How to Capitalize on Holiday Sales for Continued Growth

It’s the most wonderful time of the year!

Yes, it’s the much awaited Holiday Season. With all of the hustle and bustle this season brings, it is also a time when businesses experience a huge surge in sales.  Whether your business is a product or a service, I’m sure you can attest to how business booms in November and December.

But how do you keep the wave of momentum going?  How can you leverage this uptick of sales into 2019?

Here are a few key marketing initiatives to keep in mind.

New Year’s Promotion

You may be thinking, “I just ran a ton of promotions, do I really need another one? The last thing I want to do is continue to eat up my margin.”  If you had a healthy number of customers buy from you for the first time, or they bought from you only during the holidays, these are the exact buyers you want to target with a New Year’s promotion.  If you can take a one-time and/or first-time buyer and convert a second sale, then your chances to continue to keep them on board as a repeat customer just doubled.  So yes, there is some investment necessary, but your return in terms of conversion will be much more lucrative than if you ignore this group.

Targeted Marketing

A New Year’s promotion is just one way to conduct targeted marketing, but you can also take those increased sales and make additional suggestions to your customers on your other products.  Amazon has created lucrative success with this approach.  If you just bought a tablet, what about a case?  If you just bought this shirt, what about this sweater?  By understanding these patterns and making these suggestions, you can continue to stay top of mind while increasing customer retention.

Launch a New Product or Service

If you could launch a major product or service enhancement, then surely you launched it before the Holiday Season began to capitalize on it the most.  However, the New Year is still a great opportunity to make some new additions that can attract your customers back for another purchase.  It can be something as simple as a new color option for a product or a new enhancement of your shipping policy that can bring customers back to you sooner rather than later.

Use Your Data

A surge in sales can be a ticket into insightful knowledge about your customers.  Perhaps you found your customers were traditionally males aged 18-35, but your holiday numbers just showed males up to age 50 are buying your product. With that knowledge you can capitalize on a new subset of customers. Or, perhaps the bulk of your sales were in the northeast, but now you see your geographic reach extending all the way south to Georgia.  Just think of how many more opportunities that creates for you! This type of knowledge is gold because it will help focus your customer base at the beginning of the year to leverage the information for increased sales all year round.

Send emails, emails, and more emails

As customers come rushing to buy from you during the holidays, take the time to collect emails from every single one.  If you can grow your contact list during the busy season, it will provide you with the information you need to properly communicate to your customers year-round.  This information will be the gateway to execute the campaigns discussed above as successfully as possible.

Invest in yourself

Don’t forget to take some of your extra earnings and invest it back into your business.  Perhaps now is the time to revamp your website and increase its functionality for your customers.  Or, now may be the time to improve your email marketing and include drip campaigns to improve your outreach efforts.  By investing back into your business and your marketing efforts, you can continue to achieve long-term success.

Enjoy the growth in your business and ensure continued prosperity into 2019.