Get the Most Out of Your Retail Marketing Around Natural Holidays

Let's face it, we've trained the consumer to shop on the natural holidays. For years, every retailer has trotted out their best offers on those holidays. And the customers know it. The natural holidays that matter for retail marketing are the big five: Memorial Day, 4th of July, Labor Day, Black Friday/After Thanksgiving and New Year's. Each of those holidays have enough retail marketing power to build a three week strategy around them.

Some of the next tier holidays are making a push to join the big five, but aren't quite there. Veteran's Day has been coming on strong in recent years. President's Day has always done better in the East and Midwest than in the rest of the country and seems to have cooled a bit – except in certain categories, like mattresses. The day after Christmas is always big, because of returns and gift cards – but you can make that part of your pre-New Year's sale if you don't want to do an After Christmas Clearance. Back to School time has also been good for retailers, but doesn't have a indicative time frame like the holidays do. And, of course the Christmas buying season is always good, but is spread out over many weeks. Some retailers have even tried to make a sale out of MLK day or Black History Month – but these can go horribly wrong if you're not treating the holiday with respect and reserve.

So, back to the big natural holidays. By now you should have your sales figures for the 4th of July and be well on your way in preparing your big Labor Day Sale. If you're a retailer, you pretty much have to participate in these big five holidays – if you don't the competition will probably hand you your lunch. Customers expect big things: low prices, BOGO offers, big financing offers, cash back, free gifts and a host of other "amazing" offers. if you're not providing something as good or better than your competition, you probably aren't going to do well. Granted, with so many shoppers in the market, you will still probably do better than average – but customers have so many ways to get information today, they will look for the best deals and shop there first. Which means they may never make it to your store.

For many of these events, our retail clients follow a 3 week sales strategy. Hold a pre-holiday event, holiday event and an extended holiday event. And if you really want to drive traffic, do a pressure point or two along the way (especially on the actual holiday) where you give your customers a little something extra to shop you that day. The extra retail marketing expenses are usually offset by bigger store traffic and larger sales results. Those are just a few of the marketing strategies we've used to increase holiday sales.

You also should do something special for your best customers. Give them added incentive to shop your store during these events. You can do this via direct mail, email, digital or other direct one-to-one marketing channels. Give them the VIP treatment – a slightly better offer, free gift or special advance access to your sale, giving them the same offer but before everyone else.

Like them or not, these natural holidays have trained the consumers to wait for them. Chances are, your week right after the sale ends is not a good week. That's why you need to pull as many out of the market as you can each holiday, while trying to up your share of the overall market. So, get ready. Because here comes the next one!

Mike McClure, feeding the shopping frenzy