How to boost sales on Thanksgiving

This year, Thanksgiving shopping will be different. 71% of shoppers will cut spending in anticipation of financial difficulties in the upcoming months.

So in other words, discretionary spending will be minimal for many people across different income levels.

They’ll look for cheaper alternatives to their repeat purchases, will prefer economy packs and rely on promotions and discounts on staples.

So, if holiday shopping will be different for these people, then how do you adapt to those changes?

Track competitors#

I know that special holiday store-wide discounts seem incredibly useful in catching shoppers’ attention, but are they really efficient?

What if you’re unnecessarily cheaper than competitors and leaving money on the table?

Well, to know when that happens, you need to monitor your competitors.

This is what I mean:

Why aren’t they charging $200 more per unit? It’s too good of an opportunity to miss, right? And they would still be the cheapest after hiking up the price.

Unfortunately, most likely, they’re not even aware.

The thing is, store-wide discounts can easily get you in this situation when you don’t have pricing intelligence.

Instead of using steep blanket discounts this Thanksgiving, look for better ways to entice shoppers.

Let’s talk about one.

Use popular products to drive traffic#

20% of shoppers said they’ve started holiday shopping in August this year. Shoppers already started researching items that’ve been sitting in their wish lists for a while.

And they use comparison shopping engines—price comparison sites like Google Shopping, Bizrate, Idealo, etc.—which’s now a step in our pre-purchase process.

Now, if you haven’t tapped price comparison sites’ traffic potential, Thanksgiving is the perfect time for you to do that.

These websites are very popular across the world and they’re spectacular traffic sources for e-commerce sites.

I’m sure you’re familiar with the ones serving in your country, make sure you’re listed on all of them.

Once you’re listed, offer good deals on popular products.

Yeah, it’s not easy to beat large retailers’ competitive deals, considering their cost advantages. But you don’t necessarily need to be the cheapest on everything you sell.

If you find out what sells the most among your products, you can use them to drive traffic.

Google Trends can help you set the items to compete on price. You can compare your products’ historical search volume to figure out what’ll sell most in Thanksgiving shopping this year.

Once you find out what’ll sell the most this Thanksgiving, use competitor price information to beat the cheapest price in the market.

To learn from the best, let’s look at Amazon’s Thanksgiving best sellers.

As expected, Amazon offers the best deal on the most popular item.

And not only for short-term gains. The retail giant uses this tactic to lead shoppers to think of Amazon as the cheapest destination for most of their needs.

Announce your deals today#

Research shows that people visit a store 41 days prior to buying from that store on Black Friday.

Since shoppers start looking for deals from early on, the sooner you let your customers know about your special deals, the better.

Because it’s not a shopping weekend anymore, it’s a shopping month.

Walmart, Target and many more announced that they’ll be closed on Thanksgiving. And many more signalled a longer holiday period with special deals throughout the season, including Kohl’s and Macy’s.

So how do you make sure you’re keeping up with these events?

We’ve already covered how you can set competitive prices. Track competitors, use your pricing intelligence when setting your prices.

The next step is announcing your deals.

For instance, Xbox is launching on November 10, and PS5 will launch on November 12. So many people are waiting for these two to launch. Now, how do you grab their attention?

If you let customers know that you’re going to offer good deals, and remind them a few times, they will check your deal before making any buying decisions.

Send personalized discount and price drop emails#

Personalized discounts are great to entice shoppers. Considering people have reduced discretionary spending in the past couple of months, it’s crucial for sellers to understand their needs and interests.

Because that means a large portion of your existing and prospective customers will spend their money wisely, on items they truly need or are genuinely interested in.

So instead of offering unprofitable blanket discounts that your customers are not very excited about, offer them what they want.

First, find out what they are interested in.

Look at:

• Historical purchasing data
• Wish lists
• Browsing history

By collecting and analyzing these data, you get a good idea of what they’re planning to buy this season.

As the next step, find out which type/amount/percentage of discounts have enticed them to buy before.

For instance, if 50 of your customers have been looking for a good TV deal for a while, send them an email including a discount code they can use on TVs.

And of course, if you’re going to apply a generic discount on that particular category, send price drop emails to everyone who’ve shown interest in it.

So long story short, generic discounts may not be as effective as we expect them to be. But if you create well-targeted campaigns, you can meet shoppers expectations, boost sales and don’t leave money on the table.

Parting words#

The holiday season is here. In a nutshell, you need to:

• Monitor competitors to make sure your prices are fair
• Improve profit margins whenever you can
• Use popular products to drive traffic to your website
• Start letting customers know about your special holiday deals today
• Send personalized discount emails that work much better than generic discounts

How do you think holiday shopping will be different this year?

Which pricing or discounting tactics will work effectively?

What do you think will sell the most this Thanksgiving season?

Let us know!