Christmas is a busy time for many businesses, with hundreds of people shopping for that perfect Christmas gift. You’ll want to take advantage of this opportunity and direct as many people as you can towards your business instead of your competitors. To do so, it’s a good idea to try out some Christmas business promotion ideas.

This article will look at a few Christmas-focused ideas you can use to promote your business. We’ll cover marketing strategies such as:

  • Gift guides
  • Christmas packaging
  • Pre-Christmas delivery
  • Run a holiday competition
  • Promote gift cards
  • Work with a charity
  • Start early

Gift guides

The majority of the extra shopping that goes on at Christmas is for gifts. If you’re looking to divert some of these gift-shoppers towards your business, it’s a good idea to market your products as gifts. To do this, you might consider creating a gift guide.

Gift guides are essentially a list of suggestions, with each entry describing the type of people who might like each of your products. For example, if you sell sportswear, your guide might suggest your clothing lines as a great gift for people’s sons or daughters who are athletes. 

Creating a gift guide is very similar to creating a customer profile: you need to think of who would be interested in a product and list those people’s characteristics.

Christmas packaging

Although it may not seem like it, the way you package your products is a great marketing opportunity. Anyone who handles your product will see its packaging, so it has a surprisingly large audience. If you’re trying to attract more customers over Christmas, consider making your packaging more festive.

Festive packaging makes your products seem more appealing to people shopping for gifts, and it creates an association between your company and Christmas. Many multinational companies use this tactic, with Coca-Cola in particular seeing huge success from festive packaging that is now easily recognisable. 

Pre-Christmas delivery

A common issue among ecommerce businesses is that they’ll receive a lot of sales during the holidays but will struggle to deliver the items before the 25th December. This can lead to disappointed customers and reduced sales the next time Christmas rolls around.

An excellent way to avoid this issue is to advertise the cutoff time for your Christmas deliveries. Make sure it’s clear to customers that if they don’t order by a particular date, they may not receive their items before the big day. 

If you’re not sure how fast you’re able to deliver, speak with the representatives of whatever shipping solution you use to find out.

Run a festive competition

Social media competitions are a great business promotion idea year-round, but they’re particularly effective at Christmas time. There are a few different reasons for this.

First, it’s easier to create a festive competition because you don’t need to think of a theme. You just need to think of a Christmas related activity, for example, customers submitting photos of your products in festive settings.

Festive competitions are also a good idea because they can attract a lot more interest during Christmas. People will participate for the chance of winning a free product they can give to a loved one or for a gift card that might significantly reduce their shopping bill.

Promote gift cards

As well as promoting your products as being great gifts, you can maximise profits by advertising your gift cards as Christmas presents as well. This is a great way to attract customers who aren’t familiar with the hobby, product or industry you sell to, but need to buy a gift for someone who is. 

A gift card is a physical card or digital code that customers can exchange for products and services. For example, a customer can pay £20 for a gift card and give the card to someone else, who can then exchange the card for £20 worth of products or £20 off a more expensive item.

Work with a charity

Emotion and sentiment play a big part during the holidays. A lot of charity organisations use this to encourage donations. By partnering with a charity, you can attract more customers and do some good over the festive season.

Working with a charity means donating a portion of your income to them. For example, you might donate a percentage of every sale or offer customers the opportunity to donate during the checkout process. This is a fantastic way to successfully market your small business, as you will benefit from the charity’s promotional material as well as your own advertising.

Start early

The most important thing to remember with Christmas business promotion ideas is that you should be putting them into effect well before Christmas. If you start promoting gift cards during the last couple of weeks of December, you’re unlikely to see much of an impact. By starting early — in mid November, for instance — you can enjoy the benefits of festive marketing for a whole month.

Easily manage income from new customers

If your promotional efforts are successful, you’ll attract a ton of new customers, which means new income for your business. You may need to put more time and effort into your financial management due to this increased income.

Thousands of business owners use the easy Countingup app to save time on financial admin. 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.

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