We’re now more than a week into December which puts us about two and a half weeks out from Christmas Day! The next couple of weeks are bound to be the busiest for retail stores all over Canada. It’s important for their owners to not simply sit back and assume sales will be plentiful. It’s crunch time! The promotional tactics used all throughout the rest of the month are vital to the success of your store.
How can you ensure your sales remain strong throughout December?
Promote your top-selling product.
It’s a go-to idea that’s practically a no-brainer at this time of year. Promoting your top seller is a great way to maximize profits. To step things up, you may wish to come up with an inventive way to use your top seller to move other products. Perhaps creating a bundle package at a discounted price would do the trick. You can also market other products as great companions to your top seller.
On MakeWebBetter.com, Satyam lists a number of other effective ways to push your top sellers. They include displaying your best-selling products in your website’s footer and landing pages, pitching your top selling products through emails and generating content around your most popular products.
Appeal to last minute shoppers.
Believe it or not, there are many Canadians who haven’t even begun their holiday shopping yet. You’d be wise to let them know you have their backs. Launch a “Last Minute Shopper Sale” the week before Christmas to encourage those procrastinators to visit your store over others. On RetailDoc.com, Bob Phibbs suggests that you send out an email with a big picture no later than Friday, December 17.
“Give them last-minute shopping tips, parking secrets for your store’s downtown area or mall,” he advises, “Remind them if you offer online ordering and in-store pickup, that you offer free gift-wrapping or versatile gift cards – all are good to mention this week.”
Provide your best customer service ever.
It’s hard to argue that this is the time of year when your customer service must be at its best. Consider the fact that your store is likely to see heavier foot traffic than at any other time of year. Your job isn’t just to satisfy your customers’ holiday shopping needs. It’s to create memorable customer experiences that will both generate current sales and encourage repeat business in the future.
“People shop most during the holiday season,” says Satyam, “And the more they shop, the more issues pop up. Your job is to provide them with customer service that can fix those issues in no time. If you do that successfully, 93% of the customers would like to shop again from your brand. Keep in mind, you can’t keep every user happy, but if most of them are, you’re doing great.”
Accept all methods of payment methods.
Do you accept both credit cards and debit cards as methods of payment in your store? At Unity Payments, we offer Canadian merchants a variety of high-quality POS terminals to choose from. You can easily and securely accept credit card and debit card payments with the Newland 910, the Ingenico Desk 5000 or the Ingenico Move 5000. To learn all about your options, please don’t hesitate to call us at 1-800-661-3761. You may also email us at info@unitypayments.ca.
