Christmas is around the corner – how do I stand out?

Christmas is a scary nine weeks away, and if your company usually has a sales uplift around the holiday season then you better put your thinking cap on. The best way to stand out at Christmas is to plan for it, so don’t wait until December 1 to do something – work it out now!

Did you know… The last week in October (that’s next week people!) is usually when Christmas sales start to pick up? The last week in November is the peak sales period.

Here are some suggestions for standing out:

• Decide if you are going to have a special offer and then tell people early – did you know many consumers start their Christmas shopping in September?
• Send Christmas cards to your clients/customers and give them an incentive to get in touch – your Christmas present to them. Remember, it doesn’t have to be cash, it could be a free ebook. This works best if you send cards early, ie. end of November, then you don’t get lost in the mix.
• If you normally update customers on specials by email why not send this month’s out by mail? I’ve found that we get nearly twice as many people responding if we send them something physical.
• If you want to promote things on social media like Twitter and Facebook why not write out your posts/blogs now and get someone to post them for you before the rush of Christmas starts and you forget. Using odesk.com for this kind of thing works well.
• For online stores, include shopping deadlines for delivery to be before Christmas. This “call to action” will prompt more sales.
• Why not try a 12 days of Christmas theme campaign closer to the time where each day you focus on a different product or service – you could email this to customers daily or even do a flyer that they can pick up when they visit.
• Reward loyal customers early by sending them a letter encouraging them to buy now and get a slight discount, or a freebie as a “thank you”.

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Lara Solomon is the founder of Mocks, mobile phone socks www.MyMocks.com and author of Brand New Day – the Highs & Lows of Starting a Small Business. Lara’s business LaRoo was the winner of the NSW Telstra Micro-Business Award in 2008.