We’ve been discussing ways of preparing your eCommerce business for festivals, where we’ve explored the keys for a successful supply chain buildup. We’ll now look at the content marketing, website planning and promotion components, as brand equity is equally important for a successful eCommerce promotion.
Make your marketing count
The first and foremost is to let people know about the promotion. You may have the best idea and sales in town, but your success depends on customers being aware of the promotion and making purchases. The key is to create awareness and enhance the overall customer experience, so they’ll make a purchase, feel good, and become repeat customers.
There is no shortcut to this. The only way is through dedicated and relentless content creation. If you already have a social media presence, start getting the message out early. Generally, brands will start promoting their festive sales weeks before the actual date. Successful brands will pay attention to the types of content and their rates of success. Witty social posts, photogenic product shots, hashtags, videos and even FB or IG stories are good ways to capture awareness. After you post something, take a good look at the analytics, reach, and engagement levels to evaluate your effort’s effectiveness.
To complement your social media effort, you can set up eDM promotions to deliver your message more directly through a well-planned email. Short but eye-catching headlines, appealing visuals and relevant promotional messages will capture anyone’s attention.
While you don’t need to opt for viral marketing and spend hours making something shareable but silly, be sure to make your content easy-to-consume, on-point and intriguing.
Website makeover
When you fine-tune your eCommerce website for the promotion, remember to keep the overall brand message relevant to the festival. Make good use of resources such as web banners, illustrations, copywriting and page layout. If you decide to add UX elements such as popups and toast boxes, you must be doing it to convey a message. Irrelevant popups or messages will undoubtedly turn off the customer. Also, make sure the messages, colours and brand experience are aligned with your overall brand equity while staying relevant to the festival, no matter whether you’re advertising for Hari Raya, Christmas or Lunar Year.
Let’s not forget the most crucial factor of eCommerce user experience: customers able to quickly navigate and make a purchase with the fewest clicks and faults. As you’re busy decorating your website, remember not to obscure the purchase funnel so your customer can still efficiently make a purchase and feel good about the experience. Also, don’t add too many components onto the website as that will increase loading time negatively impact the overall sales experience.
Campaign discounts and flash sales
There are two types of discounts you can run: ongoing, festival-specific discounts and flash sales. For the former, you can provide an overall discount or promo codes to customers. Either way, your customers will have a prolonged discount and will likely feel happy.
For the latter, a well-choreographed and advertised effort can induce a sales spark as well as positive word of mouth. You can conduct more than one flash sale, and there can be many reasons to host one. Remember to let your customers know and give them adequate time to prepare. To do that, you can set an announcement one or two days before the flash sale on Facebook, Instagram or email.
Together with your efforts on promotion and website revamp, your eCommerce business should be well-prepared to hit those festival sales targets.