During the Christmas season, it’s a great opportunity for all businesses to get a boost in sales. If you sell something that could be given as a present, you should absolutely be capitalising on this. For a local business, it might seem more difficult to push those sales. As more shoppers go online, how can you convince them to come to you instead? Here are some key tips to give you that boost ahead of the holiday.
Get Advertising
Not only should you advertise your business, but you should make sure to reference Christmas in your advertising. This keeps you top of people’s minds and may remind customers that the big day is coming up. What kind of advertising should you be doing? If you are in a location with a lot of foot traffic, put up banners near your entrance to entice customers in. You should consider advertising on social media if customers are able to come to your location. If they aren’t, you could also have a coupon code sent out over email which expires before Christmas. These little prompts could persuade people to come inside and spend.
Sign Up For Amex
If you aren’t registered for the Amex small business campaign yet, make sure that you do it as soon as possible. This campaign encourages American Express card holders to shop local. For every $20 they spend at a registered business, they’ll be getting $10 straight back. This is great news for you as it is a real incentive for them to get shopping. There’s no cost to you and you can consider it to be great advertising as well. Every shopper that sees you in their list of local shops may think about coming back to you even after the campaign has ended. It runs for the whole of November, so act fast if you want to reap the benefits.
Get Involved Locally
It’s a great idea to participate in community events. These can be few and far between these days, where everything is happening online. That’s why it’s so important to capitalise on them when they do come along. Events such as fairs give you the opportunity to sell more at a stand. Sporting events or school plays sometimes need a sponsor. And for charity events, you can add something to the prize pool. Just make sure that as many local people get to hear about your business as possible. The more often they hear your name, the better. This will keep you top of their mind and make you first choice when the need to shop arises.
Build Gift Guides
Think carefully about your stock during this season and what you are offering for your customers. Is there any way you can rebrand your items? For example, any items you would normally advertise as birthday gifts can become Christmas gifts. Pampering items and novelty items are normally very popular at Christmas time. Be sure to check out gift guides in magazines and newspapers too. Whatever is picked out as being the best gifts, you should consider stocking something similar. People do read these guides and they are built on statistics in a lot of cases. That means you can’t go wrong with stocking the most anticipated items of the holiday season as they are proven to sell based on previous years sales.
The important thing is to put yourself into the race. The more you get people thinking about your brand for Christmas, the more likely you are to see good sales during this period.
