- Stay on top of vendors. Timely delivery from your vendors has never been more important. Your vendors can make or break your holiday sales. Punctual deliveries can mean the difference between selling through your inventory and maximizing your gross profit, or receiving your stock too late and having to take post-season markdowns, which will hammer your profits. "Expedite your deliveries with your vendors," Hurlbut advises. "Expedite, expedite, expedite."
- Identify slow sellers and mark them down. This is the flipside of identifying your best sellers. Just as you used sales figures from September, October, and November to identify hot items, your results from those months can also help you identify the slow sellers of the season -- the turkeys. These are the items that did not move at full retail price and it's important for your bottom line to clear them off your shelves -- even at a discount -- than when those items are competing with other clearance items later on. Hurlbut recommends discounting those slow sellers by 30 percent early on to help move them out, rather than slashing prices by 50 percent to 75 percent later on. "Further, by clearing them out early, you free up your displays to focus your customer's attention on your key items," he says.
- Plan for post-holiday gift card redemptions. Gift certificates and gift cards have become an increasingly important component of holiday gift giving. Retailers that offer gift cards earn the revenue before the holidays, but are at the mercy of customers as to when they use the cards to buy merchandise. The NRF survey of holiday shoppers found that only 36 percent of gift cards were redeemed within the first two weeks after Christmas. "The critical objective is to redeem them for full margin sales, rather than clearance sales," Hurlbut says. "If you've planned your inventory prudently, there's not likely to be as much clearance inventory, and there's room to bring in early transitional inventory in mid-December, which doesn't have to be marked down and can be sold at full margins."
Timely marketing to drive holiday sales
Small businesses can be at a disadvantage when it comes to holiday advertising. The big chains take out full-page ads, or spring for inserts, in newspapers around the country. They buy TV spots during prime time. And they blanket the radio markets, too. Those advertising markets are also open to small and mid-sized businesses, although they may be too pricey. But the Internet has provided a host of new ways to reach customers for low or no cost. In fairness, the best marketing medium for your business depends who you are targeting. NRF found that 78 percent of adults over 55 read a daily newspaper, but 48 percent of young adults aged 18-34 use instant messaging at least once a week.
Here are some online marketing strategies too consider when trying to boost sales during the holidays:
- E-mail marketing. The holiday season is a good time to use the e-mail list of customers that you have been compiling all year. But while the holidays may be a good time to send out a coupon or gift certificate that they can share with a friend, it shouldn't be the first time that your customers are hearing from you. "If you've been doing the right things and building a list all year long, you should take advantage of that. It's still one of the most cost effective means of marketing with the highest returns," says Jantsch. "But this can't be the first time I've heard from you, when all of a sudden you're desperate for holiday sales. You should be sending out alerts about new products, a show you went to, trends in color -- those are the types of things you should be sending out all year long."
- Online ads. There are a variety of ways to advertise your holiday promotions online. You can buy ads on websites frequented by your customers. You can also buy keywords from search engines, such as Google and Yahoo!, which will promote your website when someone searches the Internet using those terms. In addition, a new twist has been added recently -- targeted online advertising. Businesses can now target their online ads based on demographic information, such as location or age or gender. The major search engines now offer more customized options for ad placement, such as demographic targeting (age, sex, or ethnicity), geographic targeting, and contextual targeting.
- Social media marketing. Social media -- such as social networks and blogs -- present another opportunity for advertisers. But it's been difficult for advertisers to measure ad effectiveness when the social media audience is so fragmented -- until now. Keeping customers engaged about issues using a blog is one good marketing tool. Alerting them to last-minute sales via Twitter feeds might also be useful when it comes to the last few days of the holidays -- and unlike so many other promotions, it won't cost you anything.
Related Links
Maximizing Profits during the Holiday Season
by Ted Hurlbut
The time to plan for a great finish to the season is now.
(November 2004)
End-of-Season Planning
by Ted Hurlbut
Even in the rush and crush of the season, it's essential to do the end-of-season planning necessary not just to maximize sales but also to protect margins and cash flow.
(December 2004)
Six Key Ways to Handle the Holiday Rush
Here are six ways to take advantage of the holiday business wave
National Retail Federation's Holiday Survival Kit
The retail trade group has a variety of statistics and charts segmented by types of industries that could help you plan for your holiday sales season.
Online Advertising through Social Media, IncTechnology.com, January 2009
Online Video Ads: How to Use Them, IncTechnology.com, August 2008
Targeted Search -- How to Optimize It, IncTechnology.com, March 2008
