Although it may be tempting to set up your merchandising plan and then leave it ticking over in the background, you could be missing out on an opportunity to make more sales. The most successful influencers adjust their merchandising strategy to the season, looking for the best times of year to sell their products.
Take the example of T-shirts, for instance. You could sell the same t-shirts all year round (with success). But keeping them fresh and offering seasonally-relevant t-shirts may boost your sales even more.
According to data from Market Research, the market for seasonal merchandise at gift and novelty stores stood at over $1.3 billion in 2014. It’s a giant market, so how can you tap into it?
Plan When You Will Offer Seasonal Merchandise
The first stage of any effective seasonal merchandising strategy is to plan which events you will target. Popular holidays include Christmas, Halloween, the summer season in general, Valentine’s Day and, for companies operating in the US, Independence Day.
There’s no need to target all major public holidays throughout the year; just the ones that you think your customers like the most.
Set Aside Time To Design Your Merch
The next step is to set aside time so that you can design your seasonal merch. Thanks to print on demand services, it’s now easier than ever before to create merch at a moment’s notice, but the design phase can be time-consuming. Setting aside time to design your merch helps you to come up with fresh ideas that your audience will love.
Be More Social
As any expert in influencer marketing will tell you, the way to boost engagement on social media is to tailor the experience to the user’s context. Many marketers, for instance, will pick up on the current high-buzz topics and create content around them. As an influencer, you should take the same tack on your social media account. Change the background to make it more seasonal, add seasonal photos, and give your pages a makeover. Promote the best selling merch to customers and warn them that it could sell out at any moment. Make the season special.
Create Seasonal Merch Displays
If you operate a physical store (or even if you only operate online for that matter), seasonal merch displays can be an opportunity to showcase your offering and create visual interest. Seasonal displays allow you to explore your creativity and make the prospect of buying merch from your more alluring to customers.
Target Your Merchandise To A Diverse Customer Base
Not all groups in society celebrate or engage with seasonal events in the same way. Jews, for instance, celebrate different events from, say, Hispanics. Smart merchandisers know that there is money to be made targeting specific groups at specific times, so they tailor their seasonal merch to coincide with ethnic holidays or events. Doing this helps to capitalise on certain times of the year while directly appealing to a range of individual groups in society, helping to foster better long-term relationships.