Michelle Gill is EVP, General Manager – Small Business & Financial Services Group at PayPal.
The holiday shopping season is the most critical time of year for businesses, as up to 65% of small businesses’ annual revenue is generated during the holidays. But in order to have a successful holiday season, businesses need to properly plan and enable the seamless experiences consumers are looking for so they can stand out from competitors, turn prospects into customers and drive sales. Below are six effective strategies small businesses can leverage to help ensure a successful holiday season.
1. Listen to your data.
Analyze your sales data to identify popular products based on historical data to inform what inventory to stock up on ahead of the busy shopping season. By analyzing your past sales data, you can better forecast customer demand for specific products and avoid both over- and under-stocking items—ensuring you have the optimal inventory levels.
2. Stock up and staff up appropriately.
Once you’ve analyzed your data and know what you need, stock up on inventory early to avoid limited stock and potential shipping delays, hire seasonal employees to ensure your customers are getting the best experience and think through additional marketing and rewards programs to help customers convert. As cashflow is often a challenge for small businesses—especially during the lead-up to the busy holiday shopping season—look for affordable business credit and working capital solutions when and where needed.
3. Reward your customers.
Shoppers are always looking for rewards and ways to save, and that’s especially true during the Cyber 5—the five shopping days between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday when many businesses offer loyalty programs, rich rewards and deals to attract customers and drive more sales. Especially in today’s economy, consumers are looking for deals so they can stretch their dollars. Research released ahead of last year’s holiday shopping season found that nearly 40% of shoppers planned to leverage rewards points and cash-back offers for their holiday shopping. Make sure you offer personalized rewards and discounts to encourage sales and loyalty programs to encourage repeat customers.
4. Give your customers a payment choice.
To ensure you’re maximizing your sales opportunities, make sure to offer your customers payment choices. A recent study found that nearly half (48.4%) of shoppers ranked payment choice as a “very or extremely important” feature when selecting a merchant to shop with, and nearly 11.8% ranked payment choice as the “most important” feature.
Customers want to be able to use their preferred payment option—like a credit card that will maximize their rewards points on a specific vertical, a digital wallet that allows them to checkout without having to enter all their payment and shipping information or even an alternative payment method. They also want to be able to leverage flexible spending options, like buy now, pay later and Pay in 4 options, so they can pay over time. To ensure you’re maximizing your sales opportunities, make sure you’re offering your customers a range of popular payment options.
5. Optimize your guest checkout experience.
Consumers expect a fast and seamless guest checkout experience. Businesses that don’t provide a quick and painless experience risk losing sales and customers. Capterra found that 43% of consumers said they prefer online guest checkout and 72% said they would still use guest checkout even if they have a store account. The same research found that 66% expect online checkout to take four minutes or less—creating a need for greater simplification and speed when consumers check out as guests.
Make sure you’ve optimized your guest checkout experience this holiday shopping season by making your checkout faster, putting into place tools that recognize shoppers and allow them to checkout without having to remember usernames and passwords or enter payment information for every purchase. That way, you can create the experiences that will turn prospects into customers and drive customers back for repeat purchases.
6. Retarget.
During the holiday shopping season, you’ll likely have new prospects and customers coming to your site. Make sure you have the tools in place to capture relevant customer information so you can retarget them in the future with things like personalized offers on complimentary products that they’ve bought to encourage repeat purchases, or sending follow-up emails to remind customers of a product they viewed but never actually purchased to keep your business and products top of mind.
Despite this year’s condensed holiday shopping season—with only 26 days between Thanksgiving and Christmas—small businesses that integrate the strategies outlined above will be well-positioned to turn prospects into customers, drive repeat purchases with better customer experiences and ultimately drive more sales.
The information provided here is not investment, tax or financial advice. You should consult with a licensed professional for advice concerning your specific situation.
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