How to Give Your Business an End-of-Year Boost
Can you believe that 2021 is almost over? It’s definitely been a hectic year with lots of surprises — some good and some bad. But there are still a few precious weeks left that you can use to your advantage and hit any sales goals you have for the year. Here are a few ways you can push through the holiday season to give your business an end-of-year boost.
Offer great holiday promotions.
This one should be obvious, but some businesses overlook the power of special pricing. People are already in a spending mindset from Black Friday all the way through New Year’s Eve. But there’s a catch for businesses — your customers really do expect a big sale, and you need to deliver. In fact, they’re expecting to see the biggest discounts of the year around Black Friday. So if you just offered a 25% off back-to-school special, you’re going to need to go higher for the holidays.
Black Friday is usually the biggest spending day of the year, so keep people feeling as if it’s Black Friday for an entire month. You can even promote your holiday sales as “Black Friday Extended” or “Our Post-Black Friday Sale.” The whole point is that your customers see the words “Black Friday” and they get the sense that there’s a great deal to be enjoyed.
Don’t scale back your marketing efforts.
The holidays practically promote themselves, right? Unfortunately, that’s not the case! While people are definitely more inclined to get out and shop during the month of December, that doesn’t mean you can just cease your advertising efforts and hope for the best. If anything, you should be increasing your advertising efforts so that you stand out among the other businesses out there as a place where shoppers want to spend their money. Whatever you advertising budget is for the end of the year, go all-in.
Get in the holiday spirit.
The holiday spirit is contagious. When your customers (or just your social media followers) see that you’re having fun in the way you celebrate, they’ll naturally gravitate toward that. They come your way not because they’re excited about your bargain pricing or your inventory — they just want to be part of that festive spirit. But you know what else feels festive and celebratory? Buying gifts for loved ones. All of a sudden, by getting people in a festive mood, you’ve put them in a shopping frame of mind.
So make sure your holiday spirit gets plenty of visibility on social media. Do a Livestream of you and your team decorating your storefront, or add some cheerful filters to any pictures you put up. Don’t forget the power of music to get people feeling festive. All of this will make people say, “Hey, they seem like they’re having fun for the holidays. I want to check them out.”
Sell in terms of gifting.
Sometimes you just have to make it easy for people to up-buy and they will. Start promoting your products in terms of gifts so you can start pairing or bundling them together. Create a gift guide with ideas for different people your customers might be shopping for. Find related items that might work well together — a larger one as the main present and a smaller one as a stocking stuffer, for example. You can even assemble gift baskets and sell an entire collection of products in one go just because it’s been packaged and promoted in a nice, festive single unit with a bow on top.
Reach out to clients you saw earlier in the year.
Do you maintain an email list of clients? The end of the year is a perfect excuse to reach out to them and announce any special sales, new products, or holiday open houses. Even once the holidays are over, let them know that you have great discounts on any leftover merchandise that they can come in and get before New Year’s Day. (After all, you can tell them, they deserve to buy a post-holiday gift for themselves.)
Make sure you’re ready to handle increased demand.
Bear in mind that there’s no sense in upping your advertising — and seriously trying to bring in more traffic — if you aren’t prepared to handle it. Make sure you have plenty of inventory stocked on your sales floor, as well as sufficient staff that is trained to handle a rush. Finally, you need to make sure your website has the bandwidth to handle the increased traffic it is likely to get from people who are trying to place online orders. The last thing you want is to find out your website crashed while people are trying to place holiday orders!