Indian Republic 2023 is just around the corner and many consumers are waiting for Republic day sales and offers in both offline and online space to make purchases. It is that period when people eagerly look forward to deals, discounts, and new product launches before setting themselves up for a shopping spree. Mobile phones, accessories, laptops, home furnishing items, apparel, and whatnot – the shelves will be ready to attract potential prospects in these celebration vibes.
What about your plans to grow sales and profit around this Republic day? Have you thought of Republic day offers that your customers would benefit from and choose to buy from you?
A significant part of growing your business in both online and offline spheres is to make sales. The more you sell, the stronger your business will become. The time around Republic day is the one when different types of businesses begin the New Year with substantial sales and profits. It is also the time to prioritize selling through different channels based on their performance in the previous shopping season.
Some key numbers you should be aware of are:
- E-commerce retailers recorded impressive sales worth Rs. 76,000 crore during the festival sale in 2022 – an almost 2x jump from the pre-pandemic sale value of Rs. 40,000 crores in 2019 (Redseer Report).
- The overall retail sector in India was worth $836 billion in 2022 and had an 81.5% contribution from traditional retail and a 12% contribution from organized brick-and-mortar retail (Source).
If you are willing to take the step forward and plan for a Republic Day sale for your customers, this guide is meant for you.
9 Best Practices for a Republic Day Sale
Get the pre-sale preparations right
The start of every new year is often considered the ideal time to attract new customers. Even though the holiday season has just ended, you can still plan to grow your business by leveraging every opportunity, one of which is Republic day. To prepare your business for the Republic Day sale, you must:
- Stock up your inventory, including both popular items and new items on the list
- Plan offers, deals, and discounts that will appeal to the target audience along with bringing in significant profits
- Keep an eye on the changing customer demands and needs to sell accordingly
Select the right sales channels
Choosing the right sales channels to promote Republic Day offers will help you utilize the occasion to its full potential. If you only sell products or services online, you can plan to dive into the offline retail segment by opening brand outlets or partnering with resellers. On the other hand, if you are running a traditional brick and mortar business, you can expand it further in the online space to widen the target customer base.
Selecting the right channels for an omnichannel retail strategy in 2023 is more about understanding what works for your business. There will be no benefit in selling through avenues that do not attract significant footfall or online traffic.
Plan Your Offers Carefully
For new customers reaching your stores, it is obvious to first feel attracted to the offerings, product quality, and pricing before they would buy from you. Along with delivering the best quality products and seamless customer experience across touchpoints, you can add attractive offers for first-time buyers or those spending beyond a certain threshold.
Offering something free (paired with terms and conditions) can also encourage shoppers to buy more. For example, a buyer having a total cart value Rs. 9000 may feel encouraged to spend another thousand bucks if you have an exciting product worth Rs. 500-800 for total purchases worth Rs.10,000.
Similarly, you can offer no cost EMIs and bank cashbacks (alliance with a bank to accept payments with bank-specific cards) to your customers during the Republic Day sale.
| Paytm for Business’ payment suite can make it easier for you to extend no-cost EMIs, subscription plans, and bank offers to your customers. |
Let your store reflect Republic Day’s aura
Many businesses make the mistake of not reflecting the Republic Day vibes even though they want to sell more around the occasion. For the offline stores you have, you can decorate the space with the occasional theme, Indian flags, tricolor balloons, and more to highlight the festive flare and attract more people to benefit from the live Republic Day sale. In the online stores, you can create Republic Day-specific landing pages and offer pages.
In other words, make it clear you are offering something special or at a special rate around Republic Day.
| Pro Tip: You can also create occasion-specific product combos and create a dedicated web page to sell them all. |
Start the Republic Day sale early but end later
If you have been in the business for some time now, you know already that consumers go crazy shopping around festive deals and discounts. Many of them look forward to Republic Day sale offers and discounts to start shopping in the new year. To win the match easily ahead of your competition, you can plan to start the sale earlier than your competitors and make it go longer than expected.
In doing so, you will benefit from lesser competition in the pre- and post-Republic Day period and a longer time frame for your consumers to buy from you.
Ensure that you accept payments via different payment methods
You have every product that your customers are looking for. You have planned for the Republic Day sale with attractive deals and discounts. You have prospects visiting your local and online stores. But if you do not accept payments via the most preferred payment methods, the chances are you lose customers and ultimately, sales.
Hence, before you plan for any such occasion-specific offer, it is very important that you streamline payment acceptance related to your business. Invest in POS machines, Soundbox, and QR codes for your offline retail stores while also having a super-fast payment gateway integrated into your website. Leave no room untouched when it comes to simplifying the way people would pay for purchases.
Recommended Read: What Do Omnichannel Payments Mean For Indian Businesses?
Offer referral discounts
Referral marketing is an all-time effective strategy to boost sales and can be made to work really well as a part of the Republic day sale in your store. You can encourage the customers to refer the products they buy or others to people they know – friends, relatives, colleagues, etc. Once the referral is successful and leads to a sale, you can make the referrer avail of a certain discount on the next purchase.
This will help you grow sales without costing much. The best part is that your customers will be promoting your products forward.
Market your Republic Day Sale offers via paid advertising
Another important task to make your Republic Day sale a success is to invest in paid advertising to reach a larger audience. The reason why this is crucial is that the more people know about festive deals on your offerings, the more sales you can expect.
In terms of paid advertising, you can run ads on search engines based on customer preferences and create/boost Facebook ads or Instagram ads to cater to a wide variety of consumers. If you have products for different types of individuals, you can segment ad targeting based on age, gender, occupation, and similar other parameters.
Send out marketing emails
If you have built a considerable list of existing customers and prospects, it will be an asset for your Republic Day sale campaigns. Using this list, you can announce the sale, various discounts, and offers you have planned. It would be best to plan sending various types of emails – pre-buzz, on-occasion, post-live, etc. to continue reaping the benefits of the occasion-oriented shopping fervor.
