As we navigate through the murky and expensive waters of Google AdWords during the holiday season, there are a few other things that could help close that sale.
Have you ever seen those holiday gift baskets at your favorite big box store? Here in New Jersey we have several Costco and BJ's stores. Right now, in the middle of October, they already have shrink wrapped holiday gift baskets for sale. There's a basket bundle of video games, another for movies, and of course a basket of edible goodies.
These baskets present the gift buyer with a perceived greater value. Among those bundled items is probably one quality item and then the rest are lower cost to produce or perhaps even closeout items from the manufacturer.
The movie "Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" had its ups and downs in the ratings and quickly faded into the back shelves of the videos stores and discount storage room over at Amazon.com. Harrison Ford's latest alien movie "Cowboys and Aliens" comes out on DVD on December 6, 2011. A keen business owner could easily bundle the back shelved copies of "Crystal Skull" with "Cowboys and Aliens" and create a special "Harrison Ford Alien Collection" and get away with selling the 2 DVDs together for the "Cowboys" list price of $35. Since Crystal Skull currently sells for $11 and the Amazon discount price of Cowboys is $24, the gift giver could be convinced that the bundle is a good value because you get the older movie for free when paying full price for the new movie.
Brilliant!
So let's take this strategy and apply it to your jewelry store. What could you bundle together with your jewelry that otherwise you wouldn't be able to sell? You probably would freely provide a jewelry box, but make a big deal out of that anyway. How about a free bottle of jewelry cleaner? Why not a bottle and one of those dry cleaning cloths too?
What about a free appraisal? Not simply a stated value sheet for the insurance company, but a certified appraisal from your store?
Actually, we know of several jewelers who already use these strategies, but the gift giver will not be familiar with them and therefore you should make mention of them on your AdWords landing pages and even in your AdWords ads.
Some AdWords ideas:
"Complete Holiday Gift of Jewelry"
"One-stop jewelry gift bundle includes everything"
"Gift of Jewelry + Certification for Insurance"
Certainly if the jewelry gift is large enough it will need an appraisal before getting insured. Providing the complete bundle of the jewelry with the box, cleaner and appraisal will be the gift of love, long term beauty, and security. We have another trick regarding that appraisal, but you have to wait until tomorrow to find out about it.
Other bundle ideas include matching some of your older inventory to newer items. Perhaps you can create full suites of jewelry to sell bundled at a discount or individually at higher prices.
Another option is to bundle a choice of a free jewelry items to the gift giver if they spend a set amount. Remember they already have a specific budget and they are trying to weigh their buying options. If they have $250 to spend, they would be attracted to an ad that says "Spend $250 and pick your own free jewelry gift." This is where your loss leader jewelry comes into play.
Throughout the Holiday Season, those gift givers will be evaluating you and all your competitors at the same time. They will be clicking on your AdWords ads and then the next ad they see. They will sign up for email special offers from various websites and they will look at the Sunday newspaper for local deals.
Your consumers have a world of information at their finger tips and you need to realize that and monitor all that information yourself if you want your jewelry store to succeed. Realize that sometimes your own marketing strategy will need to change once you see Jones Jewelers sending out a new email or changing their website or even their print ad on Thanksgiving Week. You might need to keep up with them, but our hope is that they will need to keep up with you.
Our last topic for this week's Holiday 2011 Run-Up series will cover details about landing page tuning and how to turn a gift recipient into a future customer. See you tomorrow!
