10 Awesome Tips for Using Gift Cards to Boost your Holiday Sales
Whether you own a retail store, beauty salon, restaurant, housecleaning service or other local business, Gift Cards can be a great way to spark new holiday sales!
These are not just for the Big Box Chains any more, in fact new study reports show that half of North Americans are very open to buying gift cards from small independent retailers today! This is great news for todays economy where we all want to support Local Businesses!
Here are 10 Tips to successful uses of Gift Cards for your Business:
Promote your Gift Cards on Social media. Consumers increasingly turn to social media for holiday gift ideas and seeing a post will encourage them to purchase them right then and there.
Market Gift cards as a self-gifting option. Let’s face it: most holiday shoppers end up buying a little something for themselves, and git cards are no exception. Create marketing messages that encourage customers to treat themselves with a gift card.
Use Gift Cards as promotional items. You can draw customers into your business- or get them to buy more than they otherwise would - with a gift-card related promotion. For example, give customers a $10 gift card for every $50 they spend.
Offer deals on gift cards themselves. For instance do a promotion where the customer buys a $20 card they get a $25 card or $100 for $85 and so forth.
Place gift cards at the point of purchase. Gift Cards are often impulse buys, so putting an attractive display with the gift cards, envelopes, and boxes near the register can really boost sales!
Use Gift Cards to reward loyal customers. If you have a loyalty program in place, try using gift cards instead of or in addition to discounts. Gift Cards have higher perceived value than discounts, so they’re more successful at getting customers into your business.
Promote Gift Cards more heavily as holidays draw near. As time runs out for shoppers to buy, they start to panic, and gift cards become even more appealing.
Emphasize that gift cards can be used after the holidays- when crowds have thinned out and there are plenty of deals to be had. Since gift cards purchased in December most times, they are likely to be used in January and February which will help to pump up your sales during a season that is usually slow for most retailers.
Market gift cards as “The perfect gift for (fill in the blank)”. Don’t know what to get the teacher/client/neighbour/etc? Gift Cards are suitable for just about any recipient, so emphasize that in your marketing messages!
And Finally, Gift Cards are a wonderful way to support your local community! This year more than ever, businesses will notice that many shoppers will be purchasing gift cards to help support their local community more than ever! So make sure you are stocked up with a selection of cards for those shoppers who cherish their favorite local business as yours!
So get creative with how you want to market your Gift Cards, but be sure to have plenty of stock for right around the holidays and throughout the year!
Select Print Services can provide you with the Standard PVC Cards that are Laminated and print in Full color. We offer short run card orders at small quantities for your convenience. Your choice of Mag Stripe encoding, bar coding or sequential numbering!
So what are you waiting for! Give us a Call today to push your sales into overdrive this holiday season!
Thats a wrap…