Savvy businesses are always on the lookout for opportunities to promote their brand in a refreshing way. This holiday season will be no different. Soon, we’ll start seeing advertisements that have a Christmas theme popping up across various communication channels, with advertisers hoping that the Christmas spirit will put us in a spirit of spend-thriftiness.
What types of promotional trends will these companies use to cast their products and services in a positive light that’s in keeping with the upcoming holiday season? It would be hard to list them all, but the four major promotional trends below are sure to be in the mix, motivating people to make purchases during one of the most spendy, celebratory periods of the year.
1. Free Gifts as Incentives With a Christmas Theme
If you’re marketing during the holiday season, what better way to get potential customers in the festive spirit than with a free gift? Incentivize visitors to buy a product or sign up for a service and give them a gift in return. For many people, the gift itself means less than the context in which it’s presented: a microcosm of the Christmas spirit. However you slice it, it’s one of the best and simplest marketing ideas for online stores during the Christmas season.
Whether you think of Christmas mostly as a time for giving or mainly as a time for receiving, one thing doesn’t change: The Christmas season is one of the biggest spending seasons of the year. According to Investopedia, “each person in the United States spends around $700 on Christmas gifts”, with Luxembourg coming in just ahead at $775 for each person.
No matter how much people spend on others, though, practically no one has qualms about receiving a gift. The key is to offer a gift that’s nice enough to incentivize would-be customers to make a purchase. Stay away from cheap, corporate giveaway items that cost pennies per piece and offer something that people would like to find under the Christmas tree such as a new iPad or a smart watch.
2. Customer-Centric Offerings With a Thanksgiving Theme
Thanksgiving is also a good theme for marketing ideas for online stores. Every business is thankful for its customers — and what better time to promote this thankfulness than on Thanksgiving? For businesses that take this route, the “thanks” can offered in the form of new product and service offerings customers can snap up.
To sweeten the deal, you could offer a free download, a free product, or temporary, free access to a service that can be purchased. If you play your marketing cards right, your business could end up being even more thankful due the revenue that rolls in from the promotion.
For example, you could offer a service that’s free until the new year rolls around, and then requires an affordable monthly payment. The same goes for products; you could ship them for free for a while, and then stat charging. Just be sure to be upfront about the fact that the offering is only free for a little while, and that charges will eventually kick in, unless the person opts out.
3. National Health Observance Branded Products
Each month of the year has national health observances that can serve as marketing ideas for online stores. For example, October is Breast Cancer Awareness Month while November is dedicated to Alzheimer’s awareness. There are quite a few more health observances for these months, as well. Choose the cause you feel the most passionate about, or the one that best aligns with your business’ clientele.
Regardless of season, health observances are good marketing ideas for online stores because they show that businesses care about their customer base as humans and not just as paying customers. Like holidays, health observance themes often have their own color schemes and symbols. To get some ideas for national health observance branding, check out this resource that lists the 2016 National Health and Awareness Months.
4. New Year’s Resolution Themes
Almost every adult seems to have something in his or her life that he or she would like to kick to the curb forever when the new year rolls in. If your business sells products or services that can help people turn over a new leaf in a highly meaningful way, you may just have yourself a great holiday marketing idea that could generate lots of revenue in a short period of time.
So, what should be the primary focus of a New Year’s resolution themed promotional campaigns? Do some resolutions have more marketing potential than others? Which resolutions are the most popular?
According to Statistic Brain — a really fun site with statistics on a variety of topics — the top ten New Year’s resolutions for 2015, heading into the next year, were: weight loss, getting organized, spending less and saving more, enjoying life to the fullest, staying fit and healthy, learning something exciting, quitting smoking, helping others achieve their dreams, falling in love, and spending more time with family.
These may be the most popular resolutions, but you can use the New Year’s resolution theme to promote practically any change that would be beneficial to a business or consumer, depending on which one you sell to. Encourage people or organisations to start 2017 off on the right foot by implementing your dynamic products or services. You could even offer free product samples or free periods of service to stimulate interest, and start out 2017 with a financial bang.
About Allied Wallet
Allied Wallet is a longtime provider of digital payment services to companies of all sizes in numerous industries. We are a worldwide merchant service provider (MSP) that serves companies in the U.S. and abroad, offering highly affordable transaction fees that help our customers do what they do best: Invest in creating great products, boost the bottom line.
To inquire about our services or a specific type of merchant account, please call us today in the U.S. at (888) 255-1137, in the U.K. at +44 203 318 8334, or use the contact form on our website. We look forward to hearing from you and learning about your online payment needs.
