As the holiday season approaches, you don't want to leave any sales on the table as you compete for a portion your audience's spending budget. With hundreds of articles on how to increase sales on your store, we decided to share the 10 absolute best ways to increase sales this holiday season - specifically for dropshipping stores.
1. Find affiliates
Think of affiliate marketing as an army of advertisers for your brand. Rather than solely promoting your products yourself, adopt an affiliate program and let the best bloggers, marketers, and influencers help generate sales.
2. Use the phrases your customers do
As entrepreneurs and marketers, we often fall into the trap of using business jargon when titling products, writing descriptions, and creating content. This holiday season, take time to research the words and phrases your target audience uses in relation to the type of products you offer and your industry.
3. Use exit lightboxes to generate leads
Even during shopping holidays like Cyber Monday, most of the people visiting your site won't have an active intent to purchase. That doesn't mean you can't change that, however. Exit lightboxes are an excellent way to offer a discount or promotion to visitors leaving your site while collecting their email address for future marketing efforts.
4. Expert interviews
Even with hundreds of reviews and testimonials, nothing builds trust and credibility like the opinion of an industry expert. Find time to interview an expert in your industry about their experience with your brand or products to position yourself as one of the go-to authorities for customers.
5. Deploy live chat
Customer engagement is an important point of focus for serious dropshippers. Actively engage customers on your site by implementing live chat to answer questions, build relationships, and ultimately convert visitors into customers.
6. Identify and highlight your USP
Your unique selling proposition (USP) is how you stand out from the competition. Identify your USP by asking yourself why a customer would by from you instead of a competitor. Once you determine your USP, make it the focus of your product descriptions, branding, and marketing efforts.
7. Show off customer testimonials and trust signals
In today's social media-driven culture, customer reviews and testimonials are more important than ever before. You'll find positive reviews and testimonials to be more powerful than any marketing campaign. Similarly, trust signals (badges, guarantees, warranties, etc) are useful ways to build trust.
8. Leverage product videos
Using high-quality images is no longer enough to convert customers in many cases. For more complex products, video is the preferred type of content for online shoppers. Invest in different types of video content like how-tos, product demos, etc to help convert customers.
9. Automate birthday, anniversary, and seasonal cash discounts
It's no secret that customers expect a personalized experience with your brand, even outside of your website. Collect simple information from customers like birthdays, anniversaries, etc to offer personalized discounts and promotions during the holidays. (Bonus points if you automate the process!)
10. Think local
Just because you're an online store does not mean you can't capitalize on local communities the way brick & mortar retailers do. Identify areas where large groups of your target audience gather, and run promotions for that area. Concerts, meetups, and conventions are good examples of local events you can target.
Final Note
With these 10 tactics, you can crush your holiday season sales goals. You may not have time to try them all, so pick 3-4 that you're most interested in and apply them ahead of the busiest shopping season of the year.
Looking for products in the baby & mom niche to sell this year? Check out the Daily Mom dropshipping app on Shopify.