The official kickoff to the holiday shopping season is almost here - is your fashion brand ready to reach those big time sales goals?
Everyone is competing for a piece of the Thanksgiving pie so how do you make sure your customers see YOUR brand amongst all the clutter and noise?
Here are 13 last minute tips to grab your customers’ attention and crush your Thanksgiving Weekend sales.
PROMOTIONS
1. START PUSHING YOUR DEALS EARLY
With Thanksgiving falling so late this year, brands will be starting their deals earlier than normal to help offset the shorter sales period. Start building your sales momentum now by reintroducing your customers to your brand and products now - this week - tomorrow - ASAP. Over the next week share your brand on your social channels, go LIVE, and pop back into their inbox with a few emails to remind your customer you and your fashion brand will be HERE FOR the Black Friday weekend. With channels and email inboxes getting more and more crowded - remind your customers why they loved you and your brand and get ahead of the competition with incentives and teasers of what you will be offering for your big promotions.
2. TELL PEOPLE WHAT DEALS YOU’RE OFFERING
Now is not the time to hold back. Be aggressive, and be clear about what you are offering and why it’s such a great deal. A lot of brands try and play coy with what promotions they’re offering throughout Thanksgiving weekend and their customers lose interest and sales as a result. Ain’t nobody got time for that - including your customers who are primed and READY on Black Friday to make decisions about purchases. People want to buy, are prepared to spend, and want to be decisive about where they will spend. Be clear and upfront about what you are offering and let them DECIDE to BUY your brand and products.
3. DON’T FORGET ABOUT SMALL BUSINESS SATURDAY AND CYBER MONDAY
This holiday weekend is a marathon, not a sprint and you want to pace yourself and your promotions to keep your customers coming back for more. Differentiate your deals between Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday. Create different promotions and advertise before and during Black Friday so your customers know you’re just getting started with your deals and are enticed to come back for more throughout the entire weekend.
4. SHOW THE PRODUCTS YOU WANT TO SELL
You’ve been planning your Thanksgiving Weekend deals for weeks (or even months) so don’t be shy now. Share your products! The ones that you developed your assortment for, bought into heavily, and featured prominently in your gift guide or other key marketing pieces. Use product imagery in your emails to show your customer “what you’ve got” and make it easy for them to click right on over to your website where they are featured prominently.
5. CREATE A SENSE OF URGENCY
Keep your customers in the loop on the deals you’ve got coming to keep your fashion brand top of mind and send them emails so they know what they can expect this year. Then, send deal alerts as your biggest promotional days approach. Use a timer to compel them to buy your deals with a countdown to remind them that they won't be available for long. Or try scarcity tactics, like "Low in stock", "last chance", or "almost gone". Nobody wants a reminder that they might miss their chance on a good deal. Use words to drive action so that your subscribers understand that there is a limit to the great deals you’ll be offering.
6. REWARD YOUR LOYAL CUSTOMERS
For your subscribers, you can offer a few good things that your normal website visitors wouldn’t get. This can include early-bird offers, discounted items, free shipping, or any combination of those things. For your loyal customers (that you can identify and segment), you can offer something even better. Your loyal customers should receive exclusive deals, such as a free gift after a certain amount ordered, or free shipping for all orders, or even a buy-one-get-one half off, free, or something similar.
Social media
7. LET CUSTOMERS WINDOW SHOP IN YOUR INSTAGRAM STORIES
So remember back in the day, you'd walk around the mall or your local shopping district and window shop. You'd peek in all the windows and see all the fantastic things that you wanted to buy, pointing them out to your parents and getting really excited about all those goodies that would soon be yours. Well window-shopping has changed quite a bit since then because now you are more apt to browse your favorite brand's stories than to walk around and browse retailers stores windows. Stories are the modern day window-shopping. Last year, 63% of shoppers either watched or posted videos on Stories and more than a third of shoppers claim that videos were influential in choosing what to buy. Share your deals early and often on your stories to reach your customers.
8. FLASH SALES
How about trying flash sales for your Thanksgiving weekend? Multiple sales at multiple different hours of multiple different days lasting a short period of time with savings of 60 to 70%. Each new sale gives you another chance to reach out to your audience in multiple ways — getting attention before the sale starts, holding attention during the sale, and teasing the next one. There are so many ways to reach your customers and flash sales are great for your stories content, going live, or social posts if you have multiple sales during the shopping weekend. Stories are especially valuable because you can create that sense of urgency and scarcity with countdown timers and reminder stickers. Lastly don’t forget to track each sale with your own coupon code.
9. GO LIVE & SHARE YOUR PRODUCTS
Remember those gift guides that you put together featuring your top selling or most exciting product for the holidays? Now is the time to whip them out and start sharing. Go live and walk your customers through it in detail. Talk about each item that you featured and why it's so fantastic. Use descriptive words that make the consumer understand EXACTLY what the product is like and so feel like they are right there with you. Consider offering an exclusive discount to those who tune in to further increase conversions.
PERSONALIZATION
10. PERSONALIZE THOSE DEALS
Offer different deals to different customer groups (new customers versus VIP customers, for example) to more specifically tailor your messages based on buying behaviors. Send personalized emails to your various segments with specifically tailored messages, product offerings, and offers. Maybe new customers get and additional 10% off their first purchase and VIP customers may get free shipping on orders over $75 etc.
11. REWARD YOUR LOYAL CUSTOMERS
Now is the time to reward your best customers for their loyalty and support of you and your brand. Use email segments to offer your best customers early-bird offers, discounted items, free shipping, or any combination of those things. For those customers who are the VIP of the VIP, you can offer something even better, like exclusive deals, a free gift after a certain amount ordered, free shipping for all holiday orders, or even a buy-one-get-one half off, something similar.
12. MAKE IT EASY FOR YOUR CUSTOMER TO SHOP
You can also create a special holiday experience for your shoppers with Thanksgiving Weekend landing pages featuring your top-selling products, services, and specials. Create a few different pages and use those email segments to personally connect your customers with the page that they would be most likely to enjoy. Keep it simple for them to click and shop so they can easily find what they are looking for and you’ll also improve their customer experience too.
13. TRACK YOUR SUCCESS
Lastly set yourself up for even more success by setting up your systems to monitor your sales over the course of the weekend. Stay focused and present over the weekend and really consider what your customers are reacting to (and what they aren’t) and take notes. Track your sales over the weekend and look for sales trends across products, categories, marketing efforts etc. so you can continue to refine and maximize your sales not just through the balance of this year’s holiday season but for next year’s too. THIS is how you’ll ensure year over year sales growth.
Struggling with your fashion brand’s sales? It may be time for a Sales Intensive Session. Click HERE to learn more.
