Holiday sales make up an outsized chunk of some retail businesses’ annual revenue, and without appropriate planning and preparation, they might fall short of their goals. When you have seasonal products to sell, an important key to ensuring your ledger is in the black post-holidays is to reach your target audience with a message that gets them excited about what you have to offer them—not only this year but every year.
Gaining the attention of potential new customers with seasonal ads and offers can be a good way to tempt them into doing business with you for the first time. Another way to boost end-of-year sales is to ensure repeat business from your existing customers by leveraging those same seasonal products. If you want to learn about other smart ways to draw in customers year after year with your seasonal offerings, the members of Forbes Agency Council share ten smart tips for doing so below.
Forbes Agency Council members share smart ways to leverage seasonal products and retain customers year after year.
Photos courtesy of the individual members.
1. Use Content To Create Affinity And Year-Round Relevance
Products may be seasonal, but brand loyalty isn’t. By leveraging a space—such as a blog, newsletter or social media channel—that provides helpful, practical, entertaining and empowering content related to your seasonal product or service, you create affinity for your brand and product by remaining relevant year-round. By staying connected, you ensure that you and your product remain top of mind. – Jonathan Schwartz, Bullseye Strategy
2. Retarget Customers With Post-Purchase Emails
Seasonal products can be an effective way to introduce a new audience to a brand. These instances allow brands to engage with new audiences and provide opportunities for them to retarget. It’s about managing these consumers after they’ve completed the purchase to convert them into new customers through post-purchase email marketing for your product catalog. – Albert Moufarrij, MACH9
3. Give Your Consumers A Reason To Purchase
Perhaps buying up front will entitle them to a discount, provide them with a value-added offer or even get them to commit to a subscription. Focus on the benefits that your company can provide all year round, rather than just the seasonal product. Your amazing customer service will also help retain your customer base. – Adrian Falk, Believe Advertising & PR
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4. Consider Ways To Serve Them Beyond The Season
Approach every customer interaction, even seasonal ones, as the beginning of an ongoing relationship, not a one-off transaction. Consider how you can serve this client in other ways beyond the current season, and incorporate that messaging into the sales funnel when possible. – Hannah Trivette, NUVEW Web Solutions
5. Automate Outreach And Offer Promotions To Returning Customers
Start collecting and planning to leverage first-party data (with every purchase) so that you can proactively target this customer base with marketing automation and email technology. Not only can you reach out year after year, but you can also offer programmatic promotional codes to your loyal, returning customers and create higher lifetime customer value for a fraction of the cost! – Bernard May, National Positions
6. Intensify Media Campaigns Leading Up To Seasonal Events
Seasonal or event-related products—such as those for Back-to-School, Mothers Day, Fathers Day and so on—benefit from intensive media campaigns leading up to the event to support product sales. Once a customer recognizes your product for that holiday and time of year, they will refer back to your product line and you can expand into other options or gift-giving ideas. – Jessica Hawthorne-Castro, Hawthorne LLC
7. Listen To What Your Customers Are Asking For
How can you meet their needs and solve a problem while tying in new products (or launching new products) as seasons change and during the holidays? Brands need to make sure that they are listening to consumer and market needs. – Melissa Litchfield, Litchfield Media
8. Personalize Post-Purchase Pricing Offers For Upcoming Seasons
It’s important not to underestimate the value of loyalty and retention incentives, even for seasonal purchases. To improve retention, an effective strategy is to combine purchase data with the post-purchase communication opportunity to offer personalized pricing offers on upcoming seasonal products. – Chris Martin, FlexMR
9. Position The Product As A Need Rather Than A Want
Be smart about the way you are positioning the product. Although it may be seasonal, presenting the product as a need instead of a want will keep your customers coming back for more. – Spencer Hadelman, Advantage Marketing
10. Connect With Your Customers On A Personal Level
While the product may be seasonal, tie it into who the person or people behind the brand/product are. If people feel a personal connection, they will continue to follow and support you whether they need the next product or not. Tell your story and get yourself out there! – Zack Teperman, ZTPR
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Author: Expert Panel®, Forbes Councils Member
