Can you hear the holiday cheer getting louder? We sure can – the festivities are right around the corner!

Holidays are the time of getting together with family, over-indulging on comfort food, and buying up everything in sight because it’s on sale. Yay, consumerism!

To make sure that your business is swimming in cash after the holiday season, we put together a list of 5 powerful marketing tactics to make it happen.

Apply them, and good ol’ Scrooge McDuck will have nothing on you!

Holiday Five

1. Incentivize first-time buyers

The easiest way to convert visitors into buyers is to offer them a small first-timer discount. This tactic is used all the time by ecommerce brands, but who says other businesses can’t apply it to their own products and services, too?

Normally, we recommend the use of discounts extremely sparingly. But if you weigh the cost of giving a potential customer 10% off versus their lifetime value to your business, it’s an obvious win-win!

2. Follow up with non-buyers

Someone was exposed to your offer and didn’t buy – it happens all the time (boo-hoo). Does this mean they’re gone forever, and you’ll never have them as your customer? Not at all!

More often than not, all it takes to close a sale is to follow up with your non-buyer and remind them of the offer. You can present it the same way, or sweeten the deal a little with a time-sensitive discount.

Because you already have a “foot in the door,” that potential customer is more likely to buy the second time around.

3. Look for ways to make it a no-brainer

As we discussed many times before, it’s easier to say “no” than to say “yes.” As a business owner, it’s your job to make the decision to buy as easy and painless for your buyer as possible. During the holiday season, there are many ways to do that:

  • If you’re selling something physical, introduce free holiday shipping.
  • If customers are worried about product quality, make all returns free during the holidays.
  • You could also introduce a special holiday satisfaction guarantee on anything you sell.

Convincing your potential customers that you’re looking out for them, and there are no strings attached, you will get a lot more sales. And because only a small percentage of buyers ever ask for their money back, you’ll still make a profit. Win-win!

In fact, according to some businesses, sometimes the customers who return the most products also spend the most money anyway – go figure!

4. Make them feel a part of something bigger

Fact: people are more eager to part with their money when they feel like they’re doing more than just buying something fancy for themselves. Fortunately, it’s easy to arrange.

That’s why you see so many brands (like Amazon) giving part of their proceeds to charity. Giving back is not only the right thing to do when you own a business, it helps you be more profitable.

Of course, you also need to make sure that your target customers actually care about the cause you’re giving back to!

5. Use scarcity and urgency

Scarcity and urgency are always important and effective sales tactics. But during the holiday season they become even more powerful, as the frenzy of Black Friday and other events kick into full gear.

Even if you’re not in retail or ecommerce, there are ways to incorporate scarcity and urgency into your marketing, such as:

  • Time-sensitive holiday promotions.
  • Festive versions of your regular products (limited editions, of course).
  • “Stock clearance” sales that make certain items unavailable.
  • Fast mover and early bird bonuses and discounts.

If you’re selling anything, you can make this work for your business during holiday season – just use your imagination!

 

Holiday season is an exciting time for you as a business owner – you get to make a tidy profit, make your customers happy, and build up some reserves for 2016. What’s not to love? With these 5 tactics you will make the most out of every customer who walk through your door, physical or virtual, and have your best end of the year yet. Enjoy!