Just like any other fields and sectors, the dropshipping market has its own rhythms, and festive season is one such example. Therefore, planning seasonal sales is critical for your growth. Although your dropshipping store might have been getting new orders consistently, failing to offer deals would not sustain your business in the long run. If you are unsure about how to get started, this article would provide you with a step-to-step guide.
1. Determine the occasions to run promotions
First of all, you need to consider which holidays would bring the greatest impacts for your store if promotions are offered. In the decision-making process, you should take into account various elements and how they interact with one another, such as your customer niches and business model. Additionally, localisation plays an important role as different regions in the world weigh the importance of certain holidays differently. For instance, Black Friday is, without doubt, the largest sales season of the year in most Western countries as it is linked to one of their most celebrated holidays - Thanksgiving. However, this is not the case in many Asian countries where their cultures and heritages place a strong value on Lunar New Year. Therefore, you should look at your buyers’ demographics when making a decision on this matter.
The table below includes some major holidays and sales seasons in Western and Eastern regions. However, you should proceed with caution as they are quite generic. Once again, localisation matters. That means you should do more research on the culture and holiday observance in your targeted markets.
2. Decide which products and types of sales to be offered
Depending on the holidays, people have certain levels of expectation about the promotions. For example, many US residents usually look for sales on electronics of more than 50% during Black Friday and Christmas sales. The similar occurs during the annual Great Singapore Sales. Once again, cultural and regional context matters. Although it can be hard to compete with others on those seemingly unbelievable promotions while managing to earn a profit, you should leverage your strengths such as being a responsive communicator and responsible goods/services provider to your buyers and get creative with how the sales are offered. Some examples include free gifts or vouchers for future purchases or ‘buy 2 get 1 free’. Besides, you can also sell bundle gifts with seasonal themes to boost your revenues.
3. Plan ahead your marketing campaigns and strategies
If you manage to execute the previous steps perfectly but ignore this component, you won’t be able to achieve optimal success from your promotional campaigns. This is why it is crucial for you to start early on a detailed marketing plan, which should include what has been decided on Step 1 and 2. Another important element of the ‘masterplan’ is the mediums through which you will be connecting with your customers. Since the dropshipping industry places a strong emphasis on online shopping and E-commerce, digital modes of communications such as email and social media are usually preferred. It is best that you send the promotional offers and deals before the official sales periods so that your customers could be informed in advance and prepare their to-buy lists. Moreover, you should also decide whether to run paid ad campaigns, and if so, which platforms (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, Google). This may depend on your projected budget on the campaigns.
While working on crafting marketing plans, there are a myriad of questions that you should answer. For a starting reference point, you could take a look at the following, and please note that the list is non-exhaustive.
Mission: What is/are your campaign(s) for?
Goal/KPI: What do you want to achieve as a result of it/them?
Targeted customers/markets: Whom do you aim to reach out to?
Duration: How long should you run the campaign(s)?
Platforms: Where do you want to launch your campaign(s) (e.g. social media platforms, Google, email, website etc.)?
Resources: What are your available resources (e.g. manpower, budget, etc.)?
Initiatives: What are the specific tactics/initiatives that should be implemented for the campaign(s) to be successful?
Competition: Who are your competitors? What are their strengths and weaknesses?
4. Optimise your website
When it comes to optimisation, there are numerous factors that you need to work on before officially launching your promotional campaigns. First of all, you need to ensure that your site speed is reasonably fast as a slow website surely deters a large number of shoppers from your store. Particularly, the checkout process should be as seamless as possible because a complicated process will discourage customers from proceeding with the transactions and/or revisiting your store. Secondly, you should ensure that your site is mobile friendly as people are increasingly shopping on their phones. Last but not least, designing your site for easy navigation is a must. In particular, you might want to create a ‘SALE’ (or the name of the holiday seasons) section or page in your website or ecommerce store page. Those sections should be easily spotted so that your customers can be directed to them with a glance. For more details on SEO, you should do more research to find out various techniques and which of them would work best given your current resources.
In conclusion, you should dedicate resources towards a detailed marketing plan and SEO in order to have successful seasonal sales.
With over 30 years of logistics experience, Xianchao Logistics began to branch out to serve the dropshipping industry in 2015. With our experience in logistics fulfilment and close relationships with suppliers, our company has risen to help different dropshippers grow their businesses over these years. We believe that our company’s success and growth will only come with helping our clients grow. Do you have a dropshipping business to grow? Discuss with us and let’s get started ASAP!
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