According to the Specialty Retail Report, being proactive is the key to a successful holiday season. Don’t just wait until a few days before Thanksgiving to plan your business’s Cyber Monday sale event. You need to start right now as time is of the essence for your business.
Here are five simple tips that will help you have a successful holiday shopping season.
Double-check Your Stock
Whatever your business is selling, you definitely need to make sure you have plenty of products in stock for the holiday season as you don’t want to sell something that you don’t have in your storeroom. Most holiday shoppers expect to receive their purchases before Christmas Eve, so it is important to double-check your inventory several weeks before Cyber Monday. If you need to order more inventory you should do so at least two weeks before Thanksgiving Day.
Make sure each product’s descriptions on your online store match what you have in your inventory. Listing something you don’t have in stock will upset customers.
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If you don’t already offer a newsletter for your online store, you should really think about setting one up, as this way you can send your customers information about upcoming sales, including your Cyber Monday sales. Make sure to include some sort of coupon in the newsletter as this can be used to bring in new and old customers to your online store.
Now don’t forget to use your social media to bring in new customers. The Woodbox blog recommends offering a percent-off or a dollar-off coupon exclusively for your Facebook fans. This could also work well with your Twitter followers as well.
Advertise A Few Weeks Ahead of Time
Newsletters will only get you so far if nobody knows about your online business and its sales events, so you need to do some other advertising. You don’t have to spend a lot of money on this either. Advertise the event on your Facebook page and on your Twitter account. The Web Chef’s Cafe states that tweets sent out with a picture receive three times the reaction from Twitter users than a single tweet does. Therefore you should probably tweet a picture of the products that are going to be included in the sale event. Even posting pictures of the sale items on Pinterest can help you bring in new customers.
Using social media sites like these will help you spread the world about your sale event. The more people that knows about the event gives you a better percentage of possible purchases on Cyber Monday.
Don’t Forget About Black Friday
You don’t have to wait until Cyber Monday to start your online sale event, as you can list a few discounted items on Black Friday, Thanksgiving evening or even right now. Fortune states that these events will give potential customers more time to learn about the sales and take advantage of them. Shoppers want the best bargains at the best prices, so offering your products during the biggest shopping day of the year is a must for any business.
Make Sure To Send a Receipt to Your Customers
With all the holiday orders being processed and shipped, you may forget about one small detail, the customer’s receipt. Most customers will get upset if there isn’t a receipt with their purchases. They’ll have a hard time sending back their purchases without a sale receipt it was damaged during shipping or shoppers just want to exchange it for another item.
There are many different computer programs that have business invoice and receipt programs that you can use, but if you want your business to look professional, you should check into buying a professional Shopify mobile POS system that can help you track everything from inventory levels to sale popularity. There are also other accessories you can purchase, such as an iPad stand that can make transactions for your brick-and-mortar business even easier.
Small online business owners can easily take advantage of the holiday shopping season and make a decent profit at the end of the year by having remarkable sale events during the last week of November and throughout the month of December.
