How to prepare your business for the run up to Christmas

As we all know, the run up to Christmas can be a businesses most advantageous time.

So, it’s important to get everything in place to propel your business further and make the most of this time. 

By doing this, your business can prepare for Christmas!

In this blog post we will cover:

  • – When is the best time to start preparing?
  • – Use emails to your advantage
  • – Offer deals around this time of year
  • – Christmas themes on your social media

Why is Christmas important for businesses?

Christmas is typically a high-volume selling season for commerce businesses around the world. Most retailers will rely on their Christmas sales to give their finances the final push through to the end of the financial year.

Without a successful Christmas, businesses can full short of their yearly economic projections.

When is the best time to start preparing?

Of course, the earlier the better. Make sure you plan ahead when it comes to getting your brand ready for Christmas.

The Black Friday weekend is normally a good indicator that Christmas is on its way and this tends to be the weekend that Christmas shopping gets underway. This is a great time to prepare your business for Christmas. 

With that being said, it’s a good idea to use this to your advantage and do a Black Friday deal to kick things off. 

So, how do businesses prepare for Christmas?

Firstly, try not to get overwhelmed. There are so many ways to make the most of Christmas but don’t do them all. Pick things that work best for your brand and stick with them. You can’t do everything and you don’t want to overstretch the business. Know your audience and work with that in mind. 

We’ve spoken in previous blog posts about how important it is to plan all the big events in your business year. Think about anything you’ve already done for other big holidays and try and change it up for Christmas.

With these plans in place, you should be able to have left a decent amount of time for you plans to come to fruition.

How do you attract customers for Christmas?

1. Use emails to your advantage

Around this time of year, people don’t want to think too hard about what gifts to buy for their loved ones. By using emails to prompt people into buying your product, you are much more likely to see conversions. 

The beauty of email marketing is people don’t have to go searching for the gift, it is sent straight to them. It’s quick and around this time of year, that’s what people are looking for.

With easy click-to-buy buttons, your customers can buy your product straight through the email without having to try. 

It can also lead them to your website where they may purchase more than one item. This targets those wanting to do a christmas shop all at once. 

You can even use emails to send out a Christmas newsletter to your database of customers. 

This keeps them up to date with any offers you have planned for Christmas and it feels personal to them. 

Sending out email campaigns is such a cost effective way to see a rise in purchases. It targets a large number of people at once and brings the product straight to them. 

Don’t forget to mix it up. You can send out Christmas teaser emails around the end of November to get the ball rolling. 

Then amp it up with a holiday gift guide featuring your best products for different family members. 

Then make some personalised emails for loyal customers you see time and time again. They could gain early access to discounts or receive a discount for a friend. 

The possibilities are endless.

2. Offer deals around this time of year 

Of course, offering deals around this time of year is a given. But how you do it is what makes the difference. 

Starting with Black Friday. Think about new and unique ways to offer a deal. You want your loyal customers to take part but you also want to pull in new customers too to really take advantage of this time. 

Many shoppers will want to take advantage of getting money off items in their Christmas shopping. These deals can start from Black Friday and continue over Christmas and into the first week of the new year if you want them to.

Or you can do them in stages to keep customers coming back and buying more over each stage. 

Offering these deals via email is a good way to get a lot of people aware of them easily and effectively.

Using your social media to promote these deals is a great way of getting a large audience aware of the deals too. 

Using swipe up links in your instagram stories works really well, as like the emails, it’s quick and easy for people to do. 

Why not host a giveaway before Christmas too? This will bring in an influx of new customers and followers on your social media channels. It will also get your name out there when you use the correct hashtags and target audience if you promote the post.

3. Christmas themes on your social media

This leads us on nicely to how to theme your social media around this time. 

It’s good to stick to your usual theme, you don’t want to go too heavy on the Christmas aesthetic as you may steer too far away from what your audience expects. 

But a little sprinkling of Christmas never hurt anyone and the best way to include this is usually through stories. 

Stories on instagram self-destruct after 24hrs, so they are great for bite sized amounts of Christmas fun. This also keeps you safe from ruining any grid themes you already have on your instagram. 

The best way to host any giveaways are through instagram too. These are best done through a feed post where people can comment and tag a friend to enter. This can be a good way to put a bit of festive cheer on your feed.

You can also use twitter for giveaway where entrants have to retweet the announcement to enter the giveaway. This propels the giveaway to larger audiences. 

Whatever you decide to do for your business this Christmas, we hope it’s very successful!