SouthOfMetro.com | How to Step Things Up for Your Business During the Holiday Season | The holidays are coming indicating the busiest season for retail businesses. Therefore, if you want your operations to take advantage of the higher demand for goods and services, you had better take your marketing efforts up to the next level.
Here are some of the best ways to step up your marketing game for the holidays.
1. Experiment with alternative means to reach new customers
Consider new avenues for bringing in more income. Join holiday bazaars and sales, which are plentiful during the months of November, December, January, and February. Set up a booth to showcase and sell your popular as well as freshly developed products.
Another thing to do is to sell online. Make sure to join top online shopping sites because they have holiday programs that will help put your products in a highly visible product lineup.
2. Ramp up your customer service
Quite often, during the holiday season, the customer service provided by most retail stores suffers. There are never enough sales representatives to cater to the needs of customers. Plus, the friendly attitude is replaced by smile-less approaches, and the queues are unbearably long for people wanting to have their concerns resolved, or inquiries answered.
Make sure to take a different approach to your own business. Come up with solutions that will allow you to service your customers more effectively and efficiently. For instance, create an express lane for particular issues such as product exchanges.
It may also help to re-train your employees to improve their workflow and attitude during the incredibly busy months. And, do not forget to offer better comfort and convenience to customers such as by setting out more seats and tables, especially for the elderly.
3. Put out new signs and marketing paraphernalia
Head to a flyer and large poster printing service and create a fresh batch of marketing paraphernalia for the season, especially if you will be offering exclusive and limited deals. Posters and flyers will notify people of the unique things you have in store and trigger their curiosity.
Put them up or hand them out in various locations to increase people’s awareness. This is a fantastic and reliable way of leading more and new customers to your store and boosting sales.
Also, make sure that you have calling cards to provide every customer with. For every purchase, include a business calling card with essential details about your store in the bag. This way, if customers end up loving your products, they can easily check your website and the different social media platforms where you offer information about your products and services.
4. Make customers fall in love with your merchandise
Work really hard on your display window and in-store displays. If you sell clothes, instead of just having mannequins standing and wearing outfits, consider creating a scene. Consumers love it when they can picture the situations where their purchase choices would be used.
Another display strategy to work with is by making your top items stand out even more. Do not make the mistake of letting them blend into the background. Therefore, always use a contrasting background for them, so they automatically catch the eyes.
Thirdly, use your store website to show off all the advantages of your products — craft different blog posts about them. And lastly, feature links about the products you’re selling to further boost their appeal. You can create a poster for these, include them in your flyers, or share them on your website.
5. Set up a giveaway or reward program
Gifts with a purchase, as well as VIP perks and rewards, never fail in attracting more customers. Who does not enjoy the idea of getting greater value for what they pay for? But, be very strategic about this. Most of the time, retail stores only use clearance products as freebies or perks.
However, according to marketing experts, it’s better to offer trial size samples because these often meet the standard desires of customers. Therefore, there’s a huge possibility that customers will purchase the full-sized versions of such products in the future. So, always think of giveaway programs as opportunities for upsells.
Meanwhile, for perks and rewards, make these an unquestionable way of expressing gratitude to loyal customers so they will stick with your business. Gift them with special gift certificates for enjoyable experiences such as a dinner for two at a contemporary Japanese restaurant, or free movie passes to a luxury cinema.
6. Create gifts to-go
Gift packages and kits are always in demand during the holiday season. Do not miss out on the opportunity to move through products more quickly by creating gift packages and kits to-go for customers. According to Beth Lang, the owner of a jewelry store in Colorado, “Convenience is the name of the game right now.”
Indeed, there are people who no longer want to think about what to buy as presents or the holidays. They find that gifts-to-go are the practical option because these offer variety and will inevitably contain at least one item that recipients would like.
Gifts to-go are not easy to make, however. Make sure that they are as pretty and useful as possible. The trend these days is to make the packaging not just visually appealing but also reusable. As for the product sets, it’s best if they are travel-sized (slightly bigger than samples) but built with all the convenience features of their full-sized counterparts.
7. Hold exclusive events
Promotions built around a specific market are a fabulous marketing tactic. For example, “For Women in Their Thirties” sales attract a smaller but ready-to-shop group that stores can focus on. What businesses have discovered is customers thoroughly enjoy the VIP treatment provided them in such events.
Plus, exclusive sales bring out a different facet of the consumer mentality. With premium services, customers do not mind the higher prices for particular items. Not only that, but they are also more receptive to upsell programs.
All in all, be proactive with your business’s marketing this holiday season. Put up attractive posters, hand out flyers, make your presence felt online, and fashion new services. With all of these strategies, you can ensure your highest sales and safeguard your business’s finances for the coming months.
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Author Bio
Michael Gribben specializes in Marketing and Product Development at King Printers Co. Ltd in Osaka, Japan and is the spokesperson for Print Arabia, the first Japanese online printing company in Dubai, UAE. Print Arabia offers hassle-free offset and digital printing, as well as large format, novelty and T-shirt printing services.
