Continue your success after the holiday season by learning how to target the dollars still out there! Many online retailers will relax their sales and marketing efforts, believing that they cannot overcome the so-called post-holiday slump. However, for those retailers savvy enough to target the substantial sales still to be made, continued success can be achieved.
Here’s an outline of post-holiday sales expectations, in perspective.
$23 Billion Dollars. That’s how much consumers spent online between November 1st and December 16th 2007. From January 1st until the end of October, consumers spent $93.6 billion. Roughly 20% of the year’s online business was done in six weeks.
The average for the weeks after Christmas is expected to be about $2 billion (per 2006′s numbers plus the 18% increase seen over last year’s numbers to date). While this is only about 60% of the holiday shopping average of $3.25 billion per week, it’s still a sizable amount.
Why the post-holiday season is a great time to continue marketing efforts
The good news is: People still buy after Christmas. This is due both to retailer efforts and seasonal customer behavior.
1. Suppliers must get rid of holiday overstock. Many suppliers load up with inventory in the weeks leading up to the holiday season. They are forced to clear out excess inventory after the holiday buying rush has ended.
2. People are looking for complementary products. People bought and received a number of big ticket items over the holidays, and will be looking for the accessories that go with them. Customers who bought gaming systems look for games and controllers. Customers who bought home electronics need cables. DVD, HD, and BluRay players need DVDs, HD, and BluRay disks to play. Think about what products you can carry that complement the products you sold.
3. People receive cash as holiday presents. This is money that they now have available to spend on the big ticket items they didn’t get – or products to complement the ones they did. Or, they may look for interesting products they didn’t know they wanted before Christmas.
4. Hot products – the products that were in the highest demand – were invariably marked-up in price by suppliers and retailers. Those hot products are now priced to clear… or at least back to normal levels
Tips for successful post-holiday marketing
There is still a lot of money out there to be spent, but what can you do to attract the spending to your site? Here are some tips on getting started with your post-Christmas marketing.
1. Send your customers an email inviting them to return to your site. Keep in touch with your existing customer base. Let them know about any promotions your store is running. Existing customers have already purchased from you – they are more likely to buy from you now that they have had a positive shopping experience. Winning their trust means you can work on getting them to buy more.
2. Create coupons or offers that will attract business. People love a deal. For example, a reputable sandwich company just held their “Christmas Special”: two six-inch subs for $6 – which looks like a good deal. Then, you look up at the menu and see that a twelve-inch sub is $5.99. While we don’t recommend perpetuating false economy, this example shows how the prospect of a “deal” can motivate sales.
3. Continue to advertise and drive online traffic. Keep up your efforts. The pool of active online consumers decreases after Christmas, so you’ll have to make sure your store retains visibility. In the process you’ll attract the more passive, “window” shoppers. Consider using pay-per-click advertising.
4. Provide additional support for your website visitors. You have to be willing to give your customers those little extras. Sales in the post-Christmas period are more elusive than during the holiday frenzy. It will be the extras that keep customers coming to you. In addition to giving a little extra help to your visitors, adding services like Live Person’s Live Call to your online store act as trust marks to consumers.
Do your research.
The information you need in order to be successful is available to you – often free of charge. You just have to look in the right places. You can pay to get industry information, or you can try out the following ideas to get that info for free.
1. Products that sell after the holidays are different than the pre-holiday best sellers. Visit as many of your competitors’ sites as possible to see what they are selling. Check out the big box websites that are selling similar products to your store. Take advantage of the research that your competitors have done in their product selection.
2. Talk to friends and family. Nothing beats talking to people when you want info. Word-of-mouth puts you in touch with what consumers want.
3. eBay and Amazon both publish the best-selling products on their systems. That information is free. Have a look and be in the know.
4. Keep your eye out for seasonal products. Those miniature MLB pennants sold fairly well… but baseball season ended months ago. Keep your product line in line with seasonal variations.
5. Christmas isn’t the only holiday with sales spikes. Find products that correspond to upcoming holidays. Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, 4th of July, et cetera, are all great sales opportunities.
6. Read high-level industry research. Sites like comScore.com offer raw data and interpretation of online sales trends. Visit and have a look at what the market is doing. You’ll get a first-hand look at retail: Leverage that information to tweak your sales strategy. If sales numbers are in a trough Internet-wide, you know that consumers just aren’t as active – so you’ll have to be more active in driving sales. If online sales numbers are at a peak, and your sales are not, then you know you’ll have to make some changes to your marketing tactics or your storefront (new products, more content, etc.).
Conclusion
To sum it all up: Don’t stop marketing just yet. If you stop your efforts now, you’re missing out on your part of the estimated $100 billion in next year’s pre-Christmas online sales. Sales are an all-year event. Follow the tips above, and get active in developing your sales strategy for the New Year.
(All sales figures taken or extrapolated from http://comScore.com/)
04 MarPost-Holiday E-Commerce Shopping and Retailer-Driven Sales Strategies
04 FebCredit Crunch And Recession Fear – Positive Thinking Will Get You Through, Part One Of Two
Are you fearful of the credit crunch and the recession? Wonder how you can manage? Want to know what a consumer crunch is? Although there could be tough financial times ahead let me show you, how by having a positive attitude you can get through this tough time in better shape. Let me show you how powerfully positive people deal with the credit crunch.
If you pick up any newspaper, or turn the TV on these days, you can’t escape hearing that about the credit crunch and recession.
When you hear this do you feel a shiver of fear run through you? Most people do, as the phrases herald a time of financial uncertainty.
I’ve got some good news for you though. There are easy steps that you can take to ensure you get through this crunch time in best possible shape.
One of the biggest steps you can take is to ensure you have the right attitude. If you hold a positive attitude in these difficult times you’ll come out better than those who are negative about the financial environment.
Here is why you should be positive, and also how you can be a powerfully positive person.
What is a credit crunch?
Credit Crunch
The credit crunch we are going through at the moment, is a sudden reduction in the amount of credit that is available for people. This has come about as a result of the banks not being able to borrow money like they used to.
They symptoms are not pleasant. They include:
Mortgage deals being withdrawn making harder to get mortgages.
Banks are putting interest rates up, despite the Bank of England base rate being cut.
Property prices are dropping and a house price slump has arrived.
All this is putting a strain on people’s wallets, a strain being increased by other factors, including:
Tax going up.
Inflation going up.
The price of petrol going up.
Supermarket prices increasing.
Double digit increases in energy tariffs.
The UK pound weakening against the Euro.
The prices of services and goods going up.
What is the Consumer Crunch?
That is the credit crunch, so what is the consumer crunch?
The consumer crunch we are going through at the moment, is a sudden reduction in the amount of money people are spending in the shops. This has come about as a result of people having less money to spend because of the factors I listed earlier.
Some of the symptoms of the consumer crunch can already be seen, including:
Some retailers reporting a 10-20% drop in sales during March 2008.
Domestic growth forecast slashed.
Some companies are issuing profit warnings.
2nd home purchasing drying up.
Suddenly the economy is very gloomy and we are in a recession. We are in a time of economic uncertainty, a time of economic fear.
So how can you stay positive in this time? How can you be a powerfully positive person in this time?
In the second half of this article I will show you how you can survive the financial crunches that we are going through, and survive them well, through:
remembering troubled financial times are nothing new you can think positively, using a few simple questions have a long term plan.
Thanks for reading, and look out for the second part of my article
Damian Miles is a life coach and NLP Practitioner and an expert in helping people to live the life of their dreams, and helping people become Powerfully Positive People. For more information on how you can start living your dream life, or on how to become a Powerfully Positive Person and start doing so TODAY check out Damian’s website at http://www.liveyourdreamlifetoday.co.uk