While other holidays like Valentine’s and Mother’s Day are great for giving gifts of jewelry to loved ones, there is no better holiday to promote your jewelry, watches and other gift items than Christmas. Christmas Eve and Christmas Day remain by far the major gift giving holiday in the United States.
Retail jewelry stores are fortunate this year. Thanksgiving is held each year on the fourth Thursday of November. With November 1st falling on a Thursday, Thanksgiving is November 22nd, the earliest possible date. This provides shoppers more days between Thanksgiving and Christmas to buy presents this year, as well as additional time for you to promote your store.
If you have not already planned your Internet Marketing for this year’s Christmas Season, don’t despair! Your online marketing does not need as long a lead time as traditional marketing, and there is still plenty of time to plan and implement it. If you have it all planned out, this article will serve as a great review and there is time to tweak your plans or add something you may have overlooked.
Thanksgiving Weekend
Thanksgiving weekend is the traditional kickoff to the Christmas Shopping Season. From Wednesday night before Thanksgiving through the weekend, more people will be looking online for Christmas gift ideas and specials than at any other time of the year. This is THE Most Important Time of the Year to be found online!
Gift Idea Lists, sorted by price points, are some of the most viewed items on the Internet. Creating your own list is easy to do. They are one of the top promotional tools you can use, not only during the Thanksgiving weekend but throughout the Christmas Holiday Season.
Black Friday
When I started in the jewelry industry in the late ‘70s and throughout the ‘80s, the Friday after Thanksgiving was the busiest day of the year at the local jewelry store where I worked. However, for many local jewelry stores today it is a slow day because all the shopping traffic is at the malls and large chain stores.
In spite of this shift in shopping preference, Black Friday is an important day to advertise especially with your online marketing. During the Thanksgiving week up until Black Friday morning, consumers are online in droves looking for gift ideas and special offers. If you do not include Black Friday advertising in your marketing you will not be seen when the most people are looking for the products you carry.
Be certain to include in your marketing the advantages of buying fine quality jewelry from your store instead of the mass-produced jewelry they find in most Black Friday advertising. Some ad copy you can use include:
• Every woman is special and she deserves to have Unique Jewelry. Why go to a chain store or online merchant to buy low-quality mass-produced jewelry for her Christmas present? We design and create custom made jewelry on the premises and carry Distinctive Jewelry Designs she is sure to love. Come in and see all our Unique Jewelry.
• This Black Friday avoid the crowds and let us show you what Friendly Service is all about.
• Our overhead and operational costs are substantially lower than the mall chain stores and department stores. This allows us to offer the Best Quality Jewelry at Prices Below the competition’s best sales prices. No Phony Sales or Hype – Just Good Honest Value, Every Day.
Small Business Saturday
Small Business Saturday was started 3 years ago by the small business division of American Express to help local retail businesses compete against the large national chain stores that dominate Black Friday. If you have not promoted this in the past, this year would be a great time to get on board and take advantage of this new marketing event for local retailers.
You can start your marketing for Small Business Saturday early in November. Then increase it during Thanksgiving week with a large push on Friday evening. An e-mail, text message, or push notification late afternoon or early evening on Friday is a great way to complement your Social Media Marketing for the event.
Some ad copy you can use include:
• Could not find what you were looking for on Black Friday? Tomorrow is Small Business Saturday! Come into our store to Support Our Local Community and Experience True Personalized Customer Service.
• We’re getting ready for Small Business Saturday on Nov. 24. Come shop with us this Saturday to support small businesses and your local economy! Buying jewelry from us is your assurance of receiving quality jewelry and value for your money. Why go to a chain store to buy mass produced jewelry for your loved one? Come in to see all our Exclusive Jewelry.
• First there was Black Friday, then Cyber Monday. Now, there is Small Business Saturday when people across the country come out and shop to support their Favorite Local Business.
• Small business is the backbone of America. Let the big box stores fight for Black Friday. Shop and Support Small Business Saturday!
For more information on promoting Small Business Saturday and marketing tools to use, visit Facebook.com/SmallBusinessSaturday.
Cyber Monday
Cyber Monday is the Monday after Thanksgiving. It is named this because many consumers are back at work following the holiday weekend and spend the day at work online buying gifts for people that they could not find while shopping over the weekend.
Since the consumer is online, this is the perfect time to share your marketing message to them informing them to beware of Online Jewelry Outlets and the advantages of coming into your store to see the jewelry before they buy.
Some ad copy you can use include:
• No professional jeweler would ever buy diamonds sight unseen and neither should you. We choose only the finest diamonds with the best personalities, the most brilliance and sparkle, to add to our inventory. Don’t be fooled by retouched photos at online stores. Come into our store and see the actual jewelry before you buy. Plus you can also examine it under a microscope to evaluate the quality of the jewelry and the gemstones.
• Diamond suppliers love Internet Jewelers. Professional Jewelers at local independent jewelry stores examine large parcels of diamonds from their suppliers and choose the best diamonds for their inventory and return the rest. In the past, these suppliers were stuck with the remaining diamonds. Today diamond suppliers can sell these left over diamonds to online jewelers who unload them on an unsuspecting (and uninformed) customer.
• The Internet is full of companies making unbelievable claims on price and quality. Remember if it sounds too good to be true – It IS! Buying your diamond and engagement ring from us is Your Assurance of Receiving Quality Jewelry and Value for Your Money.
Social Media Sweepstakes
and Contests
Facebook, YouTube, Pinterest, Twitter, and other Social Networking websites offer a new form of advertising for retail stores. Social Media Sweepstakes and Contests are easy to set-up and administer and provide a fun way to market your products without looking like traditional advertising.
Engagement Rings
More engagement rings are given at Christmas than any other time of year, and New Years Eve is close behind. Don’t forget to include them in your Holiday advertising. Facebook Engagement Ring Sweepstakes are among the most popular Social Networking promotions for jewelry stores. While you may not draw as many participants as you did a year ago, they are still effective in generating leads for your store.
A typical Facebook Engagement Ring Sweepstakes is like a drawing. Young men looking to buy an engagement ring enter the sweepstake by submitting their contact information for a chance to win a grand prize. For entering they receive a gift certificate to your store to help get them off the Internet and into your store and you have their contact information to follow-up with them if they don’t come in right away.
Hanukkah
While Christmas is the most popular gift giving holiday, you may want to also promote other holidays such as Hanukkah, especially if your community has a large Jewish presence. This year Hanukkah begins the evening of Saturday, December 8th and ends the evening of Sunday, December 16th.
Hanukkah is not traditionally known for giving gifts. However, among other traditions of Hanukkah, the gift giving tradition is growing in popularity with the passing of time. Some families give all the gifts on the first or last night of Hanukkah, while others give gifts every night.
After Christmas Promotion
Don’t end all your Holiday Christmas Promotions on Tuesday the 24th when your store closes. Be sure to schedule some Social Media posts and/or e-mails to go out on Christmas Day thanking them and wishing them a Merry Christmas and Happy New Year. New Year’s Eve and Valentine’s Day are the next two most popular holidays for giving engagement rings so it makes sense to continue your marketing of them as well.
In addition, you can hold an After Christmas Promotion on Facebook or other Social Media to promote your store for the coming year and Valentine’s Days. For example, you could do a ‘Biggest Surprise’ Contest on Facebook. It can be a video or a picture contest. You will not get as many to participate if it is a video contest, but you will receive great video clips for you to use in future online videos promoting your store.
Announce the contest during the Christmas Season and ask your customers to either take a picture or video of the person opening the present from your store. Then after Christmas they upload the picture or video to your Facebook Contest page. Your customer then tells their family and friends to vote for them and the person with the most votes wins a prize.
You can have the voting run through January and give a Valentine package for the prize. In this way you tie two holidays together and carry your Social Media momentum from the Christmas Season straight through to Valentines.
After the contest is over gather all the pictures or videos entered and plan store promotions using the content. You can advertise that “Your Store Creates the Biggest Surprises.”
If all these online promotions seem confusing or if you just don’t have the time to do it all yourself, Brad and Debbie Simon of Internet 4 Jewelers offer Internet Marketing services. We will be glad to talk to your about your Online Christmas Season Holiday Promotions. You can contact Brad at Brad@Internet4Jewelers.com or call him at 864-680-4416.
