In the cross-border e-commerce industry, seasonal products always make sellers love and hate, and seasonal products may attract more traffic and issue orders faster and better, but if there is no comprehensive preparation plan in advance, it may lead to a shortage of supply, or unsalable products.
What to do with seasonal products for sellers?What are some marketing tips to lengthen the life cycle of your product?
1. What are seasonal products?
There are many kinds of seasonal products, festival-type, cultural, regional, and conventional. The selection of seasonal products can be made from fixed elements to make different variations, such as Halloween not long ago, pumpkins, skeletons, spiders, etc. are all popular elements, and the audience, traffic, and competition of different elements are different.
There will be some differences in the selection, stocking and promotion of different products, but the general principle remains the same.
In order to seize the best sales opportunity, sellers usually start to prepare two months or half a year in advance, and the general schedule is as follows: start looking for new products, start stocking up in advance, and start promoting during the rise in popularity, and the overall effect will be much better. Products that start to be promoted in the middle and late stages to avoid being out of stock in the middle of the season, and still have inventory after the peak season is over.
2. Why do you make seasonal products?
Advantages of seasonal products:
It is a strong explosive force, if the operation is done properly, it is not a problem to have hundreds or thousands of orders in a short period of time, and you can make money by issuing orders, and you can make money quickly. As a seller who makes winter warm products said, the sales of the store are usually only tens of thousands of dollars a month, but after October, even the sales of a day can reach tens of thousands of dollars.
Disadvantages of seasonal products:
Usually the sales volume is small or none, it takes a long torment, when the season comes, the number of stocks is large, the financial pressure is high, and if the account is slightly turbulent, the risk is relatively large. In addition, if the sales volume is not as expected, it may cause a large backlog of inventory, and the backlog of inventory will be large, not only the profit will be diluted, but even the cost will be difficult to recover.
3. How to make seasonal products?
Seasonal products, especially seasonal products in the Christmas peak season, should be stocked as early as possible, not only to avoid the embarrassment of the goods not yet in the warehouse at the beginning of the peak season, but also to avoid the many uncost-effective logistics delays caused by the skyrocketing logistics costs and logistics explosion caused by the arrival of the peak season.
In terms of the number of stocks, it is necessary to make an objective assessment and conservative stocking, not to be overly optimistic, and not to hold the mentality of "gambling on a big hand". It is better to miss the last wave of the peak season because of the out-of-stock than to have a situation where there is still a lot of inventory after the peak season has passed because of too much stocking.
In the operation of seasonal products, we must try to be "fast, accurate, and ruthless", and the seller's pace must be fast.
For the main seasonal products or new products that are ready for key operations for the new season, in addition to operating the products according to the operation strategy, you can make a daily sales tracking table for the products to record the daily sales, the number of additional purchases, and the number of visitors of the key products. Through long-term tracking of such data, timely adjustment can be made to the abnormal performance of data that lasts for several days.
Sellers should also pay more attention to industry information, and use third-party analysis tools to regularly observe the search popularity data of such products in major countries, so as to formulate new store launch strategies and activities.
4. What are the precautions?
1. Pay attention to infringement and patent complaints, there are many patent pits for seasonal models, and it is a matter of minutes to settle accounts after autumn. ** and copywriting, beware of trademark infringement. Who would have thought of chrism.S Time Christmas Magic is a trademark
2. Deal with follow-up measures, **copywriting plagiarism, low price** is very common, prepare in advance to deal with it.
3. Do a good job in advance**, maximum inventory = longest sales cycle and minimum estimated sales volume. Estimated sales cannot be calculated on the basis of a regular average, but must be calculated flexibly based on seasonality. The early stage is less, and it is easy to run out of stock many times in the middle. Immersed in the pursuit of winning orders, it is very easy to have an inventory backlog.
With the increasing competition of seasonal products, simple low-price cold starts, differentiated products, and multi-link distribution are not necessarily win-win. From the combination of product selection to promotion, one ring after another.
5. Marketing techniques for seasonal products
1. Expand the use function of the product
The reason why seasonal products have a peak season is because of the limitations of the use scenario, and after the season of the use scenario, the use value and significance of the product will be lost. If you want to extend the life cycle of a product, the best way is to expand the functions of the product so that the product can adapt to more usage scenarios.
For example, in the clothing industry, where the seasonality is more significant, the dress of spring, summer, autumn and winter is generally more clearly distinguished. However, if you can break the limitations of the product from the fabric, process or some functional points of the garment, and become a versatile item that can be used in spring, summer, autumn and winter, then you can extend its life cycle and increase repurchase.
2. Seize the best sales opportunity
Seasonal products, because the use scene is greatly affected by seasonal changes, so there is a clear sales season. During the peak sales season, market demand and natural traffic can sometimes sustain a whole year's revenue flow.
In order to seize the best sales opportunity, sellers usually start to prepare one or two months before the arrival of the season, and make a refined plan according to the experience of previous years or industry rules throughout the peak season to avoid being out of stock halfway, and to have inventory after the peak season.
In addition, large outdoor, furniture and other products, affected by the transportation cycle, generally need to start stocking plans two quarters in advance. According to the statistics of relevant data, the best time to sell outdoor products in the world is from February to August.
3. Old goods are sold and new are injected
It is said that fashion is a cycle, and the trend of decades ago may still be popular now. Retro style is found in many industries, clothing, home décor, jewelry, and so on. This makes it easy to create classic styles, re-optimize and repackage old products, or figure out more matching scenarios to give new life to old products.
When seasonal products become classics, there are more available scenarios, and the life cycle is extended, even if there is more inventory, it can continue to be sold in the next year.
4. Out-of-season sales
Although it has become a consensus that seasonal products are sold in the current season, the sales cycle of some products is not completely limited by the local season. For example, swimming has become a sport, and people do not only use swimming equipment such as swimsuits and goggles in summer, but purchase them all year round.
Therefore, when the seller is doing promotion and drainage, he can expand the use scenarios of advertising materials and keywords to more use scenarios, and substitute more keywords into the regions and countries suitable for using the product at the current time, so as not to worry about counter-seasonal promotion, sales will have no effect.