Standing out against your competitors around winter time has always been a tough hill to climb. We’re here to give you some ideas on how to stand out from your competitors this holiday season, whether they are across town, or share the digital space with you.
1. Turn Weather into a Sales Incentive
Here’s one that’s really outside the box: Leveraging the weather to drive sales. That’s right.
Weather can be used as a pretty successful campaign driver if it’s done well, such as offering a rebate store-wide if there is a white Christmas in your town.
This incentive is a lot more ingenious than a typical stocking stuffer deal or flat discount for Black Friday. Doing a weather rebate is also really eye-catching to your market, and companies have been really successful with one-off campaigns
Simpson Furniture in Iowa increased sales by 21% thanks to their weather rebate promotion. SCA Promotions provided Simpson Furniture over $120,000 to rebate customers when it snowed more than two inches on a wintry January 14
You don’t have to live in the North to take advantage, a couple of companies in places like Florida run deals like this all the time, instead using record breaking heat as the trigger event instead of snow. With that in mind, you can drive sales and generate a little excitement around your brand at the same time!
2. Use a Partner Incentive
Who said you can only run % offs or BOGO’s around the holidays? Another thing you can do to put your brand way ahead of your competition is by partnering with a major national brand.
Here’s the catch: It’s really not all that hard, nor expensive either.
You can easily partner with a large brand to offer an incentive for purchasing your products. The term is gift with purchase and the idea is simple: offer a gift card in return for purchasing a product. For example, a typical deal looks like this:
“Purchase [my product] and get a $25 [big brand] gift card”
These types of deals have two clear advantages. 1. They are more unique than just a percent off 2. People associate your brand with the big brand you are using to incentivize purchases. This works with both brick and mortar and e-commerce businesses, but also has applications in B2B marketing as well. You have the opportunity to offer incentives with companies like Fanatics, Apple, Bass Pro and virtually any other brand through companies like SCA Promotions, who will create the partnership, source gift cards at a large discount and oversee fulfillment for you.
3. Opt for a Promotion
Chance-to-wins, scratch cards and gamification have been around for a while and there’s a pretty good reason.
They work.
It doesn’t matter if it’s a chance to win a million for purchasing in-store or a digital scratch card for Cyber Monday, classic promotions are great for generating buzz with your customer base, and standing out against competitors year round.
While your competitors are offering a buy one get one 50% off, you could offer a chance to win a million dollars. If you were a customer, which one would you choose?
The awesome part of a chance to win or another game mechanic is you don’t have to take the risk of someone winning, companies like SCA will take the risk so you can affordably get customers excited about the chance to win a larger than life prize. They will come up with the prize, build the games and cover the grand prize so that your next big promotional push is taken care of for you.
4. Get Ready for Sports
Plan early, plan often is a key phrase in the business world. This is also applicable for your marketing. By the time holiday season comes around, it’s already time to start looking forward to spring sports like baseball, soccer and college basketball.
Now is the best time to have your spring campaigns ready to go so that it is on autopilot by next year. One tried and true area that can make your brand stand out is by tying in with local or national sports.
Whether it’s championships, record breaks or really anything to do with your favorite team can be used in your marketing efforts. Generally speaking, anything sports is really effective in your marketing, teams have a very recognizable brand and their fan-bases often idolize specific players, which is something your company can take advantage of. Showing support for your team while using it as a marketing incentive is the one of the best ways to win over your customer base from competitors.
Our advice: Partner up with a company sooner rather than later that can help you navigate a successful sports tie-in campaign for the spring.
