12 days of Christmas ideas for a small business

With Christmas fast approaching, the time has come to start thinking about festive promotions for your business. 

To help you find customers toward you this holiday season, here are 12 Christmas ideas for a small business:

1. Christmas packaging
2. Free shipping and returns
3. Coupons and discount codes
4. Gift bundles
5. Gift guides
6. Decorations
7. Holiday videos
8. Charity campaigns
9. Christmas cards
10.  Holiday quizzes and competitions
11.  Post-Christmas promotions
12.  Celebrating other holidays 

Remember, you don’t need to wait for Christmas. There are plenty of ways to surprise and delight your customers all year round. 

For many people, opening presents is the most fun part of Christmas, so why not stir up that same feeling of excitement with some festive packaging for your online deliveries?

It’ll make your products feel that little bit more special and put your customers in the holiday spirit. 

Santa Claus doesn’t charge for delivery, unless you count the milk and cookies, so follow his example. 

Shipping fees are often enough to drive customers away, even if the price works out roughly the same. And with the amount of Christmas shopping done online these days, free shipping and returns are a must to attract holiday shoppers. 

Christmas is an expensive time, so help take the edge off with holiday coupons and discount codes. 

Distribute coupons in your stores or include them in online deliveries, and advertise discount codes in your online marketing. 

While price is a consideration for Christmas shopping, sometimes finding presents is a challenge in itself. Everybody has that one person who is impossible to buy for, so why not help customers with gift bundle ideas?

Look at some of your top-selling products, then bundle them with other items that will work together. For example, a cosmetics business could include a compact mirror with its top-selling foundation.

Following our last point, a specific gift guide will help your customers find the perfect presents. 

It’s fairly simple, and you don’t have to buy more inventory. Just categorise the products you already have that would make great gifts, and include a “gift ideas” section on your website. 

It just wouldn’t be Christmas without the decorations, so lean into the festive season with a Christmas rebrand on your social media and business website. 

You want customers to know that you’ve got holiday promotions from a mile away. Even some simple changes to your colour scheme are enough to tell the world that you’ve got holiday deals. 

If you really want to lean into the celebrations, make some holiday videos for your social media. You could make videos about:

• Christmas carolling. 
• Your office’s secret Santa. 
• Your new Christmas products and deals. 

Video content of you and your team getting excited about Christmas will have a similar effect on your followers and make them more interested in what you’ve got planned. 

Though we do love the gifts and celebrations, Christmas is really about giving. 

Spread some goodwill, and build some positive PR, with a charity campaign. Try to get as many of your employees, friends, and followers involved as possible. And keep everybody updated on your progress through email and social media. 

A small token of appreciation can go a long way. Send out hand-written Christmas cards to your most valuable customers and clients. They’ll appreciate the gesture, and it’ll help build your relationships to ensure future business. 

One of the best ways to drive engagement on social media is with interactive content like quizzes, so a Christmas themed quiz could be the perfect bit of silliness to drive customer engagement. 

Your quiz could be trivia themed, like these:

• Guess the Christmas movie, based on the quote. 
• Guess the Christmas song, based on the lyrics.

Or they could be personality themed, like these:

• Which Christmas character are you?
• Answer these questions to find out your “grinch” score. 

Alternatively, you could create a Christmas themed competition for your followers, Ask the public to submit their best Christmas recipes, or their biggest snowman, and offer a gift for the winner. 

Post the submissions online and have your followers vote for their favourites, then make it a big event when the winner is announced. 

The lead up to Christmas can be hectic, so it’s easy to forget about what happens after. But post-Christmas can be one of the most profitable times for a business. 

You’ll have the benefit of your holiday sales records, showing your top-performing products. You can promote your most popular items at a reduced price while offering bargain discounts on the ones that didn’t sell much at all. 

Although we all get caught up in the Christmas madness, it’s important to remember all the other major holidays that happen around the same time, including:

• Hanukkah (November 28th to December 6th).
• Kwanzaa (December 26th to January 1st).
• Ōmisoka (December 31st).

Shining a light on other cultural events will generate some interest from your regular customers while attracting customers who are often forgotten about in the UK. 

Christmas is stressful enough without having to worry about financial admin and upcoming tax returns. The Countingup app makes it simple.

Countingup is the business current account with built-in accounting software that allows you to manage all your financial data in one place. With features like automatic expense categorisation, invoicing on the go, receipt capture tools, tax estimates, and cash flow insights, you can confidently keep on top of your business finances wherever you are. 

You can also share your bookkeeping with your accountant instantly without worrying about duplication errors, data lags or inaccuracies. Seamless, simple, and straightforward! 

Find out more here.