The holiday season offers one of the biggest opportunities to make your small businesses shine. Whether you run a retail shop, offer professional services, or sell online, the weeks leading up to the holidays are perfect for attracting new customers, rewarding loyal ones, and setting the stage for a stronger year ahead.
Here are fresh, practical ideas to help you boost holiday sales and build momentum for the coming year.
Send Holiday Greetings Early
Help your small business stand out during the holidays by sending your customers an early Seasons Greetings message. Send it by the end of the first week in December. Include a special offer to encourage customers to finish their shopping in your store or to join their friends for lunch or dinner in your restaurant. Send the greeting and coupon in email to keep costs down.
Build Your Email List during the Holidays
Building your email list during the holidays will help your small business bring in new sales next year. Plan a special sale for after the holidays for people who subscribe to your email list. (In other words, the only people who will be able to buy at the special sale price or discount will be those who subscribe to your email list.
Announce the special sale date with signs in your window and by your cash register and by posting notices on your website and social media profiles. Make it clear that customers must be on your mailing list to take advantage of the special after-holiday sale.
Alternately, just remind new customers to sign up for your email list to be notified of future sales.
Make it clear how someone can sign up for your list (E.g., text-to-signup, scan a QR code, or a website subscribe link.) Check your email provider to see if they can provide you with the text code or QR code to use.
Mail to Your List – Often during the Holidays
Plan to send multiple mailings and promotions during the holiday season. If you only send one or two mailings, they may never get seen. Or if they get seen, they may get forgotten. Increase the chance that your small business mailings get noticed by sending multiple reminders for each promotion. Send them on different days and at different times of the day. (Consumers may be shopping online at night after work and might see a mailing then they missed during the day.)
Woo Customers into Your Boutique
People shop at boutiques when they want to find a special or different gift for friends and family. Help them find your boutique by posting photos of popular or new inventory items to your Facebook and Pinterest pages. With each photo you post, put a note about who the item would be ideal for. For example, “Grandma hates the winter? Give her this floral patterned teapot to help her think of Spring when the snow is falling outside.” Boost the best Facebook posts to make them more visible to consumers in nearby towns.
Send Holiday Gift Suggestions to Your List
Help your customers by giving them fun and useful gift suggestions for various types of people on their holiday list. Send an email with a list of best gifts for under $25, another email with suggestions for what to buy people who say they don’t want anything. Still another email could be what to buy for the office grab bag, or the party hostess, or the person who has “everything.” Include links to buy the product on your site.
Social Media Made Easy
Don’t have time to post to social media during the holidays? Hire a virtual assistant or social media specialist to do the work for you. Chances are you’ll be able to find someone to do the work in the networking groups you belong to. If not, post an ad on LinkedIn, or Fiverr or Upwork.
Encourage Self-Indulgence
During the holiday season, consumers are ready to spend. Encourage them to spend a bit of that money to pamper themselves. Offer a limited-time discount on your spa service, a home cleaning, hair cut or nail salon visit, or car detailing service. Encourage them to treat themselves to new clothing, or to spruce up their home for the holidays with some item you sell.
Cross Promotion Mania
What other businesses do you know of that attract the same kind of customers you do but don’t directly compete with you? Talk to those other stores and work out deals to cross promote each other’s products and services. Include flyers for each other in customers’ packages, share mailings, and recommend each other in email. You’ll be helping each other out and helping your customers by pointing them to reliable sources for products and services they can use.
Give Early Bird Discounts
Does credit card bill “shock” make your customers cut back on buying your services or attending your events after the holidays? Get them in the doors in January and February by running an Early Bird sale in December. Offer a discount or special perk to those who register in advance.
Plan for Next Year
If your business is one that slows to a standstill while customers are busy with holiday chores, put your free time to work. Use it to take a close look at how your business did this year. What worked and was profitable? What didn’t work or wasn’t profitable? Did you reach your sales and profit goals? Has the market or the competition changed? What do you need to change in the New Year?
Write down the results of your analysis, then write out your goals for the New Year and the steps you’ll take to achieve those goals.
Be Creative
You don’t need giant budgets or complicated campaigns—just a little creativity, consistency, and a willingness to try something different. Pick one or two ideas that fit your business, put your personal touch on them, and get them in motion. A strong holiday season can set the tone for an even better year ahead.