How To Scale Your Online Business This Mother's Day
Mother’s Day is fast approaching, a special day for mothers and grandmothers to be fawned over and appreciated. What this special day offers is an opportunity for eCommerce to increase sales of their products and services. Traditionally, the mother’s day gifts categories were dominated by flowers, chocolates, dinners, shows and spa treats - almost everything any woman loves. Let’s not forget the card, which contributes to 100+ million dollar sales for Mother’s Day.
The online shopping experience and a trend of customized, thoughtful gifts offer an altogether new outlook for all eCommerce businesses. Mother’s Day Marketing indulgences are not limited to flowers and chocolates anymore. More and more people want to gift something that is meaningful, desired, unique and useful.
Most mothers internally eagerly await and anticipate what the special day has to offer them and I am guessing that many sellers may be approaching Mother’s Day with the same anticipation. And they must! Such occasions are most suited for eCommerce websites to leverage upon, not only their sales for that one day or short term, but also to use it as an opportunity to engage customers and retain them for a longer term.
Considering the performance last year and a few years prior to that, there is no doubt that this year too online purchases will top the retail market activities to mark this day.
Everything being said, the question is how can eCommerce companies tap into the opportunities to increase sales, engage customers and deepen customer relations going forward?
Here’s How?
1) Remember Where They Came From
As much as businesses want to look forward to tapping new sales territories and future sales; it’s crucial to understand the current status, the baseline not only in terms of financial metrics but customer behaviors too. An insight into the past and current customer behavior can reveal a lot about how your business has shaped from time to time and who have been your loyal customers. As you search your database, you will know who have purchased from you for Mother’s Day in 2014, 2013 and earlier. Eagerly view all the customer base available and look for major aspects that become a part of purchase - sell- price, customer feedback, the amount spent. With a wealth of data available at fingertips - customers’ visits to your website/s, customers’ flow through websites and their behavior while there, their frequency of visits, their purchase history, abandoned cart history, unstructured social media data etc., using simple tools such as Google Analytics, places eCommerce companies in a prime spot to be able to tap into and maximize their customers’ engagement and profitability. All these provides firsthand information about your customer base and thereby an opportunity to entice them to a more profitable behavior.
2) Include Key Words
At this time of the month, patrons are taking to search engines to find out what’s up for grabs for Mother’s Day. For this occasion, they need something more than ever before, and as an eCommerce seller, one must take complete advantage of that. “MOTHERS DAY GIFTS” would be the simplest and most used search term a few days prior to the day. By leveraging specific keywords you have high chances to increase web traffic to your online store, and as a result more sales in short duration. Here are few sample search terms that are trending and could be helpful to you - “Mother’s Day Wish List”, “The Perfect Gift for Mother’s Day”, “Gifts for Mum”, “Mum’s the world”
3) What are the Gifts and Where are they?
We understand that not every online seller caters to Mother’s Day audience or has products that are meant to be gifted. But those who are may want to create categories that are easily recognizable as “gifts” and can be differentiated from remaining products. It adds to the ease and convenience of buyers, especially the last moment buyers without having to navigate through the entire store and look for what’s available. If someone is looking for a specific gift, they surely will search and take their own time to choose. But remember, in competitive eCommerce business, convenience is the king.
4) What’s the Big Deal?
Offering deals for festivals and occasions is not a new thing for online sellers or for any retailer for that matter. It’s apparent that to make the website more inviting, businesses list attractive deals on their products and services. Mother’s Day is one of the bigger eCommerce days and thus it’s a good idea to promote as many products, either through discount or coupled with other product/s. And don’t forget FREE shipping! It’s one of the most exciting things for a buyer. You may want to go to an extent to think that the FREE shipping actually attracts someone to buy the product even if they are not actively looking for it.
While you list your best deals and offer a creative packaging, don’t forget to intertwine some heart-warming stories about your business. Here’s a quick guide to get you started on product storytelling.
After all, Mother’s Day is about honoring and appreciating the contribution of a very special person and what better way than a story to strike the right chord.
The next few days many eCommerce businesses may be seeing an influx of orders coming their way.
Once the big day is over and you have a moment to breath and think, we would love to hear about your best selling experience this Mother’s Day.
