Elevate Your Business for an Unforgettable Holiday Season

Key Takeaways:

• The holiday season is a great time for businesses to boost sales and create lasting customer memories.
• To be successful, businesses need to have a holistic strategy that caters to customer behavior shifts during the holidays.
• Sales and seasonal events are a popular way to engage customers and drive sales.
• Multichannel marketing can help businesses elevate engagement and visibility.

With the holiday season on the horizon, businesses have a golden opportunity to boost their sales and make a major impact on their bottom line. Meticulous preparation during this festive period can do more than just fill your stocking with revenue — it can also help you deliver memorable experiences that keep your customers coming back for more in the new year. 

In this guide, we’ll explore time-tested strategies for creating an exceptional holiday experience to elevate sales potential, ensure your business is discovered by seasonal shoppers and harness the power of multichannel marketing for heightened engagement and revenue generation. 

Be Ready for Changed Customer Behavior

The holidays are simply different. Our schedules change as we accommodate time spent with family and friends and we find ourselves breaking out of our usual routines. In the same way, customer behavior tends to shift over the holidays, as shoppers make purchases they wouldn’t normally make. Ensure that you’re ready for the increased demand, so you can rise to the sales occasion.

Preparations for that flurry of customer activity could include stocking additional products, giving your website and social media profiles a refresh and making sure that you’re prepared to process a higher volume of orders through your online store.

Update Your Contact Information and Hours

Have your hours changed for the holiday season? Be sure to let your customers know wherever you have a presence online. Likewise, make sure your contact information is up to date on your website and on social media so your customers can reach you with ease.

Deck the Halls – Digital or Otherwise

All it takes is a few season-appropriate visuals and themed pieces of content to give your website and social media profiles a special touch during the holidays. It’s not just about being fun and festive; when a customer who visits your website or one of your profiles sees the dramatic change, that tells them they should look twice at your offerings.

For the same reason, if you do have a physical store, be sure to decorate that as well. You don’t have to go full winter wonderland; even a few small decorations can make a big difference.

Wrap Up Some Gift Collections and Special Offers

In the hectic holiday shopping season, convenience and affordability are two factors that can help a business stand apart in a crowded market.

When it comes to the convenience factor, having a smooth online shopping experience in place is number one, with thoughtful features like guest checkout also being high on many customers’ wish lists. But you can also try creating bundled gift collections, so your customers can check more people off their gift lists with a lot less effort. Group like products and give the bundles fun, holiday-themed names. This is an excellent way to move slower-moving products as well since you can group them with your top sellers and clear space for the new year’s offerings.

As far as affordability goes, this is the perfect time to offer some special discounts as part of a holiday sale. Again, this is a terrific way to sell items that didn’t fly off the shelves throughout the year, but it is also a good opportunity to reintroduce your whole product catalog – with shiny percent-off graphics next to your sale items that will instantly draw the customer’s eye. Who doesn’t love a good sale?

Give Back to Your Customers

The holiday season of giving is the perfect time to give back to your customers and let them know how much you appreciate their business. Try an email campaign to simply thank customers for doing business with you throughout the year, while also showcasing your holiday sales and previewing what’s to come after the new year.

You can frame your holiday discounts as a way of thanking your customers for their business, and you can also remind them of any other special sales or events you held throughout the year – a kind of end-of-year recap that can help build a stronger and more memorable impression of your brand.

This is also a great opportunity to solicit customer feedback in surveys and requests for reviews. The more feedback you get from your customers, the better, and you may even find an ideal candidate for a testimonial that you can share on your website, blog, and social media.

Make Your Holiday Sales Season Eventful

From Christmas parties to Thanksgiving feasts, the holidays are filled with special events. Why not fill your sales calendar with similarly memorable occasions?

We have already mentioned offering special, limited-time discounts and gift bundles. Flash sales with countdown timers and complete gift guides for the uncertain shopper are a natural extension of that strategy.

But beyond sales and discounts, you can develop creative content that will engage your customers on a different level. Consider video content that highlights your business’s holiday preparations – taking viewers inside Santa’s Workshop, if you will. Let them see how you’re putting in the work behind the scenes, make it fun, lighthearted, and allow customers and potential customers to connect with you and your business journey. Even if you find yourself in a mad scramble, consider posting about that or make a short-form video highlighting that the struggle, indeed, is real. What’s more identifiable for the average holiday shopper than the hectic rush to get everything ready for the season?

You can even reflect your holiday cheer through special domains that you can use for promotional purposes, like yourwebsitename.holiday. You can then promote this domain through a variety of channels, including print media.

Spread Cheer Through Every Channel

It is essential to take a multichannel approach to marketing during any time of year, but it is especially important during the holidays, when every channel is flooded with noise from businesses of all kinds, including your competitors. Ensure that you have enough routes to reach your customers, including a website, email campaigns, social media, paid search, remarketing, influencers, and a presence in top business directories.

The more channels you’re in, the likelier you are to cut through the noise and reach existing or potential customers. Sometimes, business owners write off certain channels throughout the year, but the holidays could very well change the performance dynamic. You never know which channel could end up being the sales surprise under your tree.

Make the Most of the Seasonal Sales Window

The holidays represent a big sales and customer relationship-building opportunity for businesses in all kinds of verticals. By planning ahead and developing a well-rounded strategy for taking advantage of your sales opportunities during this time, you can boost your revenue, create stronger customer relationships, bolster brand recognition, and give your business a hefty dose of holiday cheer that will lift you into your next season of success.

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