Five Holiday Sales Blunders to Avoid

Half of retailers’ yearly sales typically depend on holiday sales. Holiday sales can actually make up as much as 75 percent of annual profits. Since holiday sales have the potential to make up so much of your profits, it’s important to understand how to effectively draw people in at these times.

Today, consumers have many choices to fulfill their holiday needs and wants. They can shop online, browse stores and Web sites for the best deals and can order from catalogs, phone or the internet. The weeks leading up to Thanksgiving and Christmas are the time to get your products out there for everyone to peruse. You need to let people know your name by printing custom greeting cards, and sending those print greeting cards in an envelope that’s customized to your business. That’s right – even your envelope printing budget needs to be addressed for the season!

There are many mistakes that can be avoided to ensure that the next holiday season is your best sales season yet. Read on to make sure you avoid these sales blunders around the holidays.

1. Don’t rely on discounts to draw people in. Many businesses think that the way to compete around the holidays is to slash prices. But slashing prices, particularly if you do it early in the season, only slows your annual sales because customers will only shop at this time of year. If they know big discounts are coming, they’ll wait for them. And of course, discounts will dip into your profits.

So, what should you rely on? Good ol’ customer service. Ensure that all customers are waited on promptly and that you have enough staff on hand to help customers as needed. People will remember next year that they got in and got out of your store with no hassle and with help from your team. You can even print greeting cards fairly cheaply and include them in your bags for customers to take home. The customer can either keep the card, if you’ve used a custom greeting card, or can use it to send out to relatives or friends.

2. Cutting your holiday advertising budget. With all the online advertising and cheap greeting card printing options, you have no reason to cut your holiday advertising budget. You just need to use what you have wisely. Television and radio are expensive, and are no longer the hot channels to get your message out. Research the kind of marketing that has built results for your competitors or other businesses like yours.

3. Only marketing to certain customers. Don’t hold back your marketing tactics to only customers that are big-ticket purchasers. All sales count, and the people that don’t buy much during the year could end up buying the lion’s share during the holidays! Don’t lessen your effort to reach them. Along those lines, if you have customers that only shop online or that only shop in the store, be sure to get your message to both types of customers. Use greeting card printing as a tactic to reach all your customers – send each customer a card and use envelope printing services to convey a holiday message on the inside and out.

4. Ignoring customer feedback. What’s the point of even asking your customers’ opinions if you aren’t going to do anything about it? Monitor any emails you get that have questions and try to accommodate the requests or questions by posting answers on your Web site or in your store. Also, don’t keep using the same ads if they aren’t getting people in the store. If anyone comments on your advertising, use that comment instead of taking offense to it.

5. Don’t forget last-minute shoppers. People procrastinate – it’s a fact of life. Account for this procrastination in your inventory, your labor and your marketing materials. Plan to have last-minute specials to attract the latecomers into spending their last holiday money in your store instead of your competitors’.