Five WISER Ways to Boost Your Magento Holiday Sales

Just a few months more and it’s finally going to be the season that you are waiting for: the holidays (Black Friday, Cyber Monday, Thanksgiving, Christmas or New year)! And with the holiday season fast approaching, it is important that you prepare NOW for when your target market would be most likely keen to spend on your products!

Read on for five ways you could boost your Magento holiday sales.

TIP 1: Work Ahead

When it comes to business, it’s always smart for you to be a step ahead of your competition. And because the holiday season is almost here, it is crucial that you take the necessary steps that would ensure that you have the upper hand. To that end, you need to have (1) a solid upsell strategy and (2) effective marketing campaigns. Let’s discuss the two in greater detail.

Solid Upsell Strategy

Just what is up selling and why should you be interested in it? Basically, upselling is a sales technique where you convince your buyer to buy a more expensive product or purchase add-ons or other upgrades for a more profitable sale. This should be of interest to you, as upselling is usually where businesses get the biggest chunk for their revenues.

The thing is that a lot of online businesses focus more on driving traffic to their sites to increase conversion rates. While that will work to increase your sales, it is also a costly strategy. Upselling, on the other hand, allows you to induce additional conversions from your present customer base without having to spend much.

So how do you go about it? The short answer is this: effective marketing campaigns.

Marketing Campaigns

Social Media Marketing: Did you know that social media marketing is fast rising to popularity among businesses right now? That’s right. In fact, according to a 2014 report from Hubspot, 92% of marketers have invested in social media marketing, with 80% saying that doing so has driven more traffic to their sites.

If there’s one thing that those business owners have found out, it’s that increasing their visibility through social media is effective for branding. When you post updates on popular social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram, you get to reach out even to the most apathetic consumer.

Plus, investing in social media marketing does not only help you acquaint your target market to your brand; it also improves brand loyalty, thereby increasing your conversion rates. A report from Texas Tech University notes that social media engagement and brand loyalty are directly correlated. This is because the more a brand interacts with their consumers online, the more opportunities you have to influence them to patronize your products and/or services.

Email Marketing: Some think that e-mail marketing is already a dead strategy, what with the rise of the social media. But did you know that email marketing remains the top strategy for many marketers?

Here’s why:

It’s personalized. Unlike other marketing strategies, email marketing allows you to reach out to your consumers on a more personal level. For example, email marketing software allows you to access stored information on a customer’s sales and purchase history. Data on those on your email list also make it easy for you to segment your market and then tailor your marketing emails according to their segmentation.

Minimal overhead cost. Compared to traditional methods for advertising, email marketing costs are significantly lower. Why? Simply because you do not need to pay a lot of people just to get your marketing emails sent to everyone on your list. You can forget about printing expenses too. And that means greater revenues for you!

SEO: In the world of e-commerce, SEO (Search Engine Optimization) is the name of the game. In fact, SEO plays a crucial role in determining how much traffic your website would get. It’s not enough that your site appears on the 2nd or 3rd page of search results. You need to rank on the first page so you get the visibility and site traffic that you want and need for increased conversions. So if you’re not yet optimizing your site for search engines, then you really should look into this before the holiday season starts!

TIP 2: Irresistible Deals

It’s virtually impossible to resist a good deal, especially when you have the money to splurge for it! Since it’s the holiday season, you can expect that most of your target market will have the money to spend on your offers.

But all the irresistible offers you come up with will be moot if you don’t get to communicate them to your market. It is thus imperative that you come up with strategies for reaching out to potential customers.

Here’s what you can do:

Retargeting: Convincing existing customers to purchase from you again is relatively easier than convincing potential customers to patronize your product line, and that is one thing that you could do with retargeting.

But retargeting also covers those who may not have purchased from you but have already visited your site. You could also retarget those on your email list who ignore your marketing emails as well as people who have shown interest in what your brand has to offer.

The point of retargeting is to simply convince individuals to revisit your website with the aim of convincing them to avail of your new offers. So check your list and look for warm leads! Send them something interesting as a way of reminding them of your products.

The bottom line is this: Keep in touch with those on your email list without being creepy. Don’t let them forget that your brand exists, but don’t annoy them with your presence either!

Customized Campaigns: Customers want to be treated as individuals and not just statistics on your marketing report. When you make it a point to treat them as such, you encourage them to stay loyal to your brand. But how exactly could you get that message across to your market? The answer is by engaging in customized campaigns.

Personalize your marketing messages. Make the switch from the third person point of view to the first person point of view. Often, all you need to do is to use the word ‘you’ in your online content so your recipient will feel that you are addressing the message to them individually instead of a general audience.

TIP 3: Safe and Speedy Checkout

No one fancies being kept waiting, and especially is this true with online shoppers! If it takes your clients so long just to checkout an item, you can be sure that the chances of them making a repeat purchase would be very low. They most likely won’t even bother completing the purchase and you’d end up losing the sale.

So here’s what you could do to streamline the checkout process. First, see to it that your customers do not have to go through so many pages and click on too many buttons to complete the checkout. Also, refrain from suggesting too many items along the way.

But speed is not the only factor that clients look into when deciding whether to checkout an item from your site or not. Safety is also a deciding factor. To assure your clients that you are a trusted seller, make it a point to display payment security logos on your checkout page and offer a wide range of payment methods as well.

TIP 4: Enable Mobile Optimization

These days, an increasing number are going online on their mobile phones instead of on their computers. So if you want to remain in the loop and on top of the marketing game, you should be able to adapt to this shift. You can do so by enabling mobile optimization.

Make sure your visitors won’t be pulling their hair out in frustration while checking your web page through their small screens and even smaller keypads. A little tweaking in your website is all you need to boost your mobile conversion.

Here’s a checklist to guide you along the way:

Use standard fonts. Using standard fonts will ensure that your site’s visitors could navigate through your site with just one thumb—no need for pinching. People have little patience for sites that require them to make extra effort just to see what those pages have to offer.

Mobile optimized images. Yes, aesthetics matter. The more attractive your visuals are, the more your site’s visitors would want to stay and scroll through your site’s contents, and the more chances you have for making a sale.

Short and appealing content. People have no patience for lengthy text as well, so make sure that you keep your content concise without sounding unfeeling. Remember that you want to build a rapport with your audience, and you do so when you keep your content sweet. Avoid flattery though! Your audience can and will read through your flowery
and it won’t do your site or brand any good.

TIP 5: Reliable Platform

Really, of what good is it when all your strategies and careful planning are placed on a basket case?

Invest on Magento. Invest on a reliable platform for your e-Commerce! Invest on a platform that will afford you a wide range of advanced features for your website without going beyond your budget. What sets Magento apart from other e-commerce platforms is the range of highly practical and useful features that it offers to its clients. Magento allows its users to facilitate advanced search options, layered navigation, multi-store features, wishlists, favorites, email list, and SEO, among others. In short, Magento’s advanced features give you the edge that you need over your competition.

Track Website Performance. Post-evaluation is important for you to see whether or not your campaigns are giving you the results that you expect. Tracking your performance will also allow you to make changes on your strategies as needed.

Conduct a Speed Test. Remember what was mentioned above? Clients do not like being kept waiting. So conduct a speed test from time to time and see to it that it does not take more than 3 seconds for your pages to load.

Conclusion

Eager to start on your marketing strategies? Well you should be! Try out the five tips mentioned above and you’ll see just how it can do wonders for your holiday sales. Boost your sales this holiday. Be WISER!