As a small business owner, your to-do list is probably the longest around the holidays. While this time of year brings plenty of joy, it can also bring lots of stress for entrepreneurs! In order to tackle all of your holiday tasks with ease, you’ll need to prepare in advance. Hiring more help will free up your schedule. Additionally, here are a few key tips from IOMMI Designs that every small business owner should implement as the holiday season approaches.
Find Seasonal Staff
First, it’s important to assess your holiday staffing needs. If you tend to experience a major uptick in business around the holidays, as many companies do, you might not be able to handle the increased workload with your current staff alone. And if you’ve been running your business as a solo operation, you’ll be especially thankful for some part-time help around this time of year! When it comes to hiring seasonal employees, Hppy recommends determining your staffing goals early and advertising open positions through several channels, including local job boards and social media. You can also let your family and friends know that you’re hiring – if they know anyone who is looking for work, they can refer job seekers to you! Feel free to reach out to past employees who left on good terms to see if they would be interested in coming back to work for you temporarily on a part-time basis.
Hire Freelancers for Marketing
What if you only need help with specialized projects, and you don’t necessarily need to hire full-time or even part-time employees to tackle these tasks? You could look into hiring freelancers with plenty of experience in marketing to help you connect with new customers during this busy shopping season. Freelancers can help you with everything from creating polished content for your company blog to curating and scheduling posts for social media to hosting virtual holiday webinar events! Look for candidates who understand the importance of storytelling in marketing.
Decorate Your Storefront
There’s no better way to spread some holiday cheer than by decorating the storefront of your business! This helps encourage window shoppers to come inside. You don’t have to be an interior designer to put together an eye-catching display that exemplifies the holiday spirit. Printleaf recommends putting up signage inside and outside of your store to prompt people to come in, using colorful string lights or setting up backlit pop-up displays, and incorporating wintry symbols like snowflakes and wrapped gifts into your decor. You can have a lot of fun coming up with creative displays!
Update Your Website
If you don’t have a physical storefront, and you operate your company purely as an ecommerce business, you will definitely need to update your website around the holidays! You could work with a freelance content marketer for this task, or you could tackle it on your own. Make sure that your website clearly displays information about any sales taking place or special new products that you have released for the holidays. You can create fun banners with animation, install pop-ups that encourage customers to sign up for your email newsletters, or even put up a countdown to particular holidays. You can also use a logo design maker to add a little extra flare–and best of all, it’s free!
Promote Holiday Specials
Besides decorating your storefront and updating your website, what else can you do to promote any holiday specials that your business is running? There is no shortage of ideas! You could send personalized holiday cards or emails to your most loyal customers to alert them about sales in advance and offer them special discounts. Additionally, you can set up a feature on your website that allows people to create “wish lists.” Naturally, running promotional campaigns on social media is never a bad idea. And finally, you could consider partnering up with another local business to promote each others’ products or services! As long as you partner with a non-competitor, this arrangement is almost always mutually beneficial.
Host Events
You might think that your customers will be too busy to get excited about a holiday event at your business. But if you have a brick-and-mortar store, you could set up some fun perks on days when you want to promote big sales! For instance, you could designate a particular day for giving out major discounts and then make the experience extra festive. You might want to offer your customers sweets and hot chocolate, hire a local band to play holiday tunes live, or host a giveaway that customers can enter to win free gifts! Make shopping at your store special this holiday season. You can also host a fun holiday party for your staff to give them a chance to relax!
Give Back to Your Community
Finally, this is the perfect time of year to demonstrate your commitment to your community by giving back. You may want to get in touch with local charities to see how you could help with their fundraising efforts around the holidays. You could run a program where you donate a certain percentage of your proceeds for the month of December to a charity that you partner up with. You could also consider donating some of your products to a charity that can distribute them to those in need. This could be a good idea if you run a food or clothing business. No matter what, there is something you can do to give back over the holidays!
If you tend to feel overwhelmed around the holidays, a little careful planning can help you reduce your stress. With these tips, you can create a holiday checklist to stay on track. This year, you’ll be much calmer and more collected during the holiday season!
IOMMI Designs is a Web & Graphic Design company that has been working with clients large and small, local and across the country for the last 10 years. Looking to start a new project? Contact us today for a quote!