It may not be Christmas yet but that doesn’t mean you shouldn’t be thinking about it already. When you run your own business, you need to plan for events early. As before you know it, it’ll be Boxing Day. And you’ll be in a food-filled slump, wondering what the heck just happened! So let’s take a look at what you need to be doing in advance.
Christmas has got to be one of the biggest selling events of the year ahead. If you’re not ready for it, you’re going to miss out on big opportunities to grow your business.
I go into these in detail further down so carry on reading for more juiciness (is that a word?). But the essential steps you need to take are:
Things are going to get busy, and quickly. You need to have a plan for how you’re going to handle everything. Increases in sales lead to more products needing to be made. This means more packaging and more trips to the post office. More sales can also lead to more returns. This can increase your paperwork and stock management issues.
The best way to deal with this is to consider all bases. Work out in advance what stock you need to get in. Have backup plans for if things go wrong. Find alternative suppliers you can use. If you’ve thought of everything, then you’re covered for all eventualities.
Most businesses run some sort of offers during the season. But you don’t have to. If you haven’t heard about it, check out Small Business Saturday. It’s a good way to promote your business without having to run an offer. If you’re interested in doing offers, read on.
This doesn’t have to be complicated. Use some festive backgrounds on your social media posts to promote an offer. Pop some relevant hashtags on there. Job done. But, if you want to go further with it…
How about running a “12 days of deals” series? A different offer every day for 12 days. Or you could do a full advent calendar of offers. You could have a video series where you unwrap a different product each time and that’s what’s on offer that day. How about grouping certain products together to create themed gifts?
You can make it as simple or as elaborate as you like. As long as you are still profiting from the offers you run, go Christmas crazy with it!
Gift cards are perfect for last-minute buyers. They can really help to bring in sales closer to Christmas as people start to run out of time. Also, it means you don’t have to worry about postage if you make them digital!
They’re also great for customers who don’t know what to buy for people. Throw in the ability to personalise them with a name or message, and you’ve got a great gift. Simple, effective and not much effort for you. Surely that’s got to be a win?
The best way to use discounts is to make them benefit you. Consider early bird offers. You could take discounted pre-orders in September or October for Christmas delivery. It would help to improve your cash flow and you can spread out the workload. Hence, benefiting you.
Closer to Christmas, you could offer time-sensitive deals. This encourages customers to make a decision if they’ve been sitting on the fence. You could also offer free gift-wrapping or free personalisation. This puts a cherry on the cake and makes it easier for the customer.
It’s important that you focus on customer relationships at all times. But doing it at Christmas shows the customer that you’re prepared to go the extra mile during a typically busy and stressful season.
First of all, if you’re not sending your email newsletters from a business account, you run the risk of them going to spam. So that’s your first stop to get sorted. Or you won’t be informing your customers about anything!
The next step is to make them personal. This can be as easy as using their first name in the email. Then, if they’ve purchased from you before, you can use their history to recommend products. Particularly if you know you’ve got offers on those products.
Give them sneak peeks at what new products you’ve got coming out. Let them know when the last order dates are for delivery. Keep them informed about stock quantities. Let them into your little corner of the world. Just don’t overload them with info or too many emails!
Email newsletters are certainly one of the easiest ways nowadays. And there’s always social media. But they’re not the only ways. You could send a simple text. Post out leaflets. Put massive signage everywhere. Try something unusual that gets you noticed. Think outside the box. Skywriting, maybe?
Just remember to make sure the return on investment is worth it. That’s a fancy way of saying make sure whatever you spend on it is worth what you get back. Whether that’s more sales or more engagement on social media or something else.
And make sure it works for your customers. If most of your customers are airline pilots, then skywriting may be the way to go. Or if they hate answering the phone, then a simple text might be perfect. You just need to make sure that it’s your business that stays in their minds when they’re shopping.
If you’ve got employees, it’s important to get them ready for the festive period. Starting from Black Friday, things will get very busy, very quickly. Dealing with customers at this time of year can be very stressful!
I would recommend trying to be as accommodating as possible to which days your staff need off over the season. There’s nothing worse than a disgruntled employee trying to deal with a stressed out customer! However, keep in mind that you will still need to ensure you have enough people to cover busy periods. And remember that you can’t make everyone happy!
So, other things you could consider are hiring seasonal employees to cover any shortfall. Lots of shops put out adverts specifically for this reason. Think about all the supermarkets that take on extra people just to cover the run up to Christmas.
Another thing you could consider is to offer incentives to employees to encourage them to work on days they have previously requested off. It could be a bonus or first pick of the holiday days after Christmas or something else. And if you don’t already offer it, increased holiday pay is always a good idea!
At Christmas time, shoppers are likely to be rushing, stressed, and not their usual selves. They’re probably lacking in festive spirit too as they just want it to be over with so they can be home and start preparing for Christmas themselves! So the best way to deal with this is to make sure you’ve got clear processes in place for your employees to make interactions with customers as simple as possible.
Highlight to your employees that customers will be stressed and they shouldn’t take it personally. They are going to need to have more patience than usual. But equally, they shouldn’t accept any abuse just because it’s Christmas!
As the season approaches, it’s the perfect time to practice making sure the customer feels valued. Asking “how are you?” or “did you manage to find everything today” or “can I help you with anything” can be all it takes. And a simple smile goes a long way!
Motivating your team at Christmas is not much different from the rest of the year. Start with a simple “thank-you”. You’d be surprised (or maybe you wouldn’t!) at how many bosses don’t thank their employees for doing a good job. And how something as easy as that can be all it takes for them to feel appreciated and want to do a better job.
If you want to get into the spirit of the season, hosting a Christmas party or meal can be a great way to boost morale. Even better, ask your employees for their ideas to get into the festive spirit. And if all else fails, a nice Christmas bonus or voucher always goes down well!
There are very few people who don’t look for online businesses when they start their Christmas shopping. So it’s important that your online presence is the best it can possibly be.
I’m a little bit guilty in that I’ve only just got my own Google My Business set up! But I can already see the benefits of doing it. For starters, you need to encourage new and existing customers to leave some reviews on there, preferably 5 star! This could help your business to stand out from the competition.
Next, you can add your shop listings so customers have a preview of what’s in-store. They can then click through and be taken directly to your products. Highlight your holiday-themed Christmas gifts and boost sales.
Finally, if you have a physical location as well as online, make sure you include your address. This helps customers to find you easily if they do want to pop in store.
To get your business ready for Christmas, your website needs to be able to handle the increased demand. You need to make sure everything works correctly. And it needs to do it quickly. Customers won’t hang around on a slow website. So if that means you need to upgrade your hosting, it will be worth it.
Do test purchases on your website. Have friends deliberately try to break or find faults with your site so that you can fix it beforehand. Make sure it can handle the increased traffic. Check sales codes work. And I cannot say this enough: test, test and test again.
Like most small business owners, you are probably already using many social media platforms. Christmas is the perfect time to really embrace them. There are lots of themed ideas you can use, such as:
Try and vary what you post so that customers aren’t seeing the same messages on different social media channels. And just embrace the season!
Oh my goodness, where do I even start? Simply, the earlier you can start planning, the easier everything is going to be.
Imagine going into the season with no plans, no strategy and just blind hope of getting lots of sales. Does that fill you with panic and dread? It does me! The minute you put a plan in place, everything becomes so much easier. You’re less stressed. You know exactly what you need to do and when. And you can get things done earlier.
So now imagine you’ve planned everything out. You’ve automated a lot of your social media content and your marketing campaigns. You’ve thoroughly tested your website. You are ready to handle the increased sales with ease. Doesn’t that sound so much better?
Get planning as early as you can! (Unless you are someone who thrives on highly busy, highly stressful situations. In which case, leave it all till the last minute!)
It’s always worth reviewing what happened in the past so you know what to do again and what not to! Take a look at Christmas 2024 and see what your best sellers were. It’d be worth making more of those in advance. Equally, were there any that didn’t sell well? Is it worth doing an extra push on those this year? Or should you drop them all together?
Were there any particular offers that you ran that were successful? Which social media sites gained the most interactions? Where did most of your sales come from? What can you repeat this year?
All of these look at numbers (duh, I’m a bookkeeper!) but you should also consider how you coped last year. Did you handle the stress well? Were you burnt out halfway through the season? What can you do differently to protect your sanity? If you go down, so does your ship. So don’t just look at the numbers.
Throughout this blog I’ve given you several things you need to do to ensure your business is ready. But if you’d like a list of 45 actionable steps to take, I’ve created a set of festive flashcards you can view on your phone. Each card includes a task to complete with an explanation and a tip to go with it. You can find them in my shop here. Enjoy!
Ell Evan Bookkeeping are not Tax Advisors and so our advice and suggestions on the application of tax rules cannot be construed as tax advice.
