The festive season is fast approaching and retailers will be getting set for the busiest time of the year. For some of you, more than half of your revenues will be made between now and Christmas. It’s a time of chaos and fun for many independent retailers. And, of course, a time where you tend to hold more stock than the rest of the year.
So, if you’re one of the thousands of small, independent online retail businesses getting ready for a mega Q4, here are 6 quick tips for a less stressful, more joyful big retail season.
Stock Up. Now.
We get it. Holding a load of stock is always risky but you’ve got the data… you know what your biggest sellers are, you know what your customers love and you can make a really great educated guess at what you’ll need to stock most of to keep up with demand this Christmas. Some retailers take on additional warehouse/storage space over Christmas. But if you don’t want to do that or you’re unable, you can make the most of the space you do have with smarter storage solutions such as high racking. Investing in smart business equipment and storage solutions now will mean you potentially don’t need to invest in bigger premises that you may simply not need outside of the festive period.
So if you’ve not already got your stock waiting, there’s task number 1.
Start Pitching Your Christmas Products to Press. Also Now.
Ever seen those newspaper and magazine articles online that round up all those amazing gifts and it seems like every single one of your competitors is in it? You don’t necessarily need a PR agency to do that. We’ve got a free course on getting your products in press.
The benefits of doing so include sales through the article itself if it’s a good, relevant publication and also links back to specific product pages on your site. The latter there can influence your overall SEO visibility notably.
Plan and Promote Your Last Christmas Delivery Date
Look at your courier’s cut off dates, consider your own required fulfillment time and decide upon a last order date for Christmas delivery. This will help you plan your workload, plan the resource you might need and, of course, consider when you yourself will get some time off to enjoy the festive season.
You should make this visible on your website as December approaches.
Are You Black Friday-ing? Prepare Now
If you’re planning to kick start your festive sales with Black Friday promotions, plan them now. Head off to Google, type in “Black Friday Deals” and go to the news tab.
First, you’ll see that this year’s deals are already being talked about before we’ve even finished collecting conkers from the trees.
Then use the Google “tools” offering to filter the news results to show last year’s results (and look at all results from October and November 2022):
You can then look through all the Black Friday deals roundups that were promoted in press last year.
The tip here? Look at who wrote those articles, find an email address (if you have access to a press database, great, if not a quick Google search can often yield results) and contact the writer to see if they’re doing deals write ups again this year.
Now pitch your finest offers.
Tip: Have one consistent URL that shows all your Black Friday Deals and don’t include the year in that URL. So, for example, it would be example.com/black-friday-deals instead of example.com/black-friday-deals-2023.
The reason for this is that if your deals get picked up in the press, there’s a good chance you’ll get a link back to your Black Friday page. By keeping the year out of it, you can then keep the same URL next year but just update it with next year’s deals. It can help to rank quicker for things like “black friday {your product}” type keywords in search engines.
Plan Your Ad Campaigns
While your SEO has probably been a work in progress for some time, it might only be now that you’re planning you paid social and search campaigns.
Whether you’re doing them solo or you’re working with an external consultant, now is the time to plan. Consider your products, your demographics and the platforms you want to advertise on. Set target acquisition costs and ad budgets accordingly and sign all this off. This way, when things start ramping up nobody is held up waiting on ad creative or budget sign off.
Review Last Year
What went wrong? What went well? How could you have improved things?
You may well have reviewed all this in January but that’s some time ago. Refresh your memory and go back over last year’s lessons so you can apply them all now.
Above all else…
It’s a hugely busy time of year for independent retailers. And it’s the smallest businesses with the fewest pairs of hands that often see the busiest owners. While the increased revenues are often welcome, it can be hard going.
So plan as much as you can ahead of time and take breaks when you can! Good luck for another busy festive season.
