Last year’s holiday spending season saw a significant decrease in customers — about 3.2 million fewer on Thanksgiving weekend in 2020 than 2019. This year, as more families and friends look to spend the holidays together and make up for lost time, we can expect to see what may be the biggest holiday season in over a decade. Now is the time to start preparing to maximize the opportunities this presents.
One effective way is the strategic use of gift guides. Having launched several successful gift guides featuring Amazon Pay merchants, we’ve pulled together some of our top tips to leverage your company’s feature in a holiday gift guide as a tool to drive sales.
Curate and categorize your best products
It’s not enough to choose a set of gifts that would excite mom or dad or significant others. By tapping into personality traits, you can save shoppers time from endless searching if you curate a list for “the tech lover” or “the traveler” and especially the procrastinating “last-minute shopper,” just to name a few.
For instance, Crayola used some creativity with its gift guide not just by age or price, but also by how messy the product is or whether it features Disney personalities or other characters.
Connect with an influencer
Influencers on social media platforms sway customers to new places. It’s an industry that’s expected to grow to $13.8 billion this year. While some influencers may have millions of followers, and thus a huge potential market to tap into, they can be expensive to work with and it might be better to find a micro influencer, who has fewer followers but is more relevant to your industry.
If you sell houseware items, for example, look for micro influencers like organization experts, cooks, interior designers, and more. If their audiences overlap with yours, you can leverage their credibility into sales by gaining a spot in their gift guide or having them promote yours. It’s using a trusted ambassador to introduce your products to a highly engaged, tight-knit audience right when they’re primed to buy.
Join a gift guide
Gift guides are a great marketing tool to help shoppers who are in need of a little inspiration. There’s no limit to the ways you can leverage a third-party gift guide to help get your brand out there and increase sales.
For instance, Nobull, a shoe and fitness apparel company that specializes in the CrossFit community, was featured in the Possible with Pay 2020 gift guide in the “last minute” category.
Participating in a gift guide is a huge opportunity to grow your business, especially during the busiest shopping time of the year — the National Retail Foundation recently revised its 2021 forecast because it projects higher numbers. It can be akin to using an influencer by having a voice outside of your company to promote your products and introduce new audiences to your business.
Last year we had more than 160 unique products and gift ideas from Amazon Pay merchants in our gift guide. This year we’re looking to launch an even bigger guide with a dedicated focus on getting your products in front of the audiences most likely to purchase.