August is the best time of the year to get your holiday products ready for buyers. But, maybe you don’t know how well your items will sell so you are apprehensive about promoting too much too early. Or maybe you want to create holiday-specific products — which, of course, are unsaleable after the holidays. What do you do? Entice buyers with special incentives to buy early!
I found that setting up special pre-holiday ordering incentives and promotions work really well. Personally, I used this method during the slow winter months before the tourist season (which is the biggest buying season for many of the stores I sold to within Idaho).
I logically worked special incentives to increase sales and help my buyers.
- First, I starting promoting a couple of months before the season (like in August for holiday buying)
- I developed a package deal listing X amount of items — preferable in mixed shades, flavors, sizes, scents, etc. — as an opening order. Offering an introductory package like this makes it easier for the buyer.
- With this package, I offered either free shipping, free samples (more than typically supplied), free gift, free display … or whatever idea you can come up with to sweeten the offer.
- Determine a timeframe of ‘the last date to order’ for this package to receive the free incentive.
- Lastly, but most importantly, each order required a shipping date AFTER a certain timeframe. With my winter sales, I took orders in February for delivery/shipping in late April or early May. With holidays sales, you can look into shipping in November, for example.
This worked brilliantly for me. I had hot orders in my hands, placed during the slower months when buyers had more time to talk to me. And I knew just how many products I needed to get made by the shipping date.
Of course, buyers were not billed until the product(s) shipped — unless, of course, you could arrange pre-payment (which I did on occasion).
And no more extra holiday-themed product leftover at the end of the year. In this case, you can also tell buyers that they can only order these types of products on a limited basis — meaning only once, or keep the door open for orders throughout the holiday season. Whatever works best for you and your buyer.