Increase Holiday Sales with These
7 Last-Minute Profit-Boosting Tips!

Can you believe how quickly the holidays have arrived this year?

I just checked my calendar and I can't believe there's only a matter of DAYS until the 25th!

Any shopper headed to your web site now will be in a state of gift-searching PANIC, and it's up to you to make sure they don't leave your pages until they've got exactly what they need -- AND in time for the big day!

You still have time to do a few quick things to sell to those desperation shoppers.

Because the clock is ticking, I've made a list of 7 quick and easy — but extremely powerful — ways you can increase holiday sales and profits during the final shopping days before Christmas!

And believe me, this is one list you need to check twice!

Quick Tip #1: Guarantee SUPER FAST shipping!

If there's one thing that scares people about buying online for the holidays, it's late delivery. Nothing drives customers out to the shopping mall faster than the idea that their kids' Christmas presents won't arrive until the 28th of December!

And now that we're past the "10 business days before Christmas" deadline, only expedited shipping will get there on time!

If you use a major nationwide delivery service like FedEx or UPS, you'll want to feature this information prominently on your web site and ordering pages. People will feel much more comfortable ordering from a site that uses one of these services than from one that ships through the mail.

Also, be sure to offer guaranteed overnight delivery, which both UPS and FedEx provide. This will save you the headache of disgruntled customers calling you on Christmas morning wondering why the products they ordered haven't arrived yet!

It never hurts either to give a cutoff time after which delivery for Christmas CAN'T be guaranteed, e.g., "To guarantee delivery before Christmas, we must receive your order by 2:00 p.m. EST, Wednesday, December 20."

Quick Tip #2: Offer to ship gifts directly to recipients

If you can ship your customers' orders directly to their intended recipients, TELL THEM!

By tweaking your order form so that customers can send their orders directly to their intended recipients, you'll save your customers the extra hassle of waiting to receive the package and then resending it to someone else. It's also a great way to add value to your service without any additional cost to you!

If you do offer to ship gifts directly to the recipient, I can guarantee you'll have people asking if you offer gift wrapping. This is another way to give your customers a little extra attention without much additional cost to you. If you charge a small fee for the service, it'll bring in a bit more income, too.

You can also offer your customers the option of adding a holiday card to the package that you send out. Simply ask them what they want written on the card, and then include it with the package. You can charge an additional fee for this, or offer it as a free bonus.

Of course, if you have thousands of orders and you work by yourself, the card and wrapping options may not be practical!

Quick Tip #3: Highlight INSTANT delivery!

How about telling visitors they can just forget about shipping altogether and have your product zapped straight to them right over the Internet in less than a second?

You can do that if you're selling a product you can deliver electronically! And instant delivery is a benefit that grabs visitors' attention. With an eBook, or any other electronic product, like software, tickets, or digital data, your delivery is as fast as your autoresponder software can send it!

Not only that, but the buyer can customize the gift. When you send the electronic file to your customer, they can choose to print it or pass it along to the recipient in electronic form.

This is a particular selling point for an eBook. If they print it, they can choose their own paper, and even create their own cover. Any copy center or print-on-demand outlet (like FedEx Kinko's) can have it printed and professionally bound in no time.

As a seller, you should make it easy for customers to give your electronic product as a gift, including prompting them right in your salescopy to think about who'd appreciate it as a present. Allow for hard-copy printing and at least two installs, and you should see the results in Christmas sales.

Instant delivery means that last-minute shoppers now have the option of shopping at LITERALLY the last minute... and still having seconds to spare.

Quick Tip #4: Offer the gift of choice — gift certificates!

The ultimate last-minute gift idea is a gift certificate. Let people know you offer them by placing a prominent notice on every page that gift certificates are:

• available
  
• a great gift idea
  
• delivered INSTANTLY!

Gift certificates are a huge advantage for sites that sell specialized products and services to niche markets. Often the giver doesn't know exactly what the recipient wants or needs.

For example, Anthony knows that his Aunt Heather is a serious antique camera buff. He wants to spend $50 on a gift for Aunt Heather, but has no idea what she would want or need for her camera at that price.

So, if Anthony finds your photography web site and sees that you offer online gift certificates, his problem is solved!

And the best part is that you haven't just made $50 from Anthony — you've also acquired Aunt Heather as a customer! Offer her good value on products she needs, and you can bet that she'll be back again when she needs more camera equipment.

If you are selling a service online, gift certificates are a great way to turn your service into a gift! No matter what you're selling — it could be spa packages or landscape design — I can guarantee that your service would make the perfect gift for somebody out there.

Put some creativity into figuring out who would like it and why, then use those ideas in the copy about your gift certificate.

Even if your business is restricted to a local area, you can still expand your potential market by offering online gift certificates. You'll not only reach people who live in your area, but also those who are shopping for people who do.

When people search for local products and services online, they include the location in their search terms, e.g., "cooking lessons, Portland Maine."

So optimize your pages for your local market:

• Include the name of your city or town and state in your salescopy along with the type of service or products you offer
  
  
• Put your location with zip code and phone number with area code on every sales page of your site
  
  
• Make sure you're listed in all the local directories too.

That way, local searchers will be much more likely to find you when shopping with the search engines.

And remind your customers and subscribers that since gift certificates can be delivered electronically, they're ideal last-minute gifts. I know online gift certificates have saved the day for me a few times!

Quick Tip #5: Remind your audience why your product makes a great gift!

At this time of year especially, it's important to tell people why your product would make a great gift idea. Of course, sites selling products like neckties or Christmas ornaments won't need to worry about this as much, but what if your site is selling something like office supplies?

Write some quick copy about why your product or service would make a practical or unusual gift. You might want to tell a story about how people who received your products or services as a present last year couldn't stop talking about what a great gift idea it was!

If you sell a product that people need to buy only once, you can give your customers the opportunity to purchase your product as a gift. Remind them how your product has benefited them, and then explain why it would make a wonderful gift for their friends or family.

You may also want to put together a quick "Holiday Buying Guide" for your visitors. This can be a great resource for people who visit your site to buy a gift for someone but don't know much about the products you sell.

For instance, if most of your customers are men, explain to women what to look for when buying your items, and show how your products or services will benefit the guys in their life. Vice versa if most of your customers are women.

Of course, if you sell a product that people probably wouldn't give as a gift (lawn fertilizer, for example), you'll need to take a slightly different approach. Try something like this: "We know money can be tight around the holidays, so we've decided to offer our customers a generous discount on lawn fertilizer until the beginning of the New Year!"

Quick Tip #6: Feature seasonal specials in the first "fold" of your homepage

You want to make it EASY for your visitors to find and buy your products. The best way to do this is by making sure that every single visitor to your site sees your featured specials and holiday offers.

Not only are people surfing around actively looking for products to buy, they are also very receptive to discounts and specials.

Feature your seasonal specials on the first fold of your homepage. (The first fold is the first screen of your homepage that is visible without scrolling.) Add photos or put them in a box — anything to draw attention to your discount offers.

Be sure to choose proven best-sellers. Now is NOT the time to try to unload products or services that you haven't been able to sell during the past 10 months. Feature items that have been generating solid profits for you all year long and you'll increase your holiday sales.

As well as your specials, mention your express delivery options, along with any gift-wrapping or card services you offer.

Focus on your gift certificates and why your products or services would make terrific holiday gifts. And highlight the benefits of instant electronic delivery!

Anything you can do to make people's gift buying experiences go smoothly at this point will definitely be a selling point, so put ALL that information on the first fold where people will see it.

Quick Tip #7: Make a personal connection with a festive newsletter or email promotion

You really don't have time to go out and acquire a bunch of new traffic in time for the busy holiday rush.

But the good news is that you don't need to. If you have a list of customers and/or subscribers, you've already got an incredibly powerful database of people who are just waiting to make purchases from you!

People who have already bought from you are much more likely than anyone else to buy from you again, because you've already earned their trust.

Whenever possible, you'll want to send out two different promotions — one to your existing customers and one to your subscribers. This allows you to approach each group from a slightly different angle. Here's what I mean:

Your existing customers, who have already bought from you, will want to be rewarded for their loyalty. What better way to thank them than by giving them a great deal on one of your most popular products? They'll appreciate the fact that your offer is being sent to them and them alone, because we all like to feel special.

Your subscribers should be sent a slightly different offer. Tell them that this is a special promotion being offered only to your newsletter subscribers. Again, you'll want to make sure that you're offering a special on one of your proven best-sellers.

This little touch of targeting can go a really long way. It's been proven over and over that people like to be offered a deal that they don't think other people are going to get. And if you personalize each message with the person's name and any other information that's relevant to them, they'll respond.

A recent study by Jupiter Research found that click-through rates and open rates more than doubled when emails were personalized and targeted, and sales conversion rates were an astonishing 355% higher than for bulk emails!

By making your customers and subscribers feel special this holiday season, you can dramatically increase the number of sales that your email promotions generate.

Final thoughts

Everyone gets busy as the year comes to an end, but just because you haven't found the time to set up a comprehensive holiday marketing strategy doesn't mean that you can't increase your holiday sales over the coming week.

However, you do need to take the time to implement some of these quick tips IMMEDIATELY. And I mean within the next 24 hours! Pick one or two of these tips and do whatever it takes to catch the last holiday shoppers.

The ones who are still online are running out of time fast, so show them how you can solve their problems with:

• express shipping options
• downloads for instant delivery
• gift ideas and gift certificates
• special holiday discounts

The great thing is that all of the tips I've just given you can be implemented quickly and easily. Most of these tips should only take you an hour or two to set up on your site, and the results will increase your holiday sales so much you'll wish you'd started much sooner.

Happy holidays from all of us at the Internet Marketing Center!

***NEW FEATURE***

Inside the Internet Entrepreneur Club Forum

Since we launched our new Internet Entrepreneur Club last month, we've been blown away by the great questions and discussions that our club members have been posting in the club members' forum. These are real people running real online businesses.

You might be asking some of the same questions about your own business or business idea.

So, every issue of the Marketing Tips Newsletter, we'll feature a recent forum question... along with the answer it receives from one of the IMC experts monitoring the forum.

***

This issue's question comes from club member "Socratous":

I am planning a new project in which I'll be selling software for cell phones. I'll be offering a 3-day free trial to download.

I would like to know whether it's a good idea to launch a short single opt-in (or "squeeze") page that offers a FREE trial with an attractive headline like"You're About To Discover A NEW Software...", followed by a form asking for first name and email address for the free download.

After that, the visitor will be directed to a page where the long salescopy of the software is displayed. Is that a better way to start capturing their email addresses or should I start with the long salescopy right from the beginning?

What is the best business model when selling a unique and in-demand software? Especially when you start out with no emails and no credibility on that subject?

And the answer from Jennifer, one of IMC's top marketing specialists:

Hi!

I would recommend testing both options!

I've had a lot of success with the squeeze page model you've described below, where you ask the visitor for their first name, last name, email and then push them through to a long copy salesletter which sells the free trial offer.

(Hint: you need to create enough value in your trial in this sales piece, so when the trial expires, even if they haven't USED the product yet, they'll feel comfortable with the price you've charged their credit card.)

The nice part about the squeeze page model is that you quickly build an opt-in list of people who are interested, who you can quickly follow-up with by email to close the sale. Try to make sure you follow-up within 3 days max.

All that said, I've also seen instances where the squeeze page actually damaged the sale conversion rates. It's not something I would guess at; I would definitely test it.

Cheers,

Jennifer

***

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