Social Media Tactics to Boost Holiday Sales: Barvetii Wealth Consultants

A look at how three online businesses are using the social web to drive revenues. The holiday retail push is in full swing and virtual cash registers are virtually ringing as consumers the world over are scouring the Internet, buying up gifts for friends, family members and clients. To cash in on the action, small businesses are using low-cost social media tactics to increase holiday sales.rnFrom creative discount deals to contests to online gaming, here are three examples of how businesses have tapped the social web to spread the word about their holiday promotions and give their revenues a year-end jolt.rnCustomers Choose the SalernThis year, Dan Pritchett wanted to turn the tables on how businesses traditionally offer discounts. Instead of choosing which products to mark down, Pritchett asked his customers to tell him the items they preferred to see on sale. "I wanted to find a way to create the buzz and excitement of Black Friday shopping frenzy, while also not offending customers who will see a big discounted price list that they missed out on after the sale is over," says Pritchett, vice president of marketing at Logos, a Bellingham, Wash.-based online bible-study resource retailer.rnOn Friday, Nov. 26, Logos wrote on its blog, Twitter and Facebook, asking customers to choose any three products they wished were on sale and email the list to Logos. After receiving the emails, Pritchett and his team replied with exclusive, limited-time sale prices for those products. Customers then had 48 hours to make their purchases.rnPritchett says reaction to the social media announcements was immediate and overwhelming. Customers created their own thread on the site's forums page, which received more than 13,000 views and 240 comments. In comparison, Pritchett says a typical forum post gets fewer than 100 views and only about 10 comments.rnBy the time the promotion ended the following Friday, Logos received about 2,000 emails and generated about $300,000 -- tripling revenues compared with the same period last year. What's more, Logos, which is projecting nearly $30 million in revenue this year, bolstered its marketing list with the new contacts that came in from the promotion.rnA Contest That Really 'Cooked'rnSometimes mistakes lead to creative business ideas. That's what happened this fall at Lather, an 11-year-old skin-care products retailer based in Pasadena, Calif., when an internal document about a new exfoliating rub read "Cranberry Sugar Ribs" instead of "Cranberry Sugar Rub." Lather founder Emilie Hoyt saw the typo as an opportunity to tap the growing popularity of cooking-related television shows and blogs.rnIt wasn't long before Hoyt and her team of 25 employees cooked up a plan for an online contest soliciting the best recipes for cranberry-themed foods. The winners would receive up to $150 in products.rnAfter creating a dedicated contest page, Lather announced a month-long competition Oct. 8, by emails to its customer database, a post on the company's blog and frequent posts to its Facebook and Twitter pages. By the Nov. 8 deadline, Lather received nearly 100 recipe submissions. Sales of Lather's cranberry products are up by nearly 20 percent over this time last year, according to Hoyt.rnAnother bonus was that Lather, which expects to pull in about $10 million in revenue this year, added the names and emails it collected from each recipe submission to its marketing database.