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Prepare for Holiday Sales For Your Small Business | Black Friday Shopping Tips.
Holiday Season Selling (What do you need?)
Are you ready for the holiday sales season? Black Friday shopping is fast approaching.
I love the holidays, and if you're a product-based clothing and accessory business, this is your time of the year. In today's video, I'm going be talk about all the ways you can prepare for the holiday season for your small business.
Plus I'm going to share the number one, bonus tip on you can do that's going to impact how you run your business throughout the holidays.
Get ready for holiday sales: stock up on your bestsellers
The first thing you're going to want to think about is stocking up on all of your bestselling items.
You're probably going to be promoting lots of new things, perhaps seasonal items, but there are probably products in your assortment that you sell every day and that you know are consistent winners in your brand.
These are the pieces that you need to make sure you have inventory on. You don't have to go overboard, but look back at history, and make sure you have those things in stock.
Now's the time to think about inventory because as we move towards the end of the year, and close to the holidays, shipping and the distribution of some of your items, perhaps your materials if you're a maker, might start to get a little bit scarce.
The shipping to you as a brand owner may also start to slow down.
You must look ahead and plan for that right now.
So look at your inventory, review your recent bestsellers, and think about the quantities that you need as you approach the holiday season.
Get ready for holiday sales: stock up on shipping supplies
The next thing you want to think about stocking up on is your shipping supplies.
Any boxes, packaging, tissue paper, if you have special gift wrap for the season, special tags, or anything that you are going to need to use to get your products out quickly, efficiently, and in a beautiful way to your customers.
Make sure you stock up on these. Now is also the time when any of your suppliers are going to be facing higher demand.
This is one thing not to sleep on because you might miss out and you probably have some great ideas that you want to share with your customers.
Start to plan your shipping material stock now, so that you don't run into problems as you get closer to the season.
Get ready for holiday sales: Warn or alert your customers
The next thing is to figure out how you're going to warn or alert your customers to any shipping deadlines or delays. This might look like website banners or alerts on specific products or product pages.
You can email this out to your email list so your customers are aware, and you might have to remind them and tell them a couple of times. You may have different deadlines for express shipping.
You might have deadlines if you're offering free shipping for any of your products. As you get closer to the holidays the overall shipping timeline will tighten up.
Set some benchmarks in place so that you can share updates or statuses with your customers as you move throughout the season. And don't be afraid to over-communicate with your customer base, whether that's additional emails or you're posting on social, whatever that is.
Think about over-communicating, so that no one feels like they're getting left out or stuck.
Stellar customer service is something that can make and break your holiday season.
So really think about how you will communicate from now through the end of this peak time.
Get ready for holiday sales: Create content like crazy
The next thing that you can do to prepare for a stellar holiday selling season is to think about creating as much content and sharing as much as you possibly can. You are most likely already doing your weekly posts, emails, etc,
But now as we approach the holidays, you want to think about ramping up anything that you're doing to send your brand message out into the world and to your customers.
Whether that is showing live tutorials, demonstrations, speaking to customers, etc.
Anything you can do to add to the process, so people can see products in action, they can get a sense of what your products are going to look like as a gift, what your products are going to look like if people are wearing them out for special occasions.
Don't underestimate the need to show up. Your customer might be on the fence and may need to see your product multiple times, or a couple of different ways, or see how to use it, and imagine it as a gift idea.
Think about showing your product in a gift box, showing someone unboxing the product, or showing it on a body if that's not something that you regularly do.
Think of all of the ways that you can just kind of amp up your presence on social media, and your marketing throughout this whole season.
I would recommend that you kind of sit down with a piece of paper or a digital notebook and plot it all out and have some fun with it. Think of all the product stories you can tell. Lead with value, sharing all the aspects, features, and benefits of your products with your customers.
Get ready for holiday sales: Communicate everything
The next thing to do to prepare for the holidays is to think about communicating everything. There are two parts to this.
The first part is to communicate to your audience and your customers. I already mentioned communicating shipping deadlines. You can also communicate low inventory, or if there are shipping delays. Anything that you run into that is a surprise to you in your business or can keep your customers up to date.
You'd be surprised how understanding your customers can be if they realize that you're doing everything in your power to get their product to them.
The other part is communicating with everyone around you, and sharing what your needs are over the holiday season. That could be to your team, that could be to any of your virtual assistants, or anyone supporting your business, but it also could be to friends and family.
You might need a little help shipping and packing, asking a family member to help you take packages to the post office, whatever it is. You might need to grab someone to help you with social media, filming you, filming products, or whatever needs you have.
Don't wait until the last minute.
Communicate and be very transparent, not just with your customers, but with everyone who is supporting your business throughout the season.
CONCLUSION
Let’s summarize before I get into that last bonus tip that's going to impact how you run everything this holiday season. So how will you get ready and prepare for the holiday sales season ahead?
The first thing you're going to do is to stock up on your bestselling items.
The next thing you will do is stock up on all your shipping and packing supplies, and that includes gift wrap and any special tags.
The next thing you're going to do is to think about all the ways that you're going to warn or alert your customers to shipping deadlines or anything else that's going on in your business when it comes to getting products out to customers.
Next, think about how you're going to create as much content as you can from now right through the holiday season. And this can cover things broadly for your brand, but also be specific to products.
And then you want to make sure that you have a plan in place where you're communicating as often as you need to and with full transparency to your customers as you move through the season, as well as to your friends and family.
Bonus Tip:
Okay! My bonus tip for having a great holiday season in your business is not actually in your business.
It's to take care of yourself and practice a little self-care.
So that looks different for everybody, but you want to make sure you're doing something other than just focusing on sales, shipping revenue, and growing your business throughout the holidays. You want to enjoy your holidays a little bit as well.
Take some time to step away from your desk, or your computer, take a walk, get out in the sunshine, get out in the cold air, whatever that is, move around, eat well.
Look after yourself. It's going to positively impact the way you feel about your business and your holidays.
Feeling good will help you have more stamina when you need it when things get really busy and you get those sales rolling in to have a really productive season. So, practice some self-care.
Trudi
PS: If you want some more information about getting your online shop ready for the holiday season, check out this video. I'll leave a link here: WATCH NOW
PPS: Join me live for a sales planning workshop for the holidays. Click the link below and you can sign up to save your seat.
WORK WITH ME 👇🏼
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Trudi Roach specializes in helping small and emerging fashion and accessory brands scale successfully - even without any prior business or fashion industry experience.
A former fashion executive and merchandiser (aka the real Business of Fashion) she led product development for multi-million-dollar fashion brands, crafting a strategy with the Marketing, Sales, and Finance teams. Trudi learned how to run a business, from top to bottom the hard way, through hands-on experience creating products, working with vendors, and launching products, from test quantities to million-dollar programs … every month!
As a fashion brand consultant, Trudi can help you get there too.
