It’s the end of the year and it’s the holiday season. It’s the time when store and business owners get busy with their year-end sale and trying to get the word out.
It is a good move to get your business in the holiday sales earlier than expected. It’s not too early to start having a big sale because most shoppers are researching and planning for gift ideas as early as November. It’s no doubt that the searches for “gift ideas” on Google have been skyrocketing since October and continue peaking in December. So what can you make out of this detail? Implement the gift guide strategy.
What exactly is a gift guide? If you have never heard or seen one before, a gift guide is an article that comes in a form of a list of things that caters to a certain topic or category. A relevant example for this holiday season would be Christmas Gift Guides. Perhaps you have seen other gift guides with other focus or theme, but never really noticed the role it plays in marketing. This is how subtle a gift guide can help boost your online store sales.
A gift guide is curated to give the readers an idea of what gifts to purchase based on the relationship with them, special occasions, shared interest, or the age. They are usually featured in an online magazine, blogs or just any websites with relatively high traffic.
Here are a few examples of gift guides topics:
Based on the relationship
- 17 Ideal Gifts to Get for Your Sister
- 10 Items You Never Knew You and Your Significant Other Needed
- 8 Gifts to Get for Your Long-Term Boyfriend
- 30 Thoughtful Gifts for Your BFF
Based on special occasions
- 25 Gift Ideas for Mother’s Day
- 18 Things You Should Get This Father’s Day
- 10 Ideas to Celebrate Your Anniversary
Based on shared interests
- 19 Gift Ideas for Plant Lovers
- 10 Things Every Pet Owner Need
- 7 Places All Coffee Lovers Should Visit
- 9 Things New Mothers Need To Own
Gift guides are curated in such a way it will get people reading. Readers know immediately that these articles are easy and fast reading material that is neatly listed out for them to scroll through. If you have read gift guides, you noticed it got your attention and some of the items listed on the guide do appeal to you which made you click on the link provided.
Also, most of the items you see on the gift guides are items you have not seen or heard of before. This is because gift guides are curated in such a way to actually promote new businesses and products for brands. If your online business is relatively new or if you have a certain product you want to promote, you can have them featured in a gift guide.
“Gift guides usually offer a high return on investment for your time. If you’re featured, you’ll get in front of new, targeted shoppers with high intent to purchase, all for a few minutes spent writing a compelling pitch. Relatively unique or niche products do especially well in most gift guides.”
– Corey Ferreira
A gift guide marketing is subtle and does not look desperate because your product is being placed together with relevant and similar products on the list. And people who clicked to read the gift guide often times are people who show an interest in that particular category. If your product is targeted to pet owners, it will be in a gift guide that perhaps has a title like “10 Things Every Dog Parent Can’t Live Without”. The focus is so niched because it is targeted to dog owners. Your product will be featured amongst the other 9 items in the list and the chances of it receiving more exposure are very high.
That being said, you need to find the right outlet to get your product listed and featured in a gift guide. Outlets like blogs and online magazines are the ideal ones but it is important that the outlet you picked gives promising results. It has to be a high traffic and popular blog or magazine amongst the readers.
You can easily reach out to these websites or writers/bloggers to help curate a gift guide for your product. Perhaps you can have them add your brand or product in one of their lists of gift guides and give your brand a head start on your holiday sales. You will need the contact information for the person who runs the blogs or online magazine. You can usually find them on the “Contact Us” page.
Send them a personal email telling them that you like what they wrote on their blog or online magazine and you are putting up a holiday sale on your website and would like to engage them to write about it if they are planning on doing another gift guide. You can send them samples if you’d like them to try them on and don’t forget to include your website in your email for them to check it out. Don’t be shy to follow up with them if you have not heard back from them.
It may take a bit of time and effort to engage with the blogs and online magazine to get your brand featured, but the outcome and result will not disappoint you. It is a great way to get your brand known to the public and might also bring in repeat customers because you have targeted the niche market that will be interested in your products.
If you do not know whom to engage or reach out to for gift guides, Weave Asia is more than pleased to help you with this service. At Weave Asia, we do not just provide digital marketing services, but we also personalize solutions for your online marketing needs. Feel free to contact us via phone at +60 088-718 418 or email us at hello@weave.asia.
