CWCS Blog Christmas Special Part 1: Promotions

2020 has been a difficult year for many, but it’s finally December, and many people have turned their thoughts to their Christmas shopping. Every year sees an increase in people doing their Christmas shopping online, and we predict that increase will be bigger than ever this year, with more people choosing to complete their purchases from the safety of their own home, searching for those exclusive festive deals. CWCS wants to help you get your website ready for the potential increase in visitors, and today we’re going to talk about running successful Holiday promotions. So grab a hot chocolate (or mulled wine, if that’s more your thing), tear open the Quality Streets, crank up your Christmas playlist, and let us take you through the steps to ensure you and your business can enjoy a successful campaign this Christmas.

Keep It Simple!

If you are expecting your workload to increase with Christmas orders anyway, it’s not a good idea to run any complicated promotions that are just going to add to the stress of the season. If you are thinking about running promotions, keep them simple. Stick to one or two straightforward promotions that you can run exceptionally well, rather than several that you would need to keep the plates spinning on all at once. If your promotions are disorganised, your customers will notice, so it’s better to keep things as manageable as you can.

Find an exciting angle

Just because your promotions are simple it doesn’t mean you can’t make them exciting and attractive to potential buyers. Lead with eye catching promotional ads on your website and your usual online advertising channels, and offer your customers a deal they cannot refuse. Examples of promotions that work well include free gifts with orders, discounts, personalisation and competitions.

Know your audience

If you are thinking of running promotions another important aspect to consider is who you’re aiming them at. You need to ensure that your promotions will be attractive to your audience. For example, CWCS is a hosting provider. It would be of little interest to the majority of our customers if we were to give away free tea towels with every order, for example, and probably wouldn’t generate any extra business for us. If a kitchen/homewares retailer were to run that same promotion, however, they’d probably get some success from it!

Know what your margins are

This is particularly important if you’re going to be offering discounts, or buy one get one free deals. Make sure that your margins on the product still make sense. It’s no good having a successful and busy campaign over Christmas if every single order places your company at an increased amount of loss.

Ensure your web hosting can support your needs

Lastly, as we mentioned in our blog last week, always ensure your hosting package has the capacity to deal with any plans that will cause you to have out of the ordinary traffic. Speak to your hosting provider and share your plans with them, they will be able to give you advice on your current capacity and if there is anything else they recommend you implement before your campaigns start.

Hopefully this has provided you with a few ideas to get started with in your Christmas promotion endeavours. If this was helpful, let us know what you think by sending us a tweet over at @cwcs_hosting. If you would like to learn more about how we can support you over the Christmas period, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with us here.