With Christmas not that long away, I thought I would share with you my Top Ten Tips for having a successful festive season:
- Early Bird Offers – try and get Christmas sales in as early as you can by offering some incentives to order early. Even if you have a short shelf-life product you can still do early pre-orders.
- Make the most of festive events – I’m sure lots of you are attending Xmas fairs/markets so make sure you make the most of them and maximise sales. By presenting your products so consumers can see how they will fit into their Christmas. If your product is suited for gifting make sure you show examples on your stand of how it can be wrappedto look festive. Finally don’t forget to collect email addresses so you can keep the conversation going post Xmas!
- Maximise your online sales – if you have an online shop make sure you make the most of this busy time when people are spending more on food and drink. Make your shop look Xmassy, give incentives to trade up or buy more, can you offer free gift wrapping? And don’t forget to use your social media and email marketing to tell people about your shop!
- Seasonalise your product – if your product isn’t specifically Xmassy, think about how you can fit it into the season! Got a spice mix – how about brining those Brussels to life with it? Chocolate bar? Perfect stocking filler….
- Festive packaging – a seasonal touch to your pack can work wonders to get your products into those Xmas baskets. One word of caution is don’t print a load of packaging that you are then left with after Xmas. I’m thinking more ribbons/tags…..
- Brand collaborations – these are great to do all year round – but particularly at this busy time of year it makes sense to do some and get your brand seen by more people.
- Competitions – again these are great all year round – but particularly at Xmas to stay top of mind when people are thinking about food gifting.
- Tasting – this is an important part of increasing sales whatever the time of year – so make sure you make the most of all the extra opportunities that this time of the year presents.
- Email marketing and social media – whilst you don’t want to bombard people, I would suggest that you may want to up your activity at this time of the year to make sure people know about you and think about you for food gifting.
- Planning – always critical! A lot of food and drink producers do 50% of their annual turnover in the festive period. Make sure you make the most of it and create a specific Xmas period plan to ensure you are making the most of all opportunities!
If you need any help at this busy time of year with any of the above drop me a line at jo@relish-marketing.co.uk or call me on 0772 335 1884