Holidays are a time to spread love, joy and cheer. Many people use this as an opportunity to give gifts to themselves and their loved ones. As a business owner, this provides you with the unique opportunity to reach a wider audience and drive sales, leveraging the festivities of the holiday period. However, the idea is not to simply make huge sales during this period but to convert the people who buy from you at this time into loyal customers. In this article, we share actionable tips you can implement to use holiday seasons to your advantage.

Tip 1: Start Early

The most important tip to note is to start planning early. Plans for holiday sales should be made at the beginning of each year, alongside your plans for the year. It helps to identify the various holidays you intend to leverage and map them out. This will enable you to make your plans ahead of time and prevent last-minute confusion.

Tip 2: Create A Holiday Sales Strategy

While the specifics of every holiday differ, it helps to create a sales strategy that you can tweak with the specificities of every holiday. Having a strategy will give you a clear sense of direction, enable you to plan your content ahead of time and maximize your time and resources. Here are a few examples of holiday sales strategies you can adopt:

• Introduce Discounts And Special Offers Everyone loves freebies, especially customers who might be doing a lot of holiday shopping. Discounts and special offers are a surefire way to get your customers’ attention and boost sales. Be sure to craft your discount plan carefully, so you don’t run at a loss in the long run.

• Create Holiday-Specific Collections Group your products and services that go well together into collections that your customers will love. Not only will this motivate them to purchase (because they’re getting more value) but it is a great way to sell off some of your products that haven’t had a great time in the market.

• Set-Up Gift Cards Gift cards are extremely useful to busy people who may not have the time to pick out specific gifts for their loved ones. The great thing about gift cards is that they bring you more than one customer as the actual purchaser may gift them to someone else who had no previous knowledge of your business.

Bonus Tip: When crafting your holiday sales strategy, be sure to highlight a specific goal you want to achieve. Do you want to get rid of old stock in your store? Are you aiming to introduce new products or market a particular existing product? This goal will enable you to build a plan that is beneficial to both your business and your customers.

Tip 3: Build A Customer Database

It’s important to keep your customers informed of what you intend to do for the holidays ahead of them, so they can make plans to purchase from you. To do this, you need to gather customer information with every purchase and build a mailing list you can send information and updates to. With a data collection tool like UseForms, you can create a form that your customers can fill in a few easy steps.

**Bonus Tip: **Don’t forget to collect information from first-time holiday customers and add them to your mailing list. This will remind them of your product offerings and keep them coming back.

Tip 4: Use An Inventory System To Manage Sales

Holidays are usually a high-traffic time for businesses. With many customers and orders, it’s easy to lose track of what you have in stock, which may result in a lack of order fulfilment on your end and disappointment on the customer’s, even if you do issue a refund. Using automated systems to track your inventory will prevent this from happening. Kwiksell is an all-in-one retail management tool that enables you to track your inventory and oversee the operations of your online and offline sales channels, seamlessly.

Above all, one thing that customers appreciate when shopping during the holidays is a stressless and seamless experience. Providing them with this will ultimately leave them with a good feeling about your business and convert them from one-time customers into loyal advocates for your brand.