How to Get Your Business Ready for Christmas
Holiday seasons mean a lot of organization across every aspect of your business. Breaking down the different elements that need to be considered will help you manage your time and the expectations of yourself and your staff. Christmas can be an excellent opportunity to connect with your customers and your employees, as well as take advantage of exposure and promotions.
How to celebrate the season in your marketing
You will need to incorporate the holiday seasons into your marketing plans as a priority. Ideally, it would be best if you had overarching marketing schedules for your business for the year and more detailed quarterly and monthly goals. In our modern day, you will need to leave room for flexibility within these marketing plans as you may need to respond to world events accordingly.
The critical areas of marketing you need to consider are:
- Your visuals - if you have strong branding, you will want to find a way to incorporate this into any festive graphics and photoshoots you may need to plan. Finding a way to make your visuals represent your brand while still showing festive spirit is something that will need to be discussed with your graphic designer and creative team, so they have a good brief to work from.
- Your communications - a clear calendar of the messages you need to deliver to your customers is necessary.
- Promotions - depending on your sector, you may need to plan sales over the festive season. We now have a bustling last quarter of the year for retail businesses with events such as Thanksgiving, Black Friday, Christmas, Boxing Day, and New Year, as well as a cornucopia of other religious events that may be relevant to your customer base. Sales or incentives are generally expected on these specific days for certain businesses, such as fashion brands.
The logistics to be considered
Depending on the country your business operates in, you may find that you will need to close your business over the Christmas period or at least reduce operations. You may find that the infrastructure you need to run your business (courier companies, 3rd party services etc.) also limits their operations, so make sure to ask for the details of this too so you can plan accordingly.
Any business closures will need to be communicated to staff effectively in advance, as well as clear information about how this affects their annual leave allowance. Some businesses choose to give the Christmas period as “free” annual leave, or you may expect your staff to account for a certain amount of their leave allowance to cover this time. However you choose to operate, clear communication is key to making sure your staff aren't getting any unexpected negative impacts.
The fun side
While planning logistics and marketing can cause a headache, there are fun elements to the holiday season to consider. It's a great time for increasing staff morale and showing appreciation.
Look into getting Christmas gift boxes at wholesale volumes and gift your employees something that shows how grateful you are for their service to the business. Even if you are giving a monetary bonus, having a gift box with a note of the bonus details and a small sweet gift will add an extra special touch and make your staff feel great.
Planning Christmas parties is another way to show your appreciation and show that you know your staff too. Plan accordingly to the age and interests of your team and maybe organize a few different events if you have a large range of differences. A good example is you could organize a meal for everyone to get together and celebrate the year and festive season, and then if people want to continue the party they can feel free to do so whereas others may want to go home. Sometimes having a party in a big venue can be alienating for those members of staff that may not drink or don't feel comfortable in that kind of environment.
Overall, the key to keeping your business running smoothly over the festive period is to plan in advance for your marketing, make sure you have all of the information you need to make decisions about the logistics, keep clear lines of communication with your staff, and don't forget to have fun and show your appreciation.
Maak jouw eigen website met JouwWeb