15 Winter Holiday Marketing Ideas for Jewelers
According to the National Retail Federation, the winter holiday shopping season accounts for about 30% of many stores’ annual sales! That’s a significant percentage! One that surely makes retail businesses keen to take advantage of this season. But just how do you take advantage of this hot sales season? As a jewelry retailer, how do you capture consumers’ attention with all the other jewelry stores out there trying to do the same thing? Well, that’s what this article is all about. Below are 15 marketing ideas for making your jewelry business stand out and for promoting your sales during the holidays.
- Holiday branding. As the winter holidays approach, you can help put your business and customers in the holiday spirit with special holiday branding. Change your logo to something more Christmasy, for example, or your social media profile to something that reflects the winter holidays. The cost of making these changes is negligible especially when we consider that they can be reused the next time the holidays come around. Plus, it’s easy to revert back to the regular logos and branding images after the holidays are over.
- Visuals. Styles and fashion, whether for hair, clothing, jewelry, etc., are all about visual appeal, which means your jewelry must be displayed in its best light. This is as true for online websites as it is for glass display cases in bricks-and-mortar stores. Both should display your jewelry in the most visually appealing and impressive manner as possible. You want to wow your customers with your jewelry’s quality, beauty, and craftsmanship. See for yourself how visually stunning jewelry can leave a lasting impression.
3. Inspiring jewelry descriptions. Write compelling descriptions of your jewelry. Having stunning jewelry photos isn’t enough; your jewelry descriptions should be equally stunning. They should evoke emotion in the reader, while also matching the look, feel and essence of the jewelry piece.
4. Customer service. Customer service is important to every customer all through the year, but it is particularly important during the holidays when people are hurried and pressed to buy just the right types of gifts. Promoting your quality customer service, and then putting your money where your mouth is by really supplying excellent customer service, is a wonderful way to build your company’s reputation. Happy, satisfied customers will spread the word about your business and recommend your products and services. Conversely, if they’re unhappy, they’ll share that too and drive customers away from your business.
5. Solicit testimonials. When you have happy customers, you can ask them if they’d be willing to share their personal experience at your business with your other customers. Testimonials from other customers are excellent at reinforcing a company’s reputation and building brand confidence.
6. Use reviews to build a strong online reputation. A solid online reputation works in much the same way that testimonials work in that they boost trust and relationships. If you provide quality products and services, you build a relationship with your customers who learn that they can trust your company. Once this type of relationship is established, most customers will be happy to be a brand ambassador and write positive Yelp or Google My Business reviews of your jewelry store. These reviews, in turn, go a long way toward helping customers without a relationship to your business start to establish one. Once your online reputation is solidly established, you can then start to leverage that reputation to grow your market.
7. Employees as brand ambassadors. Don’t overlook your employees as brand ambassadors. Employees who wear your jewelry can be excellent brand ambassadors, displaying your store’s beautiful pieces and testifying to the quality of service and craftsmanship.
8. Add value to your customers’ lives through content marketing. Yes, your content marketing is used to promote your brand and products, but it should also be used to benefit your customers. It shouldn’t just be about your company. This is especially true during the holiday season when shoppers need a bit more of a personal touch, fresh approaches and new ideas. You should have a mix of posts; some promoting your products and services and others providing tips, suggestions, ideas. For example, as a jewelry store, you might provide tips on cleaning your jewelry, or getting jewelry appraised, or even how to buy jewelry boxes.
9. Use hashtags. Twitter, Instagram, Facebook and Linkedin all use hashtags and when done right, they can draw attention to your store and promote your products. The basics for using hashtags are simple (no spaces, no special characters, and no punctuation), but each platform has its own best practices, so make sure you learn what they are so you don’t just start randomly using hashtags on your posts.
10. Speaking of Instagram… Running contests or giveaways on Instagram is another smart way to market your jewelry business. Decide on what you want to give away, whether it’s a jewelry piece, a special discount, a free consultation etc., and then design your contest around the giveaway. For example, you can post beautiful images of your jewelry and ask people to write about an event or place they would like to visit wearing one of the jewelry pieces and to tag your page. Don’t forget to include any specific requirements for the contest, as well as the submission due date and the date you’ll announce the winner.
11. Don’t forget to find ways to reward your regular customers. You can do this with special or exclusive deals sent to them by email or newsletter. Offering them special coupons, whether the printed kind for brick and mortar stores or the digital kind for online stores, is a nice way to show your appreciation for their patronage as well as an effective way to encourage them as brand ambassadors.
12. And don’t forget to nurture customer interest too. Focusing on existing and new customers is important, but so is nurturing the shoppers who are interested, but not quite ready to buy. Sometimes potential customers visited your store (either in person or online), admired your jewelry, showed interest and enthusiasm, but still didn’t convert. Taking the time to understand their tastes, see what they’re looking for, and get their emails can pay off if you reach out to them again with updates about new pieces or special offers.
13. Launch a winter holiday email marketing campaign. The winter holidays, Valentines Day, and Mother’s Day are significant sales events for jewelers with the winter holidays making up about ⅓ of their annual sales, according to idexonline.com. This makes the winter holiday season an excellent opportunity to ramp up your email marketing by focusing on holiday-themed jewelry or jewelry pieces that make for popular purchases this time of year such as engagement rings. Catchy and clever Christmas sales slogans (for example “Add a Little Radiance to Christmas this Year” or “Spread Some Cheer and Sparkles this Christmas”) can invite sales by appealing to emotions and good cheer.
14. Promote gift ideas and jewelry collections. Shopping for Christmas gifts can be a bit overwhelming even for the hardiest of shoppers, so giving your clients gift ideas can truly aid them in their gift shopping efforts. For example, you can promote Christmas collections, wedding ring and engagement ring sets, or holiday-themed jewelry. Just try to ensure that your ideas are good for a range of shoppers in terms of ages, tastes, budgets, interests etc.
15. Combine Christmas and life events for a special marketing campaign. First Christmases are always special – a child’s first Christmas, a first Christmas as a married couple, a first Christmas as a mom or dad or grandparent etc. Promoting your jewelry around these special firsts can have emotional appeal and provides a fresh approach for your marketing campaign. Of course, you can do the same thing for other holidays too.
We hope you found these marketing tips to be helpful. If you have any tips of your own that you’d like to suggest, feel free to leave your comments below. We’d be happy to hear and share them with our readers too. And feel free to contact us if you need any assistance. We’re here to help!
