During the holiday season, gift sales are crucial for retailers. Gift sales should account for at least a quarter, and in some product categories, more than a third of your annual sales. One way to achieve success is by creating a gift guide that helps shoppers easily find the perfect gifts for their loved ones during the holiday season.
What is a Holiday Gift Guide?
In retail, a holiday gift guide is used to assist potential and existing customers in making purchasing decisions during the holiday season. Products are grouped based on factors such as category, target audience, price point, and sales history. Nowadays, gift guides are typically created digitally, but they can also be printed and mailed to your mailing list via direct mail.
How to Create a Gift Guide: 8 Steps to Follow
You may feel overwhelmed by the idea of creating and distributing your own gift guide, but you don’t have to be. Follow this step-by-step guide and you’ll be holiday ready in no time.
1. Think About Customers and Target Audience
Before you start creating your gift guide, you need to know exactly who you are creating it for. You can segment your current customers into repeat buyers and one-time purchasers based on the types of products they buy and their spending habits. Then, if you create the gift guide by price or product type, you’ll know which categories they are likely to be interested in.
Another way to gather information for your gift guide strategy is to ask customers directly about what they are looking for as gifts during the holidays (or what types of gifts they would like to receive). You can do this in-store or online through a survey.
2. Analyze Sales Data
Looking at your sales data from last year or even the past two years is a great way to make strategic decisions about which types of products to include in your holiday gift guide. Some elements to review are:
- Top sellers. Look at the products that have been purchased the most throughout the year, as well as during the holiday season last year.
- Customer demographics. Who are your customers and what do they buy? Use Google Analytics to get information about their gender, interests, and spending habits. This will help you determine what types of holiday gift guides they may be interested in.
- Shopping trends. You can also look at external data. What types of products are popular among your target customers? Are you noticing any major trends? Understanding what is rising in your market will help you create a holiday gift guide that is relevant to your audience.
For example, if facial oils are more popular these days than facial moisturizers, consider adding a facial oil product to one of your gift bundles.
3. Inquire with Brands You Sell About Popular Products
If you sell a variety of brands, inquire with your suppliers about popular and trending products this season. You can also use Shopify Collective to connect with other Shopify stores to sell each other’s products. This can also help with your buying strategy and reduce the likelihood of getting stuck with items that don’t sell.
4. Choose the Types of Products to Include
Once you’ve completed the previous three steps, you’ll have a better idea of what types of products to include in your holiday gift guide. Now it’s time to select them. The key here is to avoid overwhelming customers with too many options. Make your gift guide a curated selection of the best products so customers can make quick decisions.
5.
Thinking About Organization with Gift Guide Categories
Now that you know the target audience and trending products, as well as the types of products you will include in the holiday gift guide, it’s time to figure out how to organize it. You can create product categories in the gift guide based on personality, price, and gender, as well as curated gift bundles based on style preferences and shopping behavior. Then, name the gift guide and the headings that explain the problem it will help shoppers solve. For example, “The Perfect Gift Guide for Last-Minute Shoppers” or “Top 5 Romantic Gifts for Her.”
Here are some ideas on how to organize the holiday gift guide:
Gifts by Age
Based on the types of products you sell and your customer base, you can create a gift guide based on age categories. By grouping titles in your gift guide, you can help potential customers find the right products for the person they are buying for.
Gifts by Personality and Interests
Whether your target audience is interested in beauty and fashion or food and drinks, sports, technology, books, or anything else, creating a gift guide categorized by the recipients’ interests will help shoppers narrow down their options.
Gifts by Category
You can break down the holiday gift guide into categories such as romantic, funny, practical, popular, early, or last-minute. You can also categorize by product types, such as hair care or skincare if you sell beauty products for women.
Gifts by Budget
Creating a holiday gift guide by price helps attract customers who have a specific budget in mind. By listing gifts under $25, under $50, under $100, or any value you find suitable for your business and customers, you will make it easier for shoppers not to spend time calculating costs or guessing what they will spend. This will make the purchasing process easier and help you increase sales.
Gifts by Gender
For shoppers who are unsure how much they want to spend or the recipient’s interests, a holiday gift guide by gender can be a good starting point. This category can include gifts for men, women, children, colleagues, friends, and relatives.
Gifts by Recipient
The holiday gift guide can be divided based on the recipient, such as mom, dad, coworker, friend, girlfriend, kids, teacher, and more. You will want to select recipient categories based on the products you sell and your current customer base and target market.
Gifts by Impact
Gifts by impact refer to the effect that those gifts will have on a specific group, environment, or cause. For example, a gift guide for small businesses, or a sustainable or eco-friendly gift guide, or a gift guide for women- or minority-owned businesses, or a charitable gift guide. These are all examples of holiday gift guides that create impact.
6. Creating Gift Bundles
Now that you have considered how to organize the holiday gift guide into categories, you can take it a step further by creating gift bundles or gift baskets within each category. This strategy can increase the perceived value of the products in the minds of customers and encourage them to increase their average order value. Additionally, getting a bundle of products that complement each other at a lower retail price than purchasing each item separately makes the decision-making process easier and more convenient.
For example, if you create a gift guide titled “The Best Perfect Gifts for Her This Holiday Season,” you can include a gift bundle within the guide that features three to five products and costs less in total than purchasing each item separately. However, the total purchase value would be higher than if the shopper bought just one item, thereby increasing the total purchase value (and your sales revenue).
7.
Deciding on the Format of the Holiday Gift Guide
In the current retail landscape, integrating your physical and digital stores is crucial. Omnichannel retailing is not just a buzzword; it impacts how consumers discover and shop from brands, as well as how merchants market their products. Integrating multiple retail strategies in creating and promoting your holiday gift guide is essential.
The final format of your holiday gift guide is ultimately your decision, but here’s what we suggest:
- Use an app like Shogun to create a custom landing page with information about your holiday gift guide. If you have more than one theme for your gift guide, this is the perfect place to briefly discuss each theme and then link to each gift guide collection page.
- If you prefer to create the gift guide as a blog post, generate a list with more details about each of the products and categories, along with links to the appropriate collections or product pages.
- Then distribute your gift guide landing page or blog post via email marketing and social media (we’ll talk about that later).
What about print formatting and direct mail?
While printing your gift guide and mailing it to your customer base may not be the most cost-effective option, direct mail still works in our digital world. In fact, 74% of marketers agree that direct mail provides the best return on investment. You can incorporate direct mail into your gift guide format by creating postcards and sending them to your customer base to inform them about the gift guide. You can also create a campaign URL and print it on the postcard so that you can track how much traffic you receive due to your direct mail and print marketing efforts.
Tips for Formatting Your Holiday Gift Guide
Here are some tips for formatting your holiday gift guide:
Digital Gift Guide
- High-quality images and videos add value and increase engagement. The guide should be clean and have white space to avoid confusing customers, work on desktops, mobile phones, and tablets without broken links, and look great across all marketing channels, including your website, social media, and email marketing.
Printed Gift Guides and Postcards
- Use tools like Canva and Creative Market to create gift guide graphics and ensure they are printed on high-quality paper. Choose between editorial design styles, everyday life templates, user-generated content, or a mix of design styles, and don’t forget the importance of promotional writing.
8. Stocking the Products You’re Promoting
Planning your holiday gift guide in advance is important so that you know you have enough stock for the products you’re promoting. The last thing you want to do is frustrate customers who found the perfect gift via your gift guide but can’t complete the purchase because it’s sold out. You can look at last year’s holiday sales history from the past three years, as well as your sales of similar products throughout the year, to estimate demand and purchase stock accordingly.
Apps like Stocky work with Shopify POS Pro to help you manage inventory. It uses analytics and statistics features to provide detailed reports on top-selling items, available stock, low inventory, and more, helping you make good inventory decisions. This way, you can increase profitability, reduce stock loss and errors, and save time.
Benefits
Creating a Holiday Gift Guide
Learning how to create a gift guide is a great way to boost sales. Here are some ways it can help you:
Helping Customers Make a Decision
Many people put off holiday shopping until the last minute or struggle to choose the perfect gift for their loved ones. A holiday gift guide that offers gift ideas for different people at various price points is the perfect way to help customers make a decision and complete their purchases more quickly. It helps spark ideas, narrow down choices, and convert browsers into paying customers.
Converting Newsletter Subscribers into Paying Customers
Sending out emails with your holiday gift guide is a great way to connect with your mailing list to provide value and make their lives easier. You can enhance customer lifetime value by creating a gift guide, re-engaging past and current customers, and encouraging them to purchase gifts at your retail store instead of the competition. This, in turn, will increase the amount they spend with your business over their lifetime as paying customers.
Attracting Shoppers Early in the Season
According to the National Retail Federation, about 46% of consumers began their holiday shopping before Halloween in 2022, and 39% said they planned to start earlier in 2023. By creating and distributing your holiday gift guide early in the season, you’ll attract shoppers who might otherwise purchase from another retailer.
Inspiring Last-Minute Shoppers
On the flip side, there will always be last-minute shoppers. Your gift guide can help spark ideas and inspiration: the easier you make the decision-making process, the more likely last-minute shoppers are to choose gifts from your store. In 2022, most customers had about 53% of their purchases made by December.
Highlighting Specific Products
Creating a gift guide allows you to focus and market specific products based on high demand, inventory planning, or sales history. For example, if you sell beauty products and see from your sales history last year that a specific face cream is consistently a best-seller, you can include it in the holiday gift guide as part of a bundle with complementary products like a face cleanser and a small towel. If the complementary products aren’t selling as quickly, bundling those items with a high-demand product is an opportunity to move your inventory.
Increasing Visibility and Brand Awareness
Whether you create a holiday gift guide for your store alone or collaborate with other businesses, promoting it will help you increase visibility and raise brand awareness. It can also help you attract customers who typically shop similar businesses – because you’ve made purchasing easier with your holiday gift guide.
Boosting Search Engine Optimization
Digital guides in the form of a landing page or blog article can help increase organic search results for your website. You can incorporate keywords related to your products and use local search strategies to help local shoppers discover your retail business online before they come to visit your store in person.
Publishing your holiday gift guide on your website can also attract media attention. “In addition to more sales, a holiday gift guide also improves SEO and makes it easier for editors looking for products to include in their gift guides,” according to Connie Lo, co-founder of Three Ships.
How to
Marketing Your Holiday Gift Guide
Creating a gift guide without a plan for distributing and marketing it is a waste of time and money. You’ll want to start early and promote it repeatedly across various channels.
Here are nine tips to help you market your holiday gift guide:
1. Create a Landing Page and Header Bar on Your Website
In addition to creating a landing page for your gift guide, you’ll want to ensure that visitors landing on your homepage can easily find your gift guide. Do this by creating a header bar on the homepage that directs website traffic to the holiday gift guide landing page or blog post and the products or gift bundles you are promoting.
According to Statista statistics, 53% of consumers in the United States use search engines for product research. So it’s important to consider the keywords you can target using your holiday gift guide landing page or blog post to help improve your organic search results. You can use Google Keyword Planner or other SEO tools to identify the keywords that have the highest search volume.
For example, if the title of your gift guide is “The Eco-Friendly Holiday Gift Guide 2023,” you can use Google Keyword Planner to get keywords relevant to…
Leave a Reply