Holiday season is just around the corner! With Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas coming up, it’s time to introduce and discuss strategic holiday sales and its importance to the small business community. Taking advantage of the holiday season can help your business bloom, so this is an opportunity you won’t want to miss.
Importance of taking advantage of holidays
Holidays are the time of year when families get together and spend time; it is the time of the year where lots of money is spent on shopping and buying gifts. As a result, the holiday season is one of the biggest opportunities of the year for your business to earn tons of profits. According to OnDeck, “in 2016, e-commerce fraud risk increased 79 percent year-over-year during the holiday season.” Taking advantage of the holiday shopping season is perhaps the most crucial step for the growth of your small business.
But how should we capitalize on this opportunity?
As people flock to the mall to shop, they will be greeted by lots of sales from different stores and vendors. Increasing foot traffic to your store is important and marketing strategies (having visually attractive storefronts, for example), are one of the ways to take advantage of the holiday season. Providing discounts, onsite pop-ups and extensions is also a strategy worthy of investigation.
During the holiday season, the abundance of shopping causes holiday shipping to be chaotic. According to Business Insider, USPS had been so overwhelmed by the amount of packages they must ship that they increased costs between October 3 and December 26 on the last holiday season. Sellers should keep in mind that shoppers are going from store to store purchasing large quantities of gifts and goods so it is essential to create a strategy that would boost your business’ performance and be ahead of your competitors.
However, given that some companies are based online, they should look into sales, such as Black Friday, where the discounts are more ecommerce-focused. Cyber Monday is also a holiday where small businesses are able to provide large discounts, according to Business Daily News.
Strategies to create Holiday Sales
Now let’s dive into some strategies to ensure that your company’s holiday sales are successful. OnDeck suggests that learning from the past experiences is an effective way to increase success with holiday sales; however, a better strategy is to not only identify the factors in need of improvement, but also use resources around you to help your company grow.
Although your store may be getting a lot of sales simply due to the holiday shopping season, another strategy to further encourage sales is to understand the best or top-selling products in your store. For small business owners, the target market is usually specific, and as a result, the products are generally quite niche. This means that customers are visiting your store for particular goods and by identifying the top-sellers in your store, you can generate higher sales by offering generous discounts on those products. The holiday season is also a great time to promote new products; for instance, buy two of a new product to get one free of another item of similar value is a strategic promotional event to highlight and spread awareness of your store’s increasing product variety. At the end of the day, your holiday season sales can be viewed as an organized marketing strategy to promote both your store and your products while generating profit.
At Blocklight, you can find your data from promotions, sales, and campaigns you’ve run on our Analytics Platform here. Get insights on what your shop should be doing more of to have a very happy holiday. Head over to our website to see how your business can grow with us!