We’ve mentioned before that the last quarter of the year (which covers October, November, and December) is always a sales-heavy season for online businesses, as it’s the winter sales period!
Today, we’ll cover all you need to know to make this time the most profitable for your business, sell all of your year’s leftovers, and make space for new products for next year. Ready to dive in? 🍪🧸❄️
Bring Your A-Game to These Winter Sales 2024
For most brands, profits during this last quarter are essential to their yearly profit expectancy. This is the peak retail season when brands typically see the highest amount of traffic and sales. This is why it’s important to be prepared for the holiday rush; all the savvy shoppers are taking advantage of this season.
When you combine the big three, Thanksgiving, Christmas, New Year’s Eve, and all the holiday sales in these months like Black Friday and Cyber Monday, there is no doubt this is the best season to promote.
Therefore, winter sales are crucial times to leverage your social media presence, review all your products and promos, check out what is happening with similar brands, and make some improvements, like offering customized support for your clients.
🍂 Find Thanksgiving marketing ideas that’ll help you prep for peak season and keep customers engaged!
Winter Holidays to Keep an Eye On
What holidays fall within the winter sales period? Let’s take a look.
Note: By keeping these holidays in mind, you can better plan your offerings, create exclusive promotions, and highlight your best products for each occasion, providing more selling opportunities beyond just Christmas. 😉✏️✨
💡 Never miss a date again with our 2025 updated e-commerce calendar.
Gray Thursday or Black Thursday
- ✨ When? November 28th, 2024
If you’re not familiar with Black Thursday (also known as Gray Thursday), it falls on the same day as Thanksgiving. The name comes from the fact that many stores kick off their Black Friday promotions on the evening of this day. So, get ready to take advantage of the sales!
Black Friday
- ✨ When? November 29th, 2024
One of the most anticipated days is Black Friday, which falls just one day after Thanksgiving. On this day, retailers and online businesses drop their prices, attracting countless shoppers eager to check off their holiday gift lists. This sale day is a great opportunity to move your products. Take a whole campaign around this day, create excitement, and use your social media.
🤑 You might like The Ultimate Black Friday Guide for POD Sellers
Small Business Saturday
- ✨ When? November 30th, 2024
Small Business Saturday comes right after Black Friday, and this retail event aims to promote shopping from local brands, shops, communities, and organizations.
Cyber Monday
- ✨ When? December 2nd, 2024.
Cyber Monday is a tech-centric sales event created to encourage online shopping and boost e-commerce sales. With the same idea of Black Friday, online retailers offer discounts and promotions to clear out excess stock before the year’s end, thereby generating more revenue.
Giving Tuesday
- ✨ When? December 3rd, 2024.
This is yet another holiday that the United Nations started as a way to overcompensate for all the eCommerce intent of the previous days. This day, we all give back!
Free Shipping Day
- ✨ When? December 14th, 2024.
This event happens on December 18th; there is more than one way to use this day for your business. You should consider optimizing your business for timely deliveries before making an offer.
Christmas Day
- ✨ When? December 25th, 2024.
One of the year’s most beloved and profitable holidays falls on Wednesday. So prepare your shop in advance with plenty of actions to boost your sales for this day.
You can:
- Create holiday-themed marketing campaigns both online and offline to align with the season.
- Offer a seasonal and customized line of merchandise, clothing, or even small gifts with every purchase.
- Provide exclusive discounts and promotions to attract more customers to your business.
- Consider inviting people by hosting special events or open houses.
- Organize cross-promotions with local businesses.
By implementing these actions, you can certainly elevate your business, establish deeper connections with your customers, and take this golden sales opportunity to increase yours.
🔔 Check out this Christmas templates collection to be prepared for the season
Boxing Day
- ✨ When? December 26th, 2024.
Right after Christmas, there’s Boxing Day, when countries like the UK, Australia, and New Zealand focus on giving gifts and making donations. It’s a beautiful opportunity to spread joy and give back. However, these days, it has become common for retailers to offer juicy sales and discounts (similar to Black Friday), making it an excellent day for shopping!
Gift Card Day
- ✨ When? January 20th, 2025.
It happens on the 3rd Sunday of every January. However, it all starts before, when numerous small businesses generously distribute gift cards during the festive holiday season to be redeemed until January. This strategic action helps drive traffic and boost sales after the hefty holiday season.
🎅🏼 Create the cutest Christmas cards for the season with this guide!
That’s what you can expect for the winter sales period! If you want to unlock even more winter templates, trust Placeit by Envato. Our professional designers are dedicated to creating trendy, high-quality templates for any occasion, including design templates and covers for social media, patterns, stickers, videos, mockups, and logos.
Just visit Placeit, browse our winter collection, choose your favorite template, customize the colors, text, and elements, and hit the download button!
And if you’re looking for a truly wintry touch to elevate your brand and digital channels, check out our curated winter color palettes. You’ll find plenty of combinations and hex codes ready to apply to any Placeit template.
Top Tips for Winter Sales
Now, let’s dive into the winning tips you’ll love to help boost and master your winter sales in 2024!
1. Avoid Off-Season Products According to Your Location
As always, think about your target audience, and again, depending on your location, avoid offering products that will no longer be in demand these months. For example, summer apparel, summer clothes, sports gear, beachwear, cold juices or frozen beverages, ice cream, and so on.
2. Offer High Demand Products
Kitchen products are also great to sell during this winter season. For instance, thermal cups and mugs for hot coffee, hot chocolate, and teas work like a charm.
Body products like lip balms, vitamins, and skin creams keep the skin hydrated during the cold winter.
Don’t forget about the other family members—pets love receiving gifts during this season too! Consider offering pet apparel, collars, bandanas, tags, food mats, leashes, pet bowls, and even calming toners.
Also, very high-demand products during the winter season: jewelry, electronics, candies, coffee, and chocolates!
3. Optimize for Mobile
We’ve said this before: optimizing your store for mobile is a MUST during this sale season. So, ensure a smooth mobile experience, fast checkouts, multiple payment methods, and sharp customer services.
4. Build a Detailed FAQ Page
It’s important you give your potential customer all the tools and resources to make their journey less annoying or confusing.
🎄 Got everything you need? Review this Holiday Checklist and make sure your brand is ready!
5. Optimize Product Descriptions
Optimize your existing product descriptions by using winter-like words to uplift your product during this time.
6. Get Creative With Your Promos
Yes, this is definitely a time to promote, promote, promote. You can create contests and giveaways, offer free products for costume buying in bulk, offer bundles of your products, make a winter clearance sale, and so on!
🖤 Not sure where to start? Dive into these Black Friday promotions to get an idea for this 2024!
7. Offer Something Special for Your Most Loyal Customers
This is a great strategy for customer retention. Remember to offer personalization, too. You can even provide personalized prices for different loyalty tiers.
Last Words
The year’s fourth quarter is a heavy-sale period for all eCommerce businesses. This is the perfect time to bring your best marketing and winter sales strategies together to promote your brand and your products like never before.
We hope you find these tips helpful and get on top of that holiday sale wave! Keep in mind that Placeit by Envato allows you to design stunning products for your shops, showcase them using beautiful and realistic images, and create eye-catching posts and videos to promote on your social media!
Have any comments? Drop us a line! And for now, enjoy a cookie for making it to the end of this winter sales guide. ✨🥛🍪