8 Must-Dos to Prepare Your Business for Holiday Sales

Ah, the holiday season—a time for family, tasty food ... and, of course, holiday shopping. Love it or hate it, the holiday shopping season is here. And do you know what that means, fellow business owners? Yup, it’s time to gear up and prepare your business for holiday sales. And I’m going to help you sleigh it.

8 ways to prepare your business for holiday sales

Between Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, and the month of December, it can be hard to keep up with shopping holidays. But alas, another year has gone by and the holiday shopping season is here yet again. To get your business and team fully prepared for holiday sales, keep these eight tips in mind. Let’s unwrap them, shall we?

1. Analyze metrics to make projections

When it comes to business, numbers matter—they really matter. Certain metrics, like sales and customer count, will help you know if you've reached a set goal. To help plan for this holiday season, use past years’ data to make predictions for this year’s sales.

To make projections for this holiday season, look at last year’s numbers:

Sales during the holiday season
Inventory levels
Products and services that sold the best
Marketing tactics that did and didn’t work

Use the information you find to set goals for this holiday season. Reviewing sales figures can help you identify trends and use what works best to your advantage.

2. Plan out marketing and promotions

One of the biggest parts of the holiday shopping season (and really any season in business) is marketing. Without it, you can miss out on boosting sales and attracting new customers—and no business owner wants to miss out on a sale. To gear up for the holiday season and let consumers know what kinds of sales your business has in store, come up with a holiday marketing plan.

Your holiday marketing plan should detail every aspect of every holiday sale, deal, coupon, etc., you plan to offer. Outline:

Types of promotions (e.g., 20% off $100 or more)
Days promotions will run (e.g., Friday-Sunday)
Advertising methods (e.g., social media, emails, etc.)
Timeline for sales launches

To help craft your marketing strategy and properly get the word out about sales, look at data from last year, current trends, and your customers’ needs and preferences.

3. Update and optimize your website

More customers are shopping online than ever before. In fact, in 2021 81% of consumers planned to do more of their holiday shopping online. And, that number continues to grow. To ensure your business makes the most from the shopping season and ensure the process is convenient for consumers, make sure your business website is up-to-date and running smoothly.

Prep and optimize your website ahead of time to make sure everything is roaring and ready to go before the holiday season kicks off. You should:

Look over navigation
Check load times
Optimize for SEO before traffic begins to increase
Update your website with promotions, coupons, discounts, etc.
Optimize for mobile

Get your website running smoothly before the holiday season starts. Do some test runs to see if it’s easy to navigate through your website, add items to the cart, check out, etc. That way, you can ensure the consumers flocking to your website during the holidays have a convenient shopping experience.

4. Review inventory levels and stock up

The last thing you want to do is run out of a hot item during the holiday season, especially if it’s the first day of the sale. Or even worse, not having the products you were planning on selling in the first place. (But with supply chain issues, that could be an unfortunate reality for many business owners this year.)

To avoid inventory issues, use previous year’s sales data to guesstimate how much product you’ll need on hand for the season. To make the process a little easier, you can also use an inventory management system to track product levels and determine what you need to order.

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5. Leverage social media marketing

Roughly 82% of people in the United States use some form of social media. What better way to gear up for the holiday season than to promote your seasonal deals on social media and get people excited?

Social media is a great tool for businesses year-round. But it’s especially nice to promote your holiday sales, hours, giveaways, etc.—not to mention, it can be 100% free (cue the jingle bells).

To showcase your business during the holiday season on social media, you can post about:

Upcoming sales and deals
Doorbusters and giveaways
Coupons
Gift ideas
New products or services
Bundling options

Along with promoting your special seasonal deals, you can use social media to let customers know about any extended holiday hours, as well as days your business will be closed for the holidays (if applicable).

Use social media to your advantage this holiday season. Come up with a plan on what you’re going to promote/post and when. To stay organized, consider using tools, like a social media management tool, to schedule and optimize posts. Don’t forget to have fun with it!

6. Optimize the shopping experience

The holiday shopping season can be hectic for business owners and customers alike. One way to make it a little less hectic (and stressful) for your loyal customers? Optimizing the shopping experience.

There are boatloads of ways you can ensure each and every customer’s shopping experience is first-rate during the holiday season. Here are just a few ideas:

Fine-tuning your store layout (Hint: put the sale items where your customers can easily see/reach them.)
Offering multiple payment options (e.g., cash, credit cards, mobile wallet, etc.)
Having team members ready to assist and answer questions
Setting and posting clear guidelines where customers can see them (e.g., posters with promotional info)
Giving customers multiple ways to buy (e.g., online purchases, in-store pickup, etc.)

The more you do to enhance the shopping experience and make it a breeze for your customers, the merrier your customers will be. And hopefully, the higher your holiday sales numbers will be.

7. Hire and train seasonal employees

When it comes to the holidays, your team may need a little helping hand to survive the chaos—a.k.a., you may need to hire (and train) some seasonal employees to help prepare your business for the holiday sales rush.

If you plan on doing some extra hiring for the holiday season, make sure you start the interview and hiring process ahead of time. That way, you can get your team lined up and have all your ducks in a row before the shopping season begins. And once you go through the hiring process, come up with a solid game plan to efficiently train your seasonal employees so they'll be ready to start working.

8. Plan holiday schedules

Schedules can be all over the place when it comes to planning around sales and promotions, employees, and holidays. To ensure everything runs smoothly, plan holiday schedules ahead of time.

You can use either a digital calendar or an old-fashioned paper calendar to lay out times and dates for sales promotions, employee shifts, and so on. Look at previous years to see your busiest times to help plan this year’s holiday schedule. This includes looking at things like:

Busiest days of the week
Best days for holiday promotions, sales, discounts, etc.
Days your business will be closed
Seasonal hours
Necessary shift times and number of employees per shift

If you create a schedule ahead of time, you’ll thank yourself later—trust me. Having a solid schedule planned out will save you from many holiday-related headaches later.

To-dos after the holiday season

Once the holiday season is over, your work isn’t done quite yet. Before you can take that well-deserved break, vacation to the Bahamas, or afternoon nap, you need to cross a few things off your list.

Make a post-holiday sales list (and check it twice), and add the following to your list:

Comparing this year’s sales to last year’s
Taking notes for next year
Seeing if you reached this year’s sales goals
Setting goals for the next holiday season
Treating your hardworking employees
Learning from any holiday sales mistakes (e.g., not ordering enough inventory)

Post-holiday tasks are just as important as pre-holiday sales responsibilities, so be sure to not put them on the backburner. Or else, yule be sorry (OK, I promise, no more holiday puns).

Once you cross your post-holiday sales tasks off your list, don’t forget to do just one more thing: relax. Oh, and give yourself a nice pat on the back for surviving another holiday season.