OMG Digital Magazine OMG Issue 334 6th December 2018 | Page 20

OMG Digital Magazine | 334 | Thursday 6 December 2018 • PAGE 20
Business
5 WAYS TO INCREASE CHRISTMAS
SALES FOR YOUR SMALL BUSINESS
BY SUSAN WARD
Children may dream of sugarplums, but for retailers there’s
only one vision that matters during the Christmas season; the
sales graph. And as the Christmas holiday season is make
or break time for many small businesses, the overwhelming
question is how to get more Christmas sales and make that
graph climb as steeply as possible.
The obvious answer to “how to get more sales” is to get
more customers. Assuming you have a quality product or
service, the more people who see or experience what you
have to offer the more sales you’ll make.
To increase Christmas sales, though, you have to get
potential customers into your store. With a little effort and
some ingenuity, that’s not as hard as you think. Use one or
more of these ideas to create your own Christmas retail rush.
Increase your Christmas sales by:
1) Having a sale.
I can hear you slapping your forehead and muttering, “Well,
duh!”
But before you dismiss this idea out-of-hand, consider this:
pretty well every retailer of every size has some kind of
Christmas season sale - because they work.
Now consider this: what if you didn't just have a sale but had
one of the sales that just about everyone wanted to attend?
How? Keep these tips in mind:
Offer one big bargain a day. Offering big discounts (30%
or more) on some one well-known item each day to bring
Christmas shoppers in can work for you if you have well-
known brand merchandise or particular items that people are
looking for.
Make it a discount, not a thing. In a flyer recently, a retailer
offered a free pair of socks to anyone spending over $20 in
their store over their three-day pre-Christmas sale. But what
if you feel you have enough socks or that socks just aren't
very Christmassy? They've lost you. On the other hand,
everyone can appreciate a discount.
Make sure your discount is worthwhile. Shoppers are used
to being spoiled. So puny little 5, 10 or even 20 percent
discounts aren't going to cut it unless you do something like
a 20% off storewide sale. On individual items, the higher the
discount the better. Shoppers will compare.
And advertise your sale heavily on the most appropriate
marketing channels for your ideal customers; social media,
newspapers, radio etc. (See 19 Advertising Ideas for Small
Businesses.) People need to hear about it if they’re going to
turn out and give you the chance to make more Christmas
sales!
2) Holding an event.
As I write this, the Business in Action group in my town
is holding a Moonlight Madness event. There will be fire-
wielders, jugglers and musicians performing and, of course,
Santa will be visiting. 
Families who come downtown get all kinds of free
entertainment – and lots of opportunities to get their
Christmas shopping done as all the downtown businesses
are open until midnight and have special sales going on. If
your town doesn’t have something like this going on this
Christmas season that your small business can participate
in, what would it take to get such an event going next year?
There’s nothing to prevent you from holding an event of
your own either. The trick is to create an event that will tie
into your products or services in some way.
For instance, a kitchen store could hold a cooking class and
benefit from increased sales of the products used in the class.
A yoga studio could hold a free class to encourage January
signup – and offer gift certificates to encourage participants
to spread the word.
Put your thinking cap on and ask yourself, “Why would I go
to that (event)?” (In other words, what’s the benefit to the
customer? No benefit = no turnout.)
3) Using email campaigns.
Social media is hot. But email is effective. Neil Patel,
founder of QuickSprout, says that “in spite of social media's
viral potential, email still wins as the most disruptive
method to reach and woo your customers” and points out
that according to McKinsey, email marketing is three times
more effective than social media, and the average customer
order is 17% higher.
Hopefully you’ve already got an email newsletter going out.
It’s an ideal spot to promote the products or services you’re
featuring over the Christmas season and spread the word
about any sales or events you’re having.
But don’t be afraid to send out separate emails as part of
a marketing campaign either. The one bargain a day idea
might work well for you as a daily email, for example.
Whatever email you send out to customers be sure to court
them personally. Besides being sure to use the recipient's first
name in the subject line (which increases the click-through
rate, according to HubSpot), you could send customers
special offers such as extra discounts just for them, buy-one-
get-one-free deals not available to the general public, etc.
The message is "you're special" - a hard message to resist.
4) Creating an attractive window display for your
small business.
Take advantage of the extra foot traffic out during the
holiday season by using an eye-catching, foot-stopping
Christmas window display.
Incorporating your products into your display is great if you
can manage it, but what’s really great about a Christmas
window display is that you don’t have to. A totally
Christmas-themed display can work well.
What you want is something unique that’s going to draw
the eye. And incorporating some kind of movement can
really draw a crowd. One of the most successful Christmas
displays I’ve ever seen involved a train that ran around a
track.
Most important of all is to work your crowd. A bunch
of people standing around watching a train go round or
admiring your gorgeous arrangement of ornaments does
nothing for your business. You have to bring them into your
store. Try offering visitors a free hot drink and a cookie -
seasonal and irresistible to most.
5) Using proximity marketing to lure shoppers
into your store.
Many shoppers are glued to their phones to the point that
they might walk right by your store without seeing it.
But by using proximity marketing that broadcasts your
targeted message to phones within a certain distance, such
as iBeacon or Smart Antenna, you can entice those shoppers
in – and offer them personalized offers to encourage them
to buy more.
Smart Antenna looks especially appealing because it
operates through Bluetooth and Wi-Fi and doesn’t require
potential customers to download an app as iBeacon does.
Invite Them & They Will Come
So there are five marketing ideas you can use to get more
customers into your store over the holiday season so you can
rack up more Christmas sales. There’s no reason why all five
of them can’t be part of your Christmas season marketing
plan.
But remember; whatever you do to create your own
Christmas retail rush, you have to get the word out to
your target market about what you’re doing. Send out that
email, place those ads, use social media. Don’t let this
Christmas season be a retail non-event for your business
because you didn’t invite your customers to your store.