Preparing Your Small Business For Christmas Sales
We need to talk about Christmas. I know it’s only early October and it feels sooo wrong, but this year, above all years, every small business needs to smash their Christmas sales.
So I’m going to help you to get your business prepared for Christmas, right now!
Corona Christmas
There’s no doubt that Christmas 2020 will feel a little different - there will be less visits, less in-person Christmas shopping, probably no work Christmas parties or social events at all and that will have a considerable effect on many small businesses (as well as large) especially hospitality and beauty. But I don’t think it’s all doom and gloom. Because of our lack of personal interaction with each other this year, I believe there is going to be a desire to give meaningful and well considered gifts and support small businesses. I'm clinging to that anyway!
We know that Jeff Bezos is going to add a few more billion to his shareholder value as Amazon continues to hoover up online sales. However, by preparing your offers now and getting in front of your regular customers and a loyal community, you can get a share of the pie. The giver feels good about supporting a small business, the recipient gets a lovely gift, and your business wins a sale. That’s a good dose of Christmas cheer right there!
5 Steps to Prepare Your Business for Christmas Sales
What will you sell and how can you make that a bit more special for Christmas? Creating a gift package of products or services, or products AND services is a very attractive way to attract Christmas gift sales.
Here are the steps I recommend to get your small business ready to rock some Christmas sales.
1. Start to Prepare Christmas Offers
Product based: If you are a product based business then I recommend that you bring together a group of products in a themed package. Yes, I know this can be done by your customer, but your job here is to add the sparkle and generate demand. A beautiful set of products grouped together is a much more exciting gift than picking out individual products and trying to imagine them all together. Also, customers are less concerned about the price this way because they see a complete package that solves their problem.
Service based: Gift vouchers for single treatments or services is always a great solid offer. But what about making that work harder? Such as a subscription gift voucher for year-long or multiple services? I would be delighted to get a subscription for hair-cuts every six weeks as a gift for example (hint hint).
2. Dress the Offers
Product based: Gorgeous packaging or quirky packaging makes the gift. I am not talking plastic crap either, come on it’s 2020, we know better! You can use brown paper or bags, string, fresh sprigs of fir and it will look gorgeous without filling up the overflowing recycling bins on boxing day. Oh, and I recommend a branded sticker or stamp to add that little finishing touch.
Service based: Make an intangible service become tangible and physical. Create a gorgeous gift card with an envelope or even a boxed card for max impact. I just created these beautiful on-brand Gift Vouchers for my client, Kirstie Purse Make-Up Artist on Canva and ordered them as postcards with high quality envelopes from moo.com. Aren’t they gorgeous?
3. Upgrade Your Offers
Product based: Offer an extra product to the gift to ‘complete’ the set. It encourages a little increase in spend but also can create a really nicely rounded gift. I’m buying some gorgeous Grow Your Own Food seed sets from Border in a Box as gifts this Christmas and I love how they are packaged up with a book and tools too. You can also collaborate with another small business to sell each other’s products/services this way just as they have here with the Furbaby Welcome Box, which includes a bar of organic pet shampoo from another brand.
Service based: People are only ever hesitant to give gift cards because of the ‘lack of something substantial to open’, so add the wow factor by adding a relevant product and packaging it (literally gift wrapping it) beautifully so it’s something anyone would be proud to give. If you nail that, then people will spend a bit more to get your ‘upgrade’.
4. Sell & Ship Your Offers
Make sure it is easy for people to purchase your product either in-store or online. This may mean you need to create a shop on your website (remember it’s much harder for people to shop in person these days and you need to adapt!).
A simple way to do this if you have a wordpress website is to set up a Stripe account to take credit cards (it takes ten mins) and install the free Stripe Payments plugin. You can use it to create products and connect to your new stripe account to process the payments. It is the simplest e-comm solution I have found to date. A more substantial alternative is the Woocommerce plugin for wordpress. It offers more options and additional paid enhancements, such as a fancy gift voucher plugin which automatically produces unique codes and downloadable vouchers. If you don’t run a wordpress site at all then setting up a simple shopify site and linking it to your current website will quickly have you up and running with some online sales.
Now, remember you need to ship anything ordered (unless you make it downloadable) so factor in a process for checking orders daily (more often if required and have a good system for processing (fulfilling) the orders and getting them out to customers. This is the difference between success and failure!
Please don’t overlook this step to sell and ship. It’s so important to make it super EASY for people to give you their money and for you to provide a seamless service. You cannot rely on people messaging you and transferring funds - you need to reduce the friction so that customers can buy in the smoothest way possible, even if that means sucking up some transaction fees.
5. Market Your Offers
Be Everywhere: Get some samples ready and take beautiful photos to showcase your special Christmas Gift Offers and share them on your website shop, social media posts and create some low-cost flyers to hand out too - create beautiful artwork on canva.com and print cost effectively with moo.com
Facebook Shop: You can now connect your online shop to Facebook and sell directly there too, which I see as having huge potential for small businesses. You cannot sell services through the shop, it has to be physical products so gift cards for services is the obvious choice here!
Customer Newsletter: Make sure to let your mailing list members know about your festive products and keep reminding them! You cannot start too soon or tell them too often. But of course weave this in with other news and stories too.
Facebook Ads: Tried Facebook and Instagram advertising yet? It’s a very cost effective way to reach a wide but targeted audience to offer your products. Check out my article here for guidance.
PR: Glossy magazines have already planned their Christmas editions back in July (crazy, huh)? But daily & weekly publications, local newspapers & magazines and online platforms are ripe for fresh content all the way up to December. So make sure you have fabulous photos of your product or service and create a great press release around it. Christmas Gift Ideas for (insert niche customer here) are going to be the features they fill so think about how you fit into that. Need some guidance about PR for your small business? Check out my blog post here on that very subject.
Inspiration for Christmas Offers
Not quite feeling Jingle Bells yet? I get that. But now is the time to get ready if you are going to be able to take advantage of the natural upswing in sales. So here’s a few ideas to help get your grey matter thinking about what you can offer:
Anyone/everyone: Gorgeous gift cards/vouchers for any product or service.
Hairdressers: An annual subscription for annual haircuts - pre-paid haircuts for a year (every month, six months, two months depending on your offer) plus a gorgeous shampoo & conditioner set.
Photographer: A 2021 calendar of their photographs to anyone who you have done a shoot for in the last year? Or a stunning framed print.
Membership Business: A gift card for a year’s subscription plus a relevant book or journal that fits with your focus.
Life Coach: Gift card for a January kick-start session or a mini-package of New Year-New You sessions.
Copywriter: Personalised stories or poems presented in a beautiful journal - get yourself on Etsy for this!
Dog Walker/Groomer: Pet grooming voucher plus dog brush and shampoo set.
Beauty Therapist: Gift voucher for treatment and/or a bundle of themed products beautifully wrapped.
Restaurant/cafe owner: Dinner at home box with all the trimmings.
I could keep going with ideas for hours, but hopefully that will start you thinking about getting your Christmas offers ready… right now!