Successful Christmas marketing actions make it possible to make the most of the greater willingness to purchase, even for consumer goods such as pet food.
Offers addressed to final consumers are usually "passive” in fact people to whom offers are addressed are not directly involved. The most common example is "Three for the price of two" where price is the marketing lever that allows a greater rotation of less noticed products in points of sale.
"Active" engagement refers to interactions through social channels such as WhatsApp, Telegram, WeChat or website. Let's take a glance at the most successful strategies during Christmas holidays.
Passive engagement: ensure good lever and make it visible
We shared with you an example of passive engagement before. Samples and products brochures are some other examples of passive engagements particularly suitable for the most demanding end consumers.
Blankets and freshness-saving bins always represent excellent levers during Christmas holidays, but we have to take into consideration how final consumer is attentive when he visits points of sale.
If you choose to use promotional and information material, remember to place it near cash desks, alternatively if you would like to draw attention to a specific promotion, it is not recommended to place the promotional material at the entrance: in fact, consumers begin to focus their attention on purchases after around ten seconds. Regarding habitual buyers, it is interesting to observe them during their usual path in point of sale.
For example the choice of varying the lighting or cyclically moving the positions of some products leads final consumers to pay more attention to small novelties in store.
Active engagement: mutual exchanges for common benefit
The majority of levers used in passive engagement can be redesigned to give the possibility to end consumers to do something more for you in order to have a mutual benefit. An expanding business should be able to invest 20% of its budget in marketing but this is not always possible.
This is the reason why to convert customers' actions into marketing actions today is a capable strategy for getting enormous benefits. The lodestar of any activity that involves active engagement must take into consideration how people appreciate those who give them importance and relevance. Make your customer feel important and unique and he will grow your business in return.
Among the successful marketing actions for Christmas, you can think of creating a corner for giving pet parents the possibility to take pictures to share on social networks. If you make it so that the name of your store or a reference #hashtag is clearly visible, you won't even have to spend too much time on it and you can reuse it several times.
You can also think of creating loyalty programs that include the publication of photos on social media tagging the store and/or rewards linked to positive reviews that can be found on channels or video reviews in the company of your most loyal customers.
Become phygital, combining digital and “physical”
Some strategies adopted during the lockdowns are successfully carried out by the most organized stores and they can be replicated. Just think of "pick up and pay" support where customers contact the retailer via WhatsApp Business, they ask for a product and they quickly collect their products by paying upon delivery; alternatively if the store has an efficient website, they can pay immediately online and collect when you want.
I Loyalty programs can be managed entirely digitally and also include "subscriptions" for the direct delivery of the most purchased products. Keep in mind that if you really know your end customer (and can communicate with him) you can provide him with all services he may need as for example holiday places where dogs and cats are welcome or dog sitting or cat sitting services.
You can also decide to actively involve your customers with an online questionnaire in order to collect useful information to build targeted promotions. Remember to use good levers and make him feel unique and important!
