The holiday season begins when businesses run their first promotions targeting year-ending sales. With this information considered, it is important to have a holiday sales strategy well ahead of time. Even with the uncertainty that surrounds every market cycle, the main goal for businesses around the holiday season is to have the best sales as possible. As you prepare for this upcoming sales season, here are tips and strategies you can integrate with your team.
Outline Holiday Sales Goals
The holiday season requires early planning even well ahead of fall. It is important to fully understand what you want to accomplish by the time summer has wrapped up. By avoiding early planning, you risk investing your money into ventures or projects that may not turn out to be aligned with your original goals. Before the fall season rolls around, plan a meeting with your sales and strategy team to outline goals ahead of time. When discussing these figures with the team, use the SMART framework, which consists of making your goal specific, measurable, attainable, relevant, and time-based. By including these factors in your goal-setting process, you can better prep your business for a strong holiday season.
Craft a Goal-Oriented Strategy
With your goals formalized, the next step is to create a strategy that your team can gravitate towards. Look at your budget and determine where to invest your financial resources in according to the parameters that make up your goal. Another factor you can use to help you allocate your budget is the exact profile of your main core customers. Your customer profile also includes those who are already interested in the products and services you sell. By recognizing your primary audiences, you can map out a clearer strategy guide to drive your holiday sales campaign.
Look at Consumer Behavior
Your existing customers’ behavior and trends can be significant in how you delegate your holiday campaign budget. A common mistake businesses make is trying to distribute their ad spend evenly throughout the season rather than syncing with holiday consumer behavior. You can then use the data you collect to adjust the level of spending throughout the holiday season. You can first start out with a small budget in October, and then make marginal increases until you reach the peak of December. More customers are making purchase decisions earlier in the season, so it is important to know when to change your advertising spend to match the activity of the audience.
Stimulate Buyer Behavior with Incentives
Some businesses and online stores provide incentives for customers to expand their shopping cart. These include shopping for additional bundles or adding more quantity to a specific product they are buying. In addition, there are holiday bundles you can set up, which can allow customers to buy a series of products in a single package. By providing rewards and incentives, you can further expand your sales reach and improve loyalty from existing customers during the holiday season.
Be Ready to Change Your Budget
Many successful companies do not stick with one budget and let it go for the rest of the season, but they are on standby ready to adjust at any time. If you foresee additional opportunities or sources of growth that other competitors aren’t capitalizing on, then shift your budget towards them as well. In addition, you may need to expand your ad budget in case you see yourself falling behind on sales. The more flexible your budget is, the more prompt you can be in responding to sudden challenges or new opportunities.
Your holiday sales strategy can be one of the most important factors in how your business closes out the year. It is important to prepare ahead of time and allocate the right amount of budget towards a well-targeted marketing campaign. In addition, understanding your customer behavior and getting your budget ready ahead of time can further help shape your strategy. As you work with your team in outlining your holiday sales campaign, consider integrating the aforementioned tips as well.
