INTERNET & CATALOG MARKETING FOR SPECIALTY FOOD COMPANIES

Many of our readers and clients have been asking what they can still do to gear up their online marketing efforts to drive additional orders and sales from their websites this holiday season.

The following checklist is by no means all that you can or should do to maximize your online sales. Nonetheless, by implementing most or all of these proven techniques, you will add traffic to your site, improve site conversion rates, and thus increase sales and profits.

Getting More Customers and Prospects to Visit and Revisit Your Site

1. Give people a reason to visit your site. New products and web-only special offers work well. In addition, recipes, plus cooking, serving and food storage tips give customers a reason to visit your site. Contests, games and product giveaways can also drive traffic.


2. Use email to deliver special offers, deals on shipping (e.g., free with $75+ orders), and information on holiday cutoff dates


3. Last year, many of our clients had very good results sending email every 2 weeks in November, weekly in December, plus a couple of last-minute “there’s still time” messages the week before Christmas.


4. Send a follow up email order confirmation with a special offer to all buyers (online and offline customers) that give you their email address, unless they specifically opt out. These follow ups typically generate an additional 3% to 5% more orders. This is especially true for companies that don’t have aggressive remail and buyer conversion programs in place.


5. Don’t forget e-certificates. These can be a silver bullet for food mailers—they generate immediate cash, they require almost no fulfillment labor at the time the order is received (unlike last-minute rush packages pouring out the warehouse door), when the certificate is redeemed you are not buried in holiday orders, and they extend the season up to Christmas day, giving you a leg up on local retailers. Promote them with emails all throughout the holiday season, and hit this hard after your ordering cut-off date for Christmas delivery.


6. Having the customer’s past gift-buying history on your site is a great way to build loyalty. This is especially true for your larger customers with 5, 10, 20, or more gift recipients. If these customers know they can easily repeat their prior year orders without having to spend a lot of time entering their recipients’ names and addresses or giving them to an operator on the phone, that’s a strong incentive for them to shop from your site year after year instead of switching to your competition.


7. Don’t forget PR. Almost all Nov and Dec issues of national magazines are already closed or put to bed by now, but most newspapers are still open. Many of them run stories on holiday gift giving and are looking for story ideas. Send new product and other newsworthy information to food, lifestyle or entertainment editors. Be ready to respond quickly to their requests for additional information and/or product samples


8. Display your URL prominently in all of your mailings, ads, labels, retail stores, and any other customer touch points.


9. If you are renting lists for your offline or catalog marketing program, test an inkjet message with a special offer for first-time buyers. Create a landing page for this offer and put that URL in the ink jet message. This will increase the overall response to the list rental mailing; therefore, more prospects will be visiting your site. In addition, the offer will help with list tracking. And the landing page will help with conversion once the prospect is on your site.


10. If you don’t currently have a pay per click (PPC) program up and running, there is still time. In less than a day, you can get set up on Google, Yahoo and MSN; submit a list of key words to these search engines, and start driving additional traffic to your site overnight. If you are new to PPC, start with a small daily spending budget to test the water.


11. Update your home page frequently.
    1. Simple changes to the graphics and background colors will give the appearance there are new things for repeat visitors to see. Conversely, if the home page looks identical to the last time they were on your site, they likely will look no farther and move on to a competitor’s site.
    
    
    2. Feature items at popular gifting price points on the home page.
    
    
    3. Feature your best sellers unless inventories are too low—it’s better for first-time visitors to see a best seller on your home page than a dog you are trying to unload.


12. Add “Best Sellers” and “Web Specials” categories to your major navigation. These sections are often the first place new prospects go to on a site. In addition, a “Best Sellers” section helps position you as a leader in your niche (e.g., gift baskets, fruit cakes, steaks, fresh fruit, etc.) of the food-by-mail market.

By making some or all of these changes to your website and additions to your online marketing plan, you will drive more traffic to your site and increase your sales this holiday season.

In the next issue of the Food-by-Mail Industry Update, we will share the mid-season results we have seen from our clients and friends who report results to us. So far, the season is off to a very good start!

We need your help and feedback. If there is a particular aspect of specialty food online marketing that you would like to see us cover, we would love to hear from you.

Catalog Solutions/5th Food Group helps specialty food catalogers and internet marketers grow and make more money by developing, managing and implementing their mail order and online marketing programs. We are the only catalog/internet marketing consulting firm that works exclusively in the specialty food industry. Helping smaller companies or large companies with small mail order or internet divisions is what we do best.

Visit us online at CatalogSolutions.net to download a copy of our free booklet, The Seven Habits of Highly Ineffective Catalogers, and for information on our fully guaranteed introductory program called JumpStart.