Small Business Solutions: 10 Last-Minute Tips to Prep for the Busy Season

Regardless of the size of business, holidays are one of the busiest times of the year, and no business wants to miss out on them. To ensure you’re fully prepared to take advantage of the upcoming holidays and potential revenue, here are some top tips while you prepare your business for the season.

Order Promotional Signage Now

As the holiday season is about to begin, it’s time to start thinking about your promotional signage, flyers, flags, decals and banners. They are among the most effective tools when it comes to marketing for the holiday season. Make sure that your store signage is attractive and easily noticed and your banners are visible to the most foot and road traffic possible. 

Giving a warm and inviting feeling, promotional signage helps you extend customers’ time in your store and make the shopping experience much easier for them by directing them where to go. Just one sign in your store increases yearly revenue by 4.75% on average. 

Up Your In-Store Display Game

From decorative signage and pricing to store hours and everything in between, it’s important to create an enticing and visually striking display to capture customer attention. End caps and special displays are critical for sparking consumer interest. Table covers, cloth banners, and other materials help create a striking display and a seamless holiday shopping experience.

Get Your Sales floor Ready for High Foot Traffic

If managing heavy foot traffic is among your list of concerns this holiday season, you need to strategize early on to keep customers flowing through your store, lines manageable, and ensure high safety.

Make sure to keep all the entrances and exits clear and plan predictable pathways that conveniently disperse and direct customers rather than leading them into high congestion areas. Arrange everything to create an easy flow because that ease of experience leads to increased sales.

Develop a Display Strategy

The importance of having a clear and defined display advertising strategy is critical. Using a variety of marketing materials such as flags, decals, and banners with actionable content presents varied looks for your messaging, keeping it vital and vibrant. 

Begin the process by considering what you want to achieve: building customer loyalty, increasing customer awareness, selling more products/services or better engagement with customers. Then plan accordingly. Just remember that all roads lead to one goal: helping you achieve your holiday season sales goals. 

Have Your Online Presence On Point

Make sure to have an online presence if you don’t have one already. Your website needs to load quickly from page to page, each page & its products needs to be optimized for Google rankings. Put in the work now and if done right, it will pay for itself. 

An optimized website allows you to attract customers new and old alike, communicating with them any time, according to their schedules. Additionally, regardless of the products you sell or the service you offer, customers typically start their search online, so making sure you’re in the mix is more important than ever before. 

Social Media Boosts Sales

Social media makes it easy to reach and attract more customers to your business. Leverage channels such as on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Pinterest for both organic posting and paid social media ads. These are highly effective avenues for promoting your holiday campaigns, to successfully target your audience, and to tailor your messaging to ensure success and sales. 

Stock Up on Popular Products

If you know your business and customers well, then you must have a fair idea of which items are going to be most popular this holiday season. Make sure that all such products are fully stocked and are easy to find. It is best to place them very close to the store entrance. Custom signs and marketing clings are highly effective means of making sure customers can’t miss them.

Create A Holiday Sales Event

Planning, creating and hosting a holiday sales event is a great way to thank existing customers for their continued support and attract new prospective customers to your store.  These sales events are also fantastic chances to engage your audience and generate buzz. They give afford the opportunity to interact with your audience face-to-face, something that has a significant impact on brand loyalty. To make it more engaging, come up with prizes for customers and encourage them to participate in the event.

BOPIS & Beyond

The BOPIS & beyond (Buy Online Pick-up In-Store) concept has gained a lot of traction in the last year plus. It is expected to continue to play an even larger role during the holiday season. In fact, it has quickly become a preferred channel for many customers. By offering BOPIS service, businesses connect the online shopping experience with in-store traffic, thereby increase revenue as well as potential revenue. It’s a new way to build better customer shopping experiences.

To have a very successful BOPIS holiday season, make sure to build a robust strategy, right from catering to customers in a rush to finding different ways to offer personalized services throughout the process.

Prioritize Employee Training

Lastly, if you’re planning to hire some extra staff this holiday season, make sure to invest in training them. Prioritizing employee training ensures an enhanced experience for your customers amidst the rush. This goes a long way to bringing customers back, both now and in the future.

With the amount of work that goes into the preparation and the planning for the holiday season, businesses need to make sure that everyone from prospects, customers to staff have a nice time and enjoy the holiday season.