Mostly, the eCommerce giants start early when it comes to employ marketing strategies to boost up the holiday sales. But what if you get late? There may be several reasons, you got late at creating plans, adding discounts, etc. The best part – there is still an array of fresh opportunities to explore. You are never late when it comes to leveraging marketing plans to raise your sales during the holidays. If you got late, herein are some last-minute sales strategies for WooCommerce business for upcoming holidays, the next holiday and anytime you need in future.
Modify Your Discounts to Increase Sales
Still struggling to make sales with 10% off, 20% off, and so on offers. You can get exceptional with your discount rules from the conventional flat cashbacks in a way to increase sales. There are several options to do this:
- Allow x% discount when a customer buys 3 or more units of an item
- Give $x cashback on a purchase of y units from the particular product category
- Get $x or y% off on a purchase of z units
- Get $x cashback on the cart total amount upon spending $y or more
Setting up an offbeat discount rule shows whether a customer is eligible to redeem the offer or not. You can enable them on your website when needed and disable them after the holidays. Put these offers on a catchy colorful banner for onsite promotions and you are ready for increased sales within a quick span. Note: Whatever you do, calculate your rates to avoid ending up in a loss in the urge of selling goods faster.
Emptying Slow-Moving Stocks
For those struggling to clear up piles of old stocks, this is the ultimate sales plan to implement during the peak holiday season. Some stocks are hard to sell and tend to keep piling up with passing time. This is particularly a case with garments. Nobody wants to wear old-fashioned clothes. For those who have higher margins, creating a holiday exclusive clearance sale offer with discount on this section of goods in your store, can clear-off the older stocks quickly and make room for those in par with the latest fashion. Another idea to clear-off clutters of stocks of outdated products and items, not selling for quite some time, is to use them as freebies. This may sound weird to give away things free of cost but it does make sense when done appropriately. Announce special gifts for customers with a certain cart checkout amount. This should be an amount covering the cost freebie. Now pack these items with the ordered products and empty your warehouse to make room for fresh stocks within a few days. What are unwanted stocks to you are great surprises for your buyers who are happy to receive gifts.
Shipping Cost Waiver
It is difficult for the storeowners to offer free shipping on all products. Nobody likes to pay another $10 for shipping. One of the main reasons, buyers randomly quit from the cart page without buying is the lack of willingness to pay the shipping charges. How to overcome this problem to make profitable sales during holidays? In order to implement last minute plans to boost sales, offer free shipping on WooCommerce store. If it is within your budget, offer free shipping on all orders. If this seems impossible with some low cost products, you can announce bundled sales with free shipping facilities. You can even offer shipping cost waiver for higher amount purchases. How to offer free shipping without compromising the profit margins? Consider the average order value (AOV) of the goods. An ideal strategy is to mark the free shipping limit one product above the AOV. For instance, if the AOV is $80 and the average price of most items on your website is $20 on your website, declare a free shipping offer on orders worth $100 and above. This has twin benefits – you make more sales during the holiday season, while your customers save money with free shipping.
Discount Offer on the Next Purchase
As part of the pre-sales preparations, you need extra workforce to create promotional campaigns, make banners, do the shipping and so much more. When you do not have enough time for planning your discounts or sufficient resources to regulate a campaign for some reason, we recommend offering a discount voucher or gift card for redemption on the next purchase. If you consider the sales plan of leading online retailers, you can see majority of them selling even the most expensive items such as refrigerators, mobile handsets, and many other goods almost close to the marked price. Despite selling products at the full price, they are able to generate sales for future by giving a coupon for redemption on next purchase at the payment page. This is also beneficial when you do not have enough products suitable for pairing with a sale offer. The customers receiving the discount coupons on the next purchase may return in a few weeks that give you enough time to set up your store for processing these vouchers. You may be speculative about how to workout these things. Don’t worry, with the right WooCommerce extension, it is superbly fast and easy to offer coupons on the next purchase. You can even choose to provide such offers on all products on your store or pair them with a selective range. There is ample scope for you to customize your discount vouchers the way it is required to maximize your sales. What is the most exciting offer? A whopping discount of 50% for a day, or 20% throughout the holiday season. Of course, a sale offer for the entire month brings in additional profits. Herein is a quick overview of this sales plan:
- The buyer purchases a product at the marked price from your online store
- Depending on the preset discount voucher, the buyer receives a unique coupon code for the next purchase at the cart checkout page (no action required from you at the moment)
- In order to redeem the code, the customer must return within the expiry period to make another purchase and get the discount
There is a lot you can do with this plan. If you want the customers to purchase additional units from the same category during this holiday season, it is easy to do so with the next purchase discount.
Show Your Offers to the Whole World
Launching an impelling offer at the last minute during the holidays is an impressive step towards success. However, this can go in vain if the customers are not aware of it or you cannot pull them to your store. You have a limited time to do everything but still there is a hope to draw customers to your store who would not consider shopping at your store when looking to shop during the holiday sales. To help you through the sales marketing campaign, we have coined some of the best methods to bring maximum audience to your website (sorted in an order from the most powerful to not-so-good tactics).
Reach Out to Your Audience on the Social Media
Post social media updates about the new and upcoming holiday sale across all platforms. This can be hectic and time consuming due to the difference of formats across different channels. An easy way to do is to use a social media management tool. This is an outstanding idea to schedule all your posts for different platforms at a time when you want to inform your audiences about the holiday sale bonanza, contests and so on.
Publish Sale Notice at Prime Visibility Zones of Your Website
This is very easy to do. You can do it from the HTML by inserting a few codes. If you do not want to do so, visit WooCommerce settings to insert the desired customized text.
Generate Call to Action or In-cart Notice
With WooCommerce cart extensions, you can publish such notices quickly. Inform your customers that they will be eligible for a free gift or free shipping upon spending a few dollars more.
Customize the Product Page Information
If you have put a product on special offer or reduced price, edit the pricing information with a custom message like- “Get flat 50% off till 12/31. Remove these customizations after the end of the season sale.
Facebook Remarketing Ad
Even if your customers have not purchased goods at your store after visiting a few times, allure them for a purchase with an extra attempt through highly targeted Facebook ads.
Run an Email Campaign
This is a bit tough one to do at the last minute. However, if you have some interesting graphics, a robust newsletter template and a copywriter ready, you can still try to create a few customized emails. Send email notifications to get maximum response from your target audiences.
Get Started Now
Now that you know that there is so much to do when planning holiday marketing strategies at the last moment, you must have got a ray of light, as there is lot you can do. While a lot of people start early, you can exceed in the competition even when starting at the last minute. It is not about how early you start. It’s all about how well you implement your holiday sales plan.
Don’t lose hope as the opportunities are not wasted yet. Start planning your holiday marketing goals following above tips.