The high highs of Black Friday & Cyber Monday, followed by the rampant Christmas spending, can make January seem like an eCommerce ghost town.
When the silly season becomes serious again there is a lull in consumer spending, and that is due to a few reasons…
Buyer fatigue is real, and people are exhausted from the endless shopping and advertising bombardment
Wallets are empty, with most buyers having already spent everything they’re willing to spend (or, often, quite a bit more)
Fence-sitters have committed. If they haven’t bought from you by now, with all those enticing, unmissable offers, they’re probably not going to
The thing is, a great 2022 is going to start right now, in December – and you have one final push this year for a payday:
Boxing Day.
People are waiting with anticipation for those Boxing Day sales, and you can use this day to not only make profits but set the tone for the new year. You want to start the year strong, don’t you?
It’s not our first rodeo, and it’s not our first Boxing Day, either, which is why we know how to generate December sales like this:
Before we get to that, however, here are a few free tips you’re going to need for the December period in general.
- Focus on year-on-year growth, not month-on-month
Unless you had an awful month (that is, you’re not a client of ours), you’re simply not going to top your BFCM sales. But it’s okay, because trying to do that is a fallacy. Instead of measuring your sales for December 2021 against November 2021, compare apples with apples and look at how you went from December 2020 to December 2021. Buying behaviour is seasonal, and you should always apply this rule of thumb for the best gauge of progress.
- Key sale dates are just around the corner
Sure, we’re about to enter a quieter period, but before you know it we’re going to be deep in Valentine’s Day, Easter and EOFY. You’ve heard of the 6Ps – Prior Proper Planning Prevents Poor Performance – and they apply to sales periods, too. Everything you do has a ripple effect, and so it’s important to start building momentum now—think bigger stock orders, new product launches and positive community engagement—before those dates appear out of nowhere and catch you unawares.
- Have a plan in place
There’s that P word again, but it’s more important now than ever to have a week-by-week strategy in place. By now, this late in December, you should be doing things like scaling back your ad spend, prepping your New Year’s messaging, and focusing on gift cards, because it’s unlikely your products are going to be shipping in time.
Christmas week is when you’re upping that spend, going all-in with a big, juicy Boxing Day offer, and leveraging those audiences you made for BFCM.
The week after, in January, our advice would be to drop your spend by about a fifth, focus on customer nurturing and loyalty programs, and run a competition.
Why a competition? We’ve found they consistently provide the best return on investment, with a bunch of added benefits like building your brand awareness, generating new audiences, and dropping your CPMs.
Okay, so. Boxing Day.
When we say a big offer, we mean it. Like BFCM, every single one of your competitors is pushing a crazy deal, so to stand a chance of standing out, you’ll need to go crazier.
Something like 30-40% off should do the trick.
Deal sweeteners like free express shipping, or saving a percentage of orders over a certain amount can often be the deciding factor in getting people over the line.
You should have saved most of your monthly ad spend for the 26th. Use it. Towards the end of the week—and we recommend running your sale for about a week—you’re going to want to drive urgency in a big way. Emphasise copy like ONE DAY REMAINING, FINAL HOURS and LAST CHANCE. Anyway, we’re sure you know how to drive urgency, because you should be doing it for every sale.
These strategies are proven to work, because we do them ourselves every single year. But, they do rely on having a core understanding of your business. That means knowing your product demand, being across your inventory, and understanding exactly where you fit in the market, because this will all influence your possible return.
Want more?
Did you get something out of this? Great, because we have some more actionable learnings in our eBook, 6 Ways to Survive the Post-Christmas Sales Slump.
Download it here.
Or, if you’re interested in having our marketing strategists work directly on your account and make these decisions for you based on tried-and-tested big data, you’ll need to get in quick to be set up for 2022.
