No budget? No matter
Christmas is a huge boom for retailers, but how can smaller businesses with little or no marketing budget attract their share of festive sales this December?
By Tim Pritchard, SellerDeck
According to a poll from netmums, the John Lewis Christmas advert featuring the bear and the hare, is the nation’s favourite festive ad.
However, it’s more than just an advert, clocking up a £7m price tag, it’s a short film intended to pull on the heartstrings and get the viewer’s emotions high, ripe for spending. Marks and Spencer and other high street chains have also been getting in on the early seasonal action with star studded, big budget, blockbuster TV commercials.
Television advertising is still relevant and these adverts are worth every penny. The name John Lewis has spread like wildfire across various social networks, countless blogs (including this one) have mentioned it and the footage has already been seen 2 million times more than their 2011 commercial.
So what, as a smaller ecommerce business, can we do to prepare for Christmas? I doubt many people have the budget to make a commercial for prime-time viewing. Indeed, I doubt many have much, or any, budget at all. Luckily, there are lots of tools available to make the most of the Yuletide spending boom, so here are my top tips:
1 Decorate your site
We decorate our homes and if you had (or have) a bricks and mortar store, I’m sure you’ll decorate that too. Giving your site a festive makeover puts people in the mood to spend and gives you a great opportunity to highlight some seasonal products or run a Christmas promotion. Google doesn’t like it when sites are left stagnant, so a temporary makeover will keep things fresh and help your SEO as well.
2 Use social networks
Use your social networks to offer a Christmas offer to get people to visit your store. You could also run a competition and use a seasonal hashtag to promote the event.
3 Get yourself on YouTube
Creating something akin to ‘The Bear and The Hare’ may be out of reach for most of us, but that doesn’t stop you making videos of your own. Your YouTube offerings don’t have to be Hollywood blockbusters to get views. Be creative, be festive and have fun!
4 Take advantage of seasonal search trends
Your blog can be a great way to boost seasonal traffic even more, and now is the time to do it. Around this time of year, a lot of searches will be for strings like “What can I buy the man who has everything” or “What shall I get my wife for Christmas” etc. Use your blog to answer these questions and link to some of your products. You could go as far as creating a specific page on your site with suggestions for gifts for different family members.
5 Wrap up
Some shoppers are happy to pay a bit extra to have their purchase gift-wrapped, so consider offering this service (and make sure you have enough staff to do a good job using good quality paper).
6 Get mobile
M-commerce is on the rise. That’s a fact that I think we can all agree on. A large amount of Christmas spending will be done via a smartphone or tablet in the next month or so. If your site isn’t mobile-ready and easy to use, that money could be spent elsewhere.
These are just a few simple, and fairly obvious tips in the ramp up towards Christmas. A lot of money is spent at this time of the year; don’t let it all be spent at the John Lewis’ of this world. Be ready to change things and Christmas could come early for you!
for more visit: www.SellerDeck.co.uk
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