During the winter holiday shopping season, pool and spa industry stores always find creative ways to promote their pool, spa, and outdoor living products as gifts for family and friends. From BBQs and hot tubs to fire pits and outdoor TVs, the pool and spa industry can boost revenue with marketing and sales promotions around Black Friday, Cyber Monday and beyond. That’s why it’s important to make sure your promotions, customer service, retail store displays, and your e-store are fully optimized and ready to take advantage of these big holiday spending periods.

Here are a few promotion tips and action items to help your pool and spa business maximize revenues during this shopping season.

BOGO Promotions: Give your customers a reason to do more business with you while still offering a Black Friday offer. BOGO — or buy one, get one — is where customers buy one item and get a similar, comparable item for free or discounted. If you’re looking to boost foot traffic, consider offering this promotion exclusively in your physical retail location to capture more holiday shoppers.

Up-sell/Cross-sell Promotions: Up-selling is when customers choose a product and are then encouraged to upgrade their choice to a higher-end, more expensive version. Cross-selling offers customers the opportunity to purchase related or complementary items that fulfill a need their original item doesn’t. When it comes to cross selling, remember that it’s not only about getting customers to purchase higher-end products. The goal is to offer related products that present a better solution to meeting the customers’ needs. Using RB Pool & Spa’s related product feature that makes up-selling and cross-selling promotions easier for staff to make a reality.

Delight Loyal Customers: Especially in a time that has been challenging for many, surprising and delighting your most loyal customers can go a long way. Whether it’s taking your customer service to the next level or creating a customer loyalty and rewards program, delivering a leading customer experience lets your customers know you’ll always go the extra mile for them — even on the big day. Giving unanticipated rewards to customers can renew their interest, restore their loyalty and boost your sales. A great way to surprise your customers is to reach out to them personally.

Connect digitally with SMS marketing or send handwritten thank you notes to your most loyal shoppers. This will make them feel special and appreciated, showing them that they are important to you. Also, be sure to engage with customers on social media with personalized direct messages to those who have shared your content or liked your posts. This ability to reach out to customers on a personal level can also give you a competitive edge against big-box retailers.

Holiday Contests and Giveaways: Enacting different contests and giveaways during the holidays is a great way to help you increase customer satisfaction and engagement while also boosting sales. This can be done directly on your store’s website, or you can utilize social media tools. For instance, on Instagram you could post a picture of one of your products during Christmas, and run a contest for people who comment about their favorite part of the holiday in order to win that specific product. Not only are you engaging customers and fostering a sense of community around your brand, but you’re also promoting specific products and deals you might be running during the holiday seasons.

Use Rewards Programs: Be sure to maximize the use of your loyalty rewards program. Give the rewards program prominence this holiday season with membership-only benefits that place a higher value on your products and increase member engagement and interaction. This is a good way to turn one-time holiday shoppers into lifelong customers.

Now is the time to begin creating and scheduling your email campaigns before Black Friday and Cyber Monday. People are still shopping, looking for deals and this year is expected to be no different. Powerful promotions will bring people into your physical store as well as to your online e-store.

Design and Content: Now is the time to start preparing your e-commerce store for the holiday season. Just like changing the window displays in your brick and mortar location, changing your e-commerce site appearance and keeping a constant stream of content flowing is an essential part of planning a marketing strategy for the holidays. This can be done with social media channels, blog posts, video content, etc. Any web search traffic directed to your business is good traffic. When your content is original, up-to-date and relevant to the holiday season, chances are customers will be directed to your store and therefore boost your holiday sales. For example, if you create a blog post on cooking holiday meals in an outdoor kitchen or watching Elf while soaking in a hot tub, by showcasing a variety of your products will increase your chances of a sale from customers visiting your blog.

While you are at it, take your e-storefront experience up a notch. Use your website design to bring your brand to life and create a custom experience. Update your site with a new holiday theme and more importantly, be sure your e-store has a seamless checkout experience offering multiple payment and shipping or curbside pick up options. If your company doesn’t have an e-store, RB Retail has created an easy e-commerce solution/shopping cart feature for existing websites that is fully equipped for easy check-out and curbside pickup or delivery. It’s the perfect tool to make pool sales management easier and simultaneously improves inventory control. It’s important to be sure to create a seamless checkout experience by only having one checkout page, enabling guest checkout, and offering several payment and shipping options.

Remember to Add BOPIS: It’s particularly important to be sure your brick and mortar store offers the option to buy online but with the option to pick up in-store (BOPIS). BOPIS is a great option for shoppers who prefer to browse online, but also want the items in their possession on the same day. With BOPIS, merchants can improve the shopping experience by giving customers the opportunity to place orders from the comfort and safety of their own home and collect the items ordered in-store at their earliest convenience. This can also help to eliminate the barriers of shipping and processing and increase in-store foot traffic. Utilizing a physical store as a place of fulfillment for online sales can help get merchants’ products in the hands of customers faster and avoid delivery delays.

Shoppers will potentially be shopping in-store, online and across all channels and marketplaces as they hunt for the perfect gifts for everyone on their list. Creating a shopping experience that entices them and offers a smooth path to purchase (and post-purchase!) gives them a strong reason to choose your store over the competition. Make it easy and quick to shop with you however they choose to do it.

Black Friday is only one day during a long holiday weekend where customers expect to bag phenomenal deals. It’s important to consider your approach and have a marketing strategy for all five days of Cyber Week, like Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday.

Encourage your customers to not only take advantage of your holiday deals, but your engaged customer community. To do this, you can leverage continued email marketing, engage on social media and send abandoned cart notifications. Take holiday readiness with a step-by-step approach, and before you know it, you’ll be on your way to welcoming jolly shoppers with ease.

Implementing a new marketing, e-commerce, or inventory system can help you boost winter swimming pool product sales and improve your ability to handle another busy summer. RB’s software does all that and much more.