The end of the year is approaching fast, meaning the annual holiday sales rush is about to commence. Kicking off with Black Friday in late November, this six-week sales period represents a crucial opportunity for businesses to attract customers and help improve the bottom line.
Visit our page Preparing for Holiday Success for more tips to make your small business shine this holiday season.
The good news is, there’s still a window of opportunity to prepare your business – and your website – to make the most of the spending season. Covering everything from operations, to marketing and staffing, we’ve put together a simple to follow guide on how to prepare your business for the holidays.
Look to Previous Benchmarks
Unless this is your first holiday sales period, your first priority should be a thorough audit of how you performed in previous years. Assess your weaknesses, find areas you can improve upon, and continue to build on your strengths. Each year should be considered a learning experience, with special attention paid to any trends, like increasing demand, to inform your choices.
Now is the Time to Think Mobile
Consumers are increasingly making purchases using their smartphones. Are you catering to this growing audience? To understand how many consumers are accessing your site on their phone, consult with your Google Analytics account.
Tailoring your site to become more mobile-responsive will pay off quickly for your business. According to a recent Salesforce study, 63 percent of Canadians completed a Boxing Day purchase on their mobile device. That’s a lot of potential sales you will miss out on unless you think mobile.
Don’t have the budget to create a unique mobile website? Many common website platforms like WordPress, Shopify and Squarespace allow you to invest in a cost-effective, off-the-shelf mobile solution that’s customizable to your needs.
The Issue of Capacity
Capacity is an issue that should be top of mind for each business owner, and it’s a broad topic that covers two equally important areas.
Creating a Safe Environment for Customers
It’s your obligation as a business owner to create a safe physical space for your staff and customers. This can be achieved by ensuring compliance with mask mandates, physical distancing, and providing hand sanitizer at high-touch stations. Ensure your staff are equipped with the PPE (personal protective equipment) they need to stay safe.
Online Capacity
If you’ve ever run into technical difficulties on your website during a sale, don’t fret. Even the big boys go through hiccups from time to time. In 2018, Amazon’s website crashed during their much-publicized Prime Day promotion. That being said, the holidays are the busiest time of year in E-commerce, and it’s a time when website outages can cost a lot in lost sales.
As a starting point, stress-test your servers. If you saw high numbers of visits last year, it’s likely you will exceed those numbers in the coming years. Consider turning off some features of your website to create a pared-back experience that will load faster for customers. If you want to upgrade aspects of your website performance, contact your hosting provider and look to upgrade your server capacity.
Create a Marketing Plan
To drive sales, you should create a dedicated marketing plan across multiple channels. As a marketer, you’ve never had more tools at your disposal to achieve this goal. Does your business have a blog? Prepare some guides, advice or expertise to share across your social media channels. This will drive visitors to your website, build recognition of your brand expertise, and work to build your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts.
How is your email marketing game? Email Marketing is more relevant than ever and shows remarkable conversion rates. Make sure you’re sending out your deals via your email list. Consider staging contests and even enlisting the help of industry-relevant influencers to assist with your marketing effort.
Deploy Your Marketing Plan ASAP
There’s no time like the present to start building your holiday marketing push. If you’re thinking of offering any deals or special offers to entice customers in, let them know in advance through your marketing channels. Don’t fall into the trap of announcing deals at the last minute. Go big and go early with your marketing push. It will serve to build a buzz around your business, increasing exposure and excitement among your customer base.
Small Business BC is Here to Help
SBBC is a non-profit resource centre for BC-based small businesses. Whatever your idea of success is, we’re here to provide holistic support and resources at every step of the journey. Check out our range of business webinars, on-demand E-Learning Education, our Talk to an Expert Advisories, or browse our business articles.
