Holiday Marketing Calendar to Help Plan Your Jewelry Business

In retail, every day should be a sales day because shoppers have needs to meet daily; however, some products are heavily occasion-based purchases like jewelry. Although jewelry has been slowly moving to become an everyday use, it still pays to have a yearly holiday marketing calendar to help with your strategic planning.

From a financial perspective, relying on a single month for the majority of your sales is very unhealthy. For a healthy business, you’d want a steady cash flow throughout the year so you can manage your spending. Where you fail to pay your financial obligations, you may be subject to insolvency and litigation. This problem is compounded by the fact that buying jewelry inventory can get quite expensive. On the flip side, when you sell jewelry, your markup can go up to 100%. So it’s happy days if you can turn over your goods consistently!

Last year displayed e-commerce strength with online sales hitting a record high as bumped by the holiday season. The Mastercard Spending Pulse of 2019, covering US holiday retail sales, reported an online sales growth of 18.8%. Further, the jewelry sector did not lag, with a total growth record of 1.8% in total retail sales and 8.8% in online sales growth. Considering that the increasing sales trend in the jewelry sector began before the holiday season tells that jewelers, indeed, had a joyous holiday celebration.

But there’s more to it than that. Such a sparkling holiday sales wrap-up is evidence that more and more people are doing their jewelry shopping online, especially on holidays.

And what’s the better way to take the bigger piece of the holiday pie, you ask?

In this marketing calendar, we’re going to give you a rundown of all the key dates jewelers like yourself should know for 2020. After all, nothing beats being prepared for sales opportunities and preparation begins by knowing what you’re preparing for.

Stick with us and read on!

Holiday Marketing Calendar to Help Your Jewelry Business This Year

January

1 – New Year’s Day

20 – Martin Luther King Jr. Day (US)

MLK is the first major sales weekend this year that starts on the weekend before the actual day. While it’s not as profusely advertised as before, retailers continue with its three-day-weekend sales that include jewelry items. Don’t even harbor doubts for a second as people will have more time off work to shop these days. You don’t want to miss all those opportunities!

25 – Spring Festival / Chinese New Year (China)

As a marketing tip, entice your shoppers by engaging them via social media platforms with a new jewelry item launch or limited-time offer.

February

14 – Valentine’s Day

Love is still in the air if previous Valentine’s Day spending would be the key indication. For instance, last year, V-day shoppers spent a total of $20.7 billion, which was a 6% increase from the previous year. This is an indication that shoppers are spending more than ever. In fact, sales would start to pour in ahead of the actual celebration.

Don’t forget to update your promotional tactics. You can start a spellbinding YouTube Valentine’s Day campaign or maximize Pinterest to capture all the lovers at heart.

15 – Singles Awareness Day

17 – Presidents’ Day (US)

March

17 – St. Patrick’s Day

22 – Mother’s Day (UK)

24 – Cash Mob Day (AU)

Celebrated annually in Australia, Cash Mob is a community get-together where people are encouraged to shop small as a boost to small business owners.

If you’re an independent jeweler in Australia, you can organize your own cash mob and entice shoppers by sponsoring events, telling your story, communicating your values, and just staying active in community groups that advocate for local shopping. You can also partner with other independent jewelry businesses.   

April

1 – April Fool’s Day

4 – Qingming Festival (China)

10 – Good Friday

12 – Easter Day

15 -Tax Day (US)

20 – Patriot’s Day (US)

22 – Eaarth Day (US)

23 – St. George’s Day (UK)

May

1 – Labour Day (UK, China)

5 – Cinco de Mayo (US)

10 – Mother’s Day (US, Canada, & Australia)

25 – Spring Bank Holiday (UK)

25 – Memorial Day (US)

Graduation

Jewelry (mostly engraved) and watches are often considered to be among the best graduation gifts although, cash remains to be the king. Last year, graduation spending was at $5.5 billion, but just because cash reigns supreme, it doesn’t mean that jewelers can forego preparing for this holiday. In fact, you can help make this milestone memorable between the parents and the students by offering customization and other personalized services.

June

13 – Queen’s Birthday

21 – Father’s Day (US & UK)

July

4 – Independence Day (UK)

13 – Amazon Prime Day

Independent Retailer Month (UK)

Independent Retailer Month is an annual event that highlights the role of independent, local, and small retailers in their respective communities, the local economy, and the retail sector as a whole. If you’re an independent jeweler in the UK, watch out for this event and make the most out of it by promoting it on your social media pages or partnering with other local, independent jewelers to host sales or contests.  

August

25 – Qixi Festival (China)

31 – August Bank Holiday (UK)

September

7 – Labor Day (US)

13 – National Grandparents Day (US)

October

1 – Mid-Autumn Festival (China)

1-7 – Golden Week (China)

12 – Thanksgiving Day (Canada)

12 – Columbus Day (US)

31 – Halloween

November

5 – Bonfire Night (UK)

11 – Singles’ Day (China)

Take advantage of the unabashed retail therapy phenomenon when you prepare for this year’s Singles’ Day, one of the biggest (if not the biggest) 24-hour shopping events.

Last year, e-commerce giant Alibaba reported sales activity totaling US$38.4 billion, which was more than the entire quarter sales of Amazon. Further, jewelry and apparel from American retailers were two of the most popular categories on this biggest shopping day of the year.

11 – Veterans Day

26 – Thanksgiving Day (US)

27 – Black Friday

28 – Small Business Saturday (US)

30 – Cyber Monday (US)

December

1 – Giving Tuesday

12 – Double 12 Festival (China)

14 – Green Monday

14 – Free Shipping Day (US)

15 – Free Shipping Day (AU)

25 – Christmas Day

26 – Boxing Day (AU & UK)

31 – New Year’s Eve

Proposals/Engagements

Time and time again, December always emerges as the most popular time of year to get engaged and married. In fact, jewelry sales in the US tend to peak in December of each year, so get your engagement rings and wedding bands ready should they decide to get down on one knee and ask that heart-melting question, “will you marry me?”

Be sure to come up with a well-thought-out campaign. Remember, more than the jewelry, you’re selling them the emotion of love, so influence through emotions and drive those sales.

Building Long-Term Success

While there are many ways to improve your cash flow including taking advantage of the holidays listed in the marketing calendar above, long-term strategies are more viable for building your business’s survival and success.

An example of a long-term strategy is building your personal brand and customer relationships. With fierce competition for both online and offline stores, it’s important that your jewelry business stands out and stays on top of your audience’s mind throughout the year. This ensures that when your customer is ready to make a jewelry purchase for any particular event, they’ll visit your website or physical store first.

Understanding Your Customer

So how do we get into the back of our audiences’ minds?

Firstly, you want to be where your customers hang around the most. With a bit of research, you can understand your customers’ behaviors and create strategies around them.

Just take a look at these social media statistics for the social media behemoths Facebook and Instagram:

With a whopping 68% and 32% of all Americans using Facebook and Instagram respectively, your jewelry business should really have a presence on these two social media platforms.

If you’ve set up a business page on Facebook or Instagram, you can use their native insights function to obtain key metrics such as engagement per number of followers, engagement per post, and the time your followers are most active. Optimize your posts using trial and error – it will take a while to see what works best with your audience but with the results that you will achieve, it will be worth it!

Staying on Top of Your Audience’s Mind

Now that you understand where most of your customers are and their behavior, the next step is to stay on top of their minds.

It’s honestly no big secret – to stay on top of your customer’s mind, you simply need to post high-quality and engaging content consistently onto the social media channels that you have identified in the previous part.

Consistency and repetition can boost your branding but more importantly, it can increase your revenue by 23% as your identity gets instilled in your customers’ minds; thereby, attracting repeat purchases.

Combined with high-quality images and videos of your jewelry, it’s a surefire way to attract the attention of your audience.

Just check out Elverd Designs Instagram page below. As you can see, the layout on the page is consistent with recurring high-quality images of themed, products, and lifestyle shots. The layout is stunning and users are more likely to associate the different colors with the jewelry designs.

Building Your Presence Before the Key Dates

Now let’s combine everything from the previous parts in this post together.

You want to promote your products well before the key dates. Your holiday marketing calendar should now have reminders set up appropriately for each key event.

For example, you’d want to start posting for internationally celebrated events such as Valentine’s Day and Christmas one month in advance. For smaller but noteworthy dates such as Black Friday sales, you can start promoting 1-2 weeks ahead of time. Post 1-3 times daily and you’re guaranteed to see growth in your brand and sales consistently throughout the year.

Get those marketing calendars ready!

Grab your pen now and start creating a marketing calendar to keep your sales flowing all year round. Forget about downtime, 2020 is yours if you seize it.

Happy selling!