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Welcome to the serious selling season.
Are you ready? Holiday sales typically represent half of
retailers' yearly sales and as much as 75% of their annual
profits. Other marketers, such as caterers, travel agents,
restaurateurs, party planners and the like, also depend
on holiday business.
Today's consumers are value-conscious, demanding and now
accustomed to multi-channel shopping options, from mail
order to phone, fax, cable TV and the Web, even in-home
or office. Retailers must do everything right or buyers
will walk.
Whether you are ready for the holiday
season or not, marketing missteps can occur all too easily
during the make-or-break selling weeks. Second chances
are hard to find.
So in planning your holiday sales strategies, don't make
this season's five worst marketing mistakes.
Increased competition and dollar-conscious
buyers make many retailers assume that discounting is the
way to ring up holiday cheer. But cutting prices, especially
early in the season, only cannibalizes year-round sales
as customers wait to buy. Discounting also eats into holiday
profits.
Price-driven marketing further pits small retailers against
high-volume giants such as Wal-Mart and Costco — a
contest that small businesses are sure to lose.
Instead, during the holidays, turn customer service into
your competitive asset. Make sure all customers are greeted
and waited on when they enter your shop, which is always
important, but particularly key for Christmas. Customer
service has become so poor that people are actually surprised
when they find good service. That's an opportunity for
smaller retailers.
Simon Sinek, a strategic marketing consultant based in
New York, suggests retailers market a shopping experience. "Instead
of having people approach holiday shopping with dread because
of the long lines and lots of dough, turn it in a fun experience," he
says.
Looking to cut costs, many retailers slash
holiday advertising budgets. But you can't gain market
share without market recognition.
Granted, the proliferation of channels and clutter makes
it hard to figure out which advertising will work nowadays. "TV
and other media can be very inefficient," Sinek says.
But that means you must get smarter, not more passive.
Invest some time and resources in researching the kind
and frequency of marketing that will build results for
your business. Also consider the idea of hiring advisers
to help develop an appropriate strategy.
You might, for example, create momentum for a holiday campaign
that combines timed print ads with direct mail and then
opt-in e-mail (sending unsolicited e-mail, of course, is
another really bad mistake). Don't forget search-engine
advertising.
Most marketers add holiday products, wish lists and content
to Web sites for the season. "Each time a retailer
adds content to their Web site, they need to optimize it
for search-engine performance, including keywords, meta
tags and page titles," says Sharron Senter, a Boston-area
marketing consultant.
You need to get a handle on the demographics and buying
patterns for customers in each of your sales channels.
Customers who like to touch, feel and buy in the store
are usually different than online buyers. Those customers
are different from people who pick up the phone in response
to catalogs. "Retailers shouldn't skimp by marketing
to only one group," says Rick Segel, author of "Retail
Business Kit for Dummies." Tailor your holiday promotions
to motivate each of your customer segments.
Of course, that's only possible if you've built a customer
database and kept it up-to-date all year, so make it a
priority year-round.
It's important to monitor customer e-mail and queries.
That's much easier for online sales. You can quickly find
out, even in real time, whether visitors are buying, when
shopping carts are abandoned and so on. Then you can refine
your offerings or navigation.
Set up a system to track results, one that takes advantage
of Web analytics and usage reports. Or use a Web analysis
service.
Offline, if promotions or ads aren't pulling. Don't keep
blindly running the same ads and promotions. If there's
time, test-drive your marketing or direct-mail packages
and find the ones that draw your best customers.
Shoppers are buying gifts and services later and later
in the season. "More and more purchase decisions are
made with just-in-time urgency," says Jay B. Lipe,
author of "The Marketing Toolkit for Growing Businesses." "Companies
need to account for this in their inventory, labor and
marketing functions," Lipe says. Plan to ratchet up
promotions for last-minute specials and products in order
to attract the growing wave of late shoppers.
Then, too, don't assume it's all over on Dec. 25. There
are growing numbers of gifts exchanged for Kwanzaa and
for New Year's.
And you should be prepared for those after-holiday sales
that can also boost your selling season.
Joanna L. Krotz writes about small-business
marketing and management issues. She is the co-author
of the "Microsoft Small Business Kit" and runs
Muse2Muse Productions, a New York City-based custom publisher.
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