Promoting Your Products During the Holiday Season
The end of the year is a busy time for businesses, especially consumer-facing brands. As we approach Black Friday, one of the busiest shopping days of the year, it is important to ensure your product has the exposure it needs to generate sales. In fact, nearly 13% of all retail sales in the U.S. occur between Black Friday and Christmas.
Here are some tips to help your product succeed this season:
- Allow consumers to buy directly from social: A recent study by Forrester found that 38% of shoppers in the U.S. make monthly purchases through social media. Therefore, if you have a product to sell, it is important to make it easy for consumers to buy directly from these platforms. Over the years, this has evolved and today, Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Pinterest all have integrations allowing consumers to purchase without leaving the sites. Some even simplify the process by saving shopping details, including email, credit card and shipping address to offer a one-click checkout.
- Tap into influencers to help spread the word: Last year, 52% of consumers found gift inspiration from social media ads – and we don’t see that trend dropping this year. Therefore, leveraging social media to reach your audiences is key. One way to increase holiday sales conversions is through influencer marketing. Identifying the right influencer for your product can help propel your brand forward. It is a win-win as many influencers are motivated to showcase products at this time of year if there are commission incentives for sales through custom links.
- Consider a chatbot to support customer inquiries: Creating a positive experience for customers is extremely important. This is especially true when the shopping experience is online. Therefore, it is important to evaluate and prepare for how your brand will respond to customer questions and concerns about the product. One way to maximize sales and improve the customer experience is to leverage an artificial intelligence (AI) powered chatbot. In fact, 64% of consumers claim that 24/7 service is the most helpful chatbot functionality. A chatbot not only can be pre-programmed to answer common questions, including those about returns or delivery time, but can also help shoppers determine specific needs and preferences, and deliver product recommendations.
- Secure coverage in gift guides. Because many publications distribute their gift guides in December, it is important to plan and identify the key media outlets and lists that you want your products included in – ideally about two months out. With so many competitors saturating the media landscape around the holiday season, it is imperative to ideate unique angles and approaches for positioning your products. If the product you are pitching has multiple unique selling propositions, focusing on key product attributes and matching those to the target audiences that would benefit most will help your product stand out.
The holidays are an exciting time of year, but the stakes are high if you are aiming to hit business goals by the end of the year. Identifying the right platform to promote your product and reach your target audience is critical to your success. If you are interested in exploring opportunities to learn how social and earned media can help, contact us today.