How To Use The Holiday Season To Increase Your Customer Base?

With holidays just around the corner, businesses are gearing up to increase sales and make the best out of the situation. Especially after last year, since most businesses were shut due to the pandemic and subscriptions were exchanged as gifts. But now that people are out on the streets again, holiday shopping is going to regain all its pomp and create frenzy on local shopkeepers. This is the busiest time of the year for businesses and is rightly so.

However, you can’t simply boost your sales overnight. You need to have a very sound marketing strategy in place. Here are a few tips to help you increase sales and customer base during the holiday season.

Tips To Expand Your Customer Base During The Holiday Season

Offer Gift Subscriptions

In this post-pandemic digitalized era, a gift subscription is mostly considered a very thoughtful gift and has every reason to be. There is no hassle of wrapping or packaging the gift. It can be immediately sent over to the recipient in an instant. That is also one of the reasons why people purchase gift subscriptions at the last minute.

In fact, according to a study conducted by Vimeo in 2018, due to last-minute shopping, gift subscriptions sales rose 6x on 23rd December. But that's not all! It rose to a whopping 10x on the next day itself.

According to another survey conducted by Vimeo, it was noticed that people purchase 150 percent more subscriptions between Black Friday and Christmas Eve, as compared to the rest of the year. This is precisely why many businesses offer gift subscriptions to their customers and clients during holiday seasons.

Release Seasonal Content

Picture this: The festival season is prevalent. You are at home after a long day, sitting with your loved ones and relaxing. There is nothing that would lift your mood better than a seasonal garnish over your favorite content. This is good enough to put you right in the festival spirit.

Brands need to know how to make maximum usage of seasonal content to increase engagement. It is the perfect time to rope in some new customers. If customers see something they relate to, they will naturally be inclined to correlate your brand name towards that particular product.

One use case of this strategy is Tello Films. They know exactly how to set you up for a holiday season. This year, they intend to release their first-ever holiday movie, and they plan to keep doing this for the coming years. It was a popular demand amongst the community, and the founder of Tello Films, Christin Baker eventually gave in.

The seasonal content theme can be leveraged for higher sales across all sectors of business. If you happen to run an instructional network, think of adding a holiday craft tutorial with it. If you work for an OTT live platform, then maybe make a special video greeting or free additional festival content for your subscribers. The key to audience engagement is to constantly provide them with new content, either on-demand or live.

Give Out Promo Codes And Coupons

Gifts aside, people love shopping for themselves during the festival season. All the hard-earned money accumulated over the years is now a gateway for people to spoil themselves and their families. Moreover, according to a study conducted by Vimeo in 2018, non-gift subscription purchases increased by 44.5 percent between Black Friday and Christmas eve.

Even the week after Christmas, sales were up 3x their normal weekly rate, as compared to the remainder of the year. Offering promo codes as a cherry over the top of such heavy festival shopping will always increase brand loyalty in the heart of customers. Free promo codes are baits for customer loyalty. You can set your promo code length across various multiple tenures, depending on what would best suit your customer’s needs.

Try Win-Back Campaigns And Free-Takeaways

The festival season is the perfect time to win back your former customers. But for that, you first need to have a clear understanding of why they left in the first place. Once you have figured this out, you can start working on your message to ‘woo’ them back.

Once you have figured out the reason behind your ‘lapsed’ customers, then you need to start segmenting your audience. Win-back messages are certainly not a one-size-fits-all shoe solution. Not all your lapsed customers are going to respond to your win-back efforts. So in order to not waste more resources than you need to, you need to start segmenting your customers based on the success rate.

You need to segment them based on frequency, recency, and monetary value. Then, segment these customers based on the types of win-back campaigns they might respond to, and start marketing to them accordingly. This will result in a good conversion rate, thereby increasing your holiday customer base.

Offer Free Shipping Or Special Delivery

If you are running an online store, the best possible incentive for your customers is free shipping. This is especially the case when you are competing against giants such as Amazon. Instant and free delivery will build a feeling of trust and authenticity in the hearts of your customer base, especially if you are a growing business.

If not an e-commerce store, you can still amp up your game. Understand what your audience would appreciate, and cater to them accordingly. For example, if you are a spa, how about a premium spa package and a home-spa kit for your most loyal customers. You can also deliver gift baskets, handmade crafts, and whatnot.

Bottom Line

Holidays are the time you, as a business, can make a chunk of your year-round earnings. Launch exclusive customer sales, offer promo codes, loyalty programs, etc, to not only satisfy and retain your original customers but also attract new ones. But it isn’t going to happen overnight. So don’t wait longer. Get creative and launch a seamless festival marketing strategy to skyrocket your sales this festive season.

Author Bio: Mansi Dhorda is a Marketing Technology Consultant, helping clients and businesses achieve their objectives. You can connect with her at LinkedIn.