The 16 Best Ways To Increase Sales Over The Holidays

Ben Selkirk

December 14, 2021

In This Topic: Digital Marketing, Search Engine Optimization

The 16 Best Ways To Increase Sales Over The Holidays

In this article we will discuss the 16 best ways to increase sales over the holidays. If done correctly, following these simple steps should ensure your business is able to achieve the highest volume of sales. Especially when every holiday seasons comes to town!

With the holidays fast approaching it is the busiest time of year for most businesses, whether they’re big or small. This can be a stressful time for business owners, but also allows for great opportunities to increase sales.

1. The 16 Best Ways To Increase Sales Over The Holidays: Begin Preparation As Early As Possible

The 16 Best Ways To Increase Sales Over The Holidays

Just like most things in life, the earlier you begin, the better prepared you’ll be. This is also true for beginning to prepare for the holiday season. In this section we will begin to discuss the 16 best ways to increase sales over the holidays.

Most of our readers are probably thinking “But Ben, it’s already December!” Fear not, because it’s never too late to start!

Following the steps in this list will allow you to make up for lost time. This will help get the most out of the upcoming holiday season.

The first step will be to take product inventory. Always be sure to check your inventory before the holiday season rush begins.

This includes determining if you should place more importance on popular items over moderate ones. Or if you should emphasize holiday related items, or stick with your regular arsenal.

Next you should establish a strong marketing strategy. What is the key message you want to portray to your clients this holiday season?

After you have decided on a good message try to come up with creative ways to portray it to clients. This could include social media posts, storefront promotions, or an email list.

Having strong promotional materials will further help with this. Getting the word out is crucial.

Try and find a few primary methods to get your promotions out to the community. You could also try writing blog posts for your website, sending out newsletters, or even print flyers!

Make sure you place emphasis on sales and offers. Do your best to come up with news sales ideas, such as discounts on holiday themed products, or bundle deals.

These tactics will help secure a higher volume of sales.

Always ensure you are keeping an overall budget in mind. Maintain your budget, and don’t sacrifice any of the previous categories if they will mean you go over budget for the holiday season.

Make sure you have the correct funds to manage these different tactics.

Lastly, be sure to have your customers at the forefront of your mind while planning. Try and consider the best way to sell to your customers during the holiday season.

Keep their wants and needs in mind, and build your strategy around them.

2. Select Appropriate Ways To Market

The 16 Best Ways To Increase Sales Over The Holidays

Ensuring you choose the correct ways to market during the holiday season can be tricky. However, doing so is incredibly important.

This will ensure the time, money, and effort you place into your sales campaign will help everyone at your company have a jolly Christmas.

Doing this will help your company target your audience and refine how you market to your customers. Below we will suggest a few ways we like to market our business during the holiday season.

However, don’t be afraid to get creative and find more!

Here at Imperium we have found success using different social media apps to market our business in the local community. If you have not already, trying using an Instagram, Facebook, LinkedIn, or Google My Business account to help promote your business.

We have also found success using various search engines to our advantage.

Having an email list for loyal customers is a great way to market. When sending out newsletters during the holidays try including some great deals and promotions.

Never discount offline marketing. Using ads such as the local newspaper, TV, or flyers are a great way to ensure your older customers get the memo.

3. Consider Adding A Holiday Theme To Your Websites Landing Page

The 16 Best Ways To Increase Sales Over The Holidays

We should briefly discuss what a landing page is for our readers. A landing page is the first page of your website. Which appears after the main links selected from an external source like Google.

Now that we’re all on the same (landing) page, lets discuss the importance of sprucing one up for the holidays. (I’m on fire today)

Giving your landing page a holiday theme will help your customers understand that your company is offering something special this holiday season. An example could be including a sliding image section to your home page.

Rather than showing testimonials and images of past projects like usual, add special holiday promotions.

Try adding a special holiday sale section, one or two images of your decorated store, and some of your holiday related products.

4. Begin Holiday Sales Early, And Extend Them Late

The 16 Best Ways To Increase Sales Over The Holidays

Holiday deals will have a huge impact on whether or not you’ll be able to secure a high volume of sales. We recommend keeping this in mind when planning for the holiday season.

Customers are always looking for deals and sales during the holiday season when things get crazy. Starting your sales as early as possible, and extending them into January is a guaranteed way to secure more sales.

This will help your business in a number of ways. The first thing this can do is ensure you are getting more sales than your competition.

This is why many larger companies begin advertising on November first, the day after Halloween.

This ensures that customers will provide them with their business, and not the competition who may start later. Extending your holiday deals later has this same desired effect.

This can help your clients return for future holiday seasons. If customers know your company starts your deals early, they are more likely to come back next year.

This ensures they take full advantage of your sales.

5. Make Sure Your Business Can Handle The Demand Increase

The 16 Best Ways To Increase Sales Over The Holidays

Before you begin your holiday marketing and sales campaign make sure your business is prepared. Especially for the high volume of customers and sales you will receive.

As we have said before, and were sure as you know to well, the holiday season can get crazy. This is not a matter of if, but when.

Make sure you have stocked up enough inventory for the influx of customers and sales. Just in case if you receive more business than expected you have a back-up plan.

Make sure the staff members you have on board for the holiday season are prepared, and experienced. This includes the ability to deal with the high volume of sales you will receive.

Last but not least, make sure your websites equipped to deal with a high volume of traffic. Your company websites guaranteed to experience a high volume of traffic.

Ensure it’ll be able to keep up, and won’t lag out on your customers.

6. Try Utilizing Time Sensitive Sales

The 16 Best Ways To Increase Sales Over The Holidays

A great marketing tactic to use during the holiday season is running limited time sales. This will further incentivize customers to make a purchase, rather than take time to consider.

Using a pop-up sale such as “50% off all holiday related sales until Friday, purchase while stock lasts!” This is important for two key reasons.

The first is you have created a large sale on holiday related products. You have targeted the holiday, and your customers interest in it.

Secondly you have created a time limit on the sale, and implied you have limited stock.

If you have prepared a strong stock list for the holiday season this is of course not true. But using this tactic will ensure the customer believes they must buy the item before it goes out of stock.

Continue to use these pop up sales as often as possible during the holiday season.

7. Never Underestimate The Power Of Gift Guides

The 16 Best Ways To Increase Sales Over The Holidays

Creating gift guides is an exceptional way to help your customers, gain more sales, and optimize your SEO.

When creating gift guides try and make them as specific as possible. Targeting your audience is important, try and aim for gift guides that will suit your specific customers.

Some gift guide ideas are “The best Christmas gift for your significant other.” Or maybe “Which gift is better, the new Xbox or the new PlayStation?”

Try and be as specific as possible. Think hard about the kinds of customers who purchase your products, and relate these guides to them as much as you can.

You can do some specific keyword research by visiting a website we use called SEMrush, and using the keyword magic tool.

No matter what the gift guide is about try and ensure you can add your own products into it. Try and convey to your reader why this product makes a great gift.

8. Try Offering Free Products Through Various Methods

The 16 Best Ways To Increase Sales Over The Holidays

Receiving something free is always an added bonus, and it’s easy to understand why customers love it. This is especially true during the holiday season, when customers are trying to get the best deals possible,

When we say various methods we are implying you try out different free services to see what works best. This could include free shipping, free gift cards, or free products with the purchase of however many items you see fit.

The key is to ensure your company still makes a profit on the free item. Keep this in mind when choosing what free services to use. To do this calculate the product cost, and your profit margins.

As long as you are still making a good profit you should have no problem utilizing these special free product deals.

We have found that free shipping is a great incentivizer to purchase products online. This will help secure sales from those who may not live in the immediate area.

Many businesses use the free shipping method, especially during the holidays. Make sure you add this to your list, and maybe check it twice.

9. Try Using Holiday Referral Discounts

The 16 Best Ways To Increase Sales Over The Holidays

A great strategy to use year round is referral marketing, however, it’s especially effective during the holiday season. This is a great method to exploit during the holiday season because it will allow you to expand your client base even further.

These new clients are more likely to purchase from your company once they see your limited times sales. Rather than your regular year round promotions.

The best way to ensure your customers are referring their friends and family is to provide discounts on their purchases.

We have to emphasize again that this must fit into your budget. Ensure you are still making a profit if you decide to use this strategy.

This is an effective method to explore year round as well. As it allows your customers to promote your business for you, at seemingly low cost.

10. Rely On Your Website

The 16 Best Ways To Increase Sales Over The Holidays

Having a great website you can rely on is a great tool for your business. This’ll be especially true for the holidays as well, as the influx of traffic will affect how well your website operates.

This is more true now than it ever has been. Due to COVID-19 the majority of customers have moved their shopping online. As a business owner it’ll be essential you have a website that can deal with the majority of your holiday customers.

Not many customers will brave storefronts this year, or even potentially next year. Ensure your websites equipped to deal with this influx of customers and is still optimized when there are many people using it.

Aside from relying on your website, ensure your customers are in the loop at all times. Especially about what your business is doing to prevent the spread of COVID-19.

This includes the limitations that have been placed on your business, and how your company is adapting and dealing with the pandemic.

11. Consider Running A Google Ads Campaign

The 16 Best Ways To Increase Sales Over The Holidays

Using Google Ads when the holiday season comes to town is a great way to increases sales, and get more traffic on your website. Try and brainstorm some industry related keywords your customers may search in a high volume during the holiday season.

This will allow you to target these keywords, and purchase ads related to them on Google. This could include anything from brand names and products, to service offerings.

Once you have found the specific keywords you would like to target, you must ensure you understand Google Ads and how to manage them. We will include a link here to ensure you understand this topic in depth.

12. Try Using Facebook Advertising For Your Products

The 16 Best Ways To Increase Sales Over The Holidays

A method that’s often overlooked is Facebook’s Advertising Feature. The best part about using Facebook Ads is how affordable they are.

While Google Ads are affordable, they are more pricey than Facebook Ads. This boils down to the outreach each can achieve.

While Google will achieve a wider outreach, if you have a strong social media following it will help clients view your special holiday promotions.

When you are using Facebook Ads make sure to create and submit them a few days in advance. This is because Facebook may take a couple of days to review and submit the ads for you.

You should also create videos, images, and content for these ads that set them apart from your competitors. The more unique your ad is, the more likely it is to attract a customers’ attention.

13. Utilize Instagram Posts And Ads

The 16 Best Ways To Increase Sales Over The Holidays

Using social media in general is a great tool for any business. Here at Imperium we use various social media platforms to stay in touch with clients and promote our services.

As one of the more popular social media platforms among younger customers it is a great way to get you holiday deals and promotions.

The fist step to using an Instagram marketing strategy is to ensure your profiles set up as a business account. These accounts will show analytics, and will assist with understanding who interacts with your page.

If you can, try and find influencers, or those with a large social media following to collaborate with. This will put your company on a pedestal in front of their audience.

Try making posts about happy customers, products, reviews, and anything that shows your business in a positive light. This will enable a trust factor with future customers.

Every time you make a post ensure you are adding hashtags to expand your posts outreach. Any kind of hashtag that will fit your industry, brand, services, or location can assist with outreach and should not be ignored.

If at all possible try using hashtags with the most amount of posts. If you run a toy shop and want to use the hashtag Santa’s elves make sure there is a high volume of posts.

There might be a higher volume of posts that use the hashtag Santa’s little elves, use that instead, or maybe even both!

Make sure you are using stories and Instagram Reels for your business as well. These will help alert your following that your company has made a new post.

This is especially crucial for the holiday season, as you may want to post your time sensitive sales.

Adding a post about them, then sharing it will ensure the highest amount of customers see them.

Both Instagram and Facebook ads go hand in hand with each other. If you are having a hard time keeping up with demand you can use the same promotions for both.

14. Make Sure You Use Organic Facebook Posts

The 16 Best Ways To Increase Sales Over The Holidays

When you are using a Facebook Business Page there are a lot of ways to reach out to new clients and potential customers. The best way to do this is to explore the different outreach options offered by Facebook.

These include Facebook Messenger, stories, marketplace, groups, and ads. Do your best to engage your audience as often as possible through all these different avenues.

This will allow you to get the most out of your holiday marketing. As long as you are proactive you are sure to reach a wider audience using Facebook.

15. Ensure Your SEO Is Optimized For The Holiday Rush

The 16 Best Ways To Increase Sales Over The Holidays

In previous blogs we have discusses SEO at length. We invite you to visit our blog post the Local SEO vs Global SEO strategy guide. This will help you learn more about this complex topic.

The basics are SEO will allow your company website to rank on Google. Which will allow your company to gain a higher volume of customers.

You are going to want to target key search words related to your services and industry. Try to rank them in order to achieve a high ranking on Google.

This can be done effectively for the holidays as you can try and target holiday related keywords as well.

When customers are frantically searching for products online for the holidays they are more likely to look through a few websites. These websites will be on the front page of Google.

If you can get your website on the front page of Google this will surely help.

This is not an instant process however, and will take time and effort to do. The earlier you optimize your SEO the more effective it’ll be for your business.

16. Use Marketing Emails As Often As Possible

The 16 Best Ways To Increase Sales Over The Holidays

Lastly, an effective strategy to use during the holidays is to use an email marketing list. Hopefully year round you collect emails from customers, and have them on file for newsletters and other exclusive promotions.

If you have done this throughout the year, it will allow you to send these promotions and exclusive holiday deals directly to your clients.

This will ensure as many past customers as possible will be exposed to your deals.

This is especially effective when using the time sensitive deals as well. Try noting that you are doing these deals for your email list only. Get customers to tell their friends and family, so they can sign up and access them as well.

When Santa Claus is coming to town, be sure to use this guide. The 16 best ways to increase sales over the holidays to ensure more sales!

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