With Christmas on the way, people have already commenced their gift-shopping marathon and are on a mission to tick their shopping lists as quickly as possible. As a business owner, you’re expecting to see your sales soar, but first, you need to make your store Christmas-shopping friendly.
People are often drawn not by the product itself but by the in-store experience. Scent, touch, sound, and sight all come into play when roaming through the aisles in search of the perfect gifts. Here are a few Christmas marketing ideas that will help you create a stellar in-store experience for your festive audience.
What is seasonal marketing?
First things first – what is seasonal marketing and how can you apply it to your business?
Seasonal marketing means adjusting your business marketing campaigns, both online and offline, to important events and holidays throughout the year to generate more revenue. It involves looking at the calendar to identify key opportunities and capitalising on them. Some of the most important points of the year include Valentine’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day, and Christmas, the latter spanning a few months.
In order to generate revenue from in-store seasonal marketing, you need to develop a strategy that involves identifying the current seasonal trends and coming up with creative ways to adopt experiential merchandising techniques.
Doing your research is the first step towards executing a successful seasonal marketing strategy. Use Google Trends to find what the most searched for terms are, look at data from previous years, and see what your competitors are doing. Next comes the fun part – brainstorming Christmas marketing ideas and executing them.
Christmas marketing ideas to captivate a festive audience in-store
Here is a wealth of tried-and-tested Christmas marketing ideas to help you enhance your in-store experience and attract a festive audience.
Release experiential seasonal merchandise
What better way to attract more customers during Christmas than by giving them a taste of the festivities? Think of how you can tweak an existing product, preferably a bestseller, by giving it a Christmas spin. Alternatively, create a brand-new product to complement a main one if the resources allow it. That way, your bestseller product will remain popular during the holidays, and customers will hold a special place for it in their hearts.
Pumpkin spice lattes have already entered most coffee shops, and their autumnal legacy will roll out through the winter as well. Gingerbread cookies can be found not only in cafes and food stores but in all sorts of shops over the Christmas period, including retail ones. So what is your Christmas special merchandise going to be?
It’s all about the store layout
Placing your highest value products at the front of the store and the low-cost but most wanted ones at the checkout is not rocket science. However, applying science when optimising your store layout during the holiday season can actually help you drive even more sales.
Think about it: in the current product sales industry, you’re not competing against other stores as much as with online stores. Yes, e-commerce is on a mission to take over physical stores, and you need to know how to balance the two. Online stores provide a user-friendly experience through which products can be found and purchased in an instant.
Your store needs to utilise the ease and flow your website has in order to achieve the same results. Here are a few things to consider:
- Customers tend to first look left and then turn to the right straight away when they enter a shop. Place your highest margin products on the right to stimulate instant purchases. This is your offline equivalent to your website’s homepage or best-sellers page.
- Group similar items and place them in the same aisle or section. Use eye-catching wayfinders to navigate customers to the right section. The website equivalent of this is categories.
- Place Christmas essentials at the checkpoint to prompt customers to make last-minute purchases. This equates to the “don’t miss out”, or “we think you will also like” sections on your website that pop up right before checkout.
- Analyse the walk-flow in your store and use it as a guideline to rearrange your product placements and A/B test different layouts until you find the best one. Similarly, analyse the order in which your customers shop online.
Tell a story
Storytelling is an essential part of your branding strategy that will make you stand out. What’s your core message, your narrative, your characters, and your setting?
These are the things that make up a brand story, which you probably already have. But with Christmas on the horizon, you need to match your brand and your story with a festive tale that will captivate your audience. According to Joe Teo, CEO of Hey Orca: “Storytelling, when done right, will pull a consumer into the world of a brand to see a different perspective, showing them the bigger picture. The story is an invitation for someone to participate in something bigger than themselves, something they believe in.”
Perhaps the best example of a well-told Christmas story is Fenwick. Every year, the high-street department store captivates customers with its festive animated window displays. Of course, let’s not forget Coca Cola’s iconic Santa Claus branding and advertising.
Here are a few Christmas marketing ideas to help you create your brand story:
- Make your brand seem more humane and relatable by creating a realistic story that is both emotional and authentic.
- Pick a likeable protagonist and build the story around them.
- Use external signage to hint at the story from the get-go and inspire the customers to “keep reading”.
- Window graphics and 3D signs will help you animate your story.
Stimulate the senses
Christmas is all about the senses: the smell of pine-scented candles, the taste of mince pies, the warmth of Christmas blankets, and the sight of the first snow are all Christmas favourites. To recreate that festive atmosphere, turn your store into a living Christmas scene by adopting these tactics:
- Use fragrances such as pine trees, cinnamon, and mandarins. According to a study that examined consumers’ behaviour in a scented and a non-scented shoe shop, 84% of the surveyed customers reported that they were more likely to purchase shoes from a scented shop compared to a non-scented one.
- Play Christmas music. Yes, people will never get tired of listening to Mariah Carey’s “Last Christmas”, but if you want to be a bit edgier, you can play modern remixes of classic Christmas songs.
- Implement festive colours, such as red, white, and green. You don’t have to spend a fortune on changing your full interior design; rather, opt for cost-effective ways to decorate your store. For example, invest in Christmas-themed internal graphics which you can easily change after the holidays. Custom wall art is also a great way to add a Christmas touch to your store ambience.
- Change your packaging. Gift wraps are not just for presents, and you can implement the Christmas colours into eye-catching packaging in the festive spirit.
These simple but effective ways to adapt your in-store experience to the Christmas mood have the potential to turn your store into a one-stop Christmas destination for your customers!
Sources
https://localiq.com/blog/seasonal-marketing/
https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/223808
https://thenextscoop.com/brand-storytelling-future-of-marketing/
https://www.airscent.com/guide-to-scenting-retail-environments/
