Review and Revise Your Holiday Season Marketing Plan
Every year, small businesses scramble to prepare for the holiday season sales at the very last minute. Unfortunately, they end up missing out on valuable revenue opportunities. Make 2017 different! Get a jump on your holiday season marketing plan today. Here are the most important things you should do to prepare before the holiday season.
Ensure you have the bandwidth for traffic spikes
Check the past performance of your website against seasonal spikes in traffic. Be sure that you have the bandwidth to handle this extra traffic. Does your site perform well under the extra pressure? If your website is slow or crashes, you will lose customers — many of whom may have turned out to be returning customers. Keep your average page loading time under three seconds –– under two, if possible.
Get your inventory ready
The holidays are the most important time to pay attention to inventory forecasting. Develop a robust forecast of which products will sell at which time. Allow sufficient lead times to get your products in. Late-arriving products can cause other problems for your operations and create problems down the whole chain.
Bring on additional staff to handle increased orders
Ensure your team is large enough to handle the extra business. This goes for handling orders — a very time-consuming process — as well as answering customer queries. Shipping orders quickly will keep those customers coming back. Aim to keep your average shipping time consistent during the holiday season. After all, it’s easy for customers to switch to a competitor during the frenzy of the holiday rush.
Try Direct mail advertising
Putting a printed message in the hands of eager shoppers is one of the most effective ways to attract hungry buyers into your online or brick & mortar stores. This is especially important if you launch your campaigns early. Feature your best offers and hottest products and beat the “Black Friday” rush.
If you’re not already using a convenient direct mail shared advertising platform like Money Mailer, be sure to supplement your outreach during the upcoming busy season. Extra advertising direct to your most affluent consumers will mean extra sales for you!
By taking the time now to plan for the holiday season sales, you can count on less stress and more sales during the hottest buying season of the year.
