How are all these other small businesses doing so great during the holiday season? Take note of these 7 ways to increase holiday sales that ACTUALLY WORK.
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The first step to learning how you can increase your holiday sales is by opening this article! You’re halfway there already. It has taken me over 10 years to perfect my system for the holidays, and now I finally have the some time before they arrive again to help out fellow small businesses.
These 7 things are a MUST if you are wanting to seriously work hard and make money this holiday season.
Here are THE TOP 7 Ways to Increase Holiday Sales
1. Are Etsy Ads Worth It?
Depending on your main selling platform, you NEED to begin creating ads to put out in the world. Make your product known, and your holiday specials known as early as possible.
As much as people like to say “they start earlier and earlier every year,” they’re fools because it works!
Don’t forget to:
- Set your daily ad budget
- Ask: How much do I want to spend a day on ads?
- Then: Create a budget specifically for ads & STICK TO IT.
If you are putting out ads on Etsy, they will ask the max you are willing to spend a day on your ads. The more you spend, the more your ads get put out, and vice versa.
Here is some ad help for other platforms:
2. Holiday Marketing for Small Business
As you create ads and put them on your platforms you are marketing your shop and product, however, a few more ways to market your product are:
- Social Media Posts
- Platform Ads
- Flyers – If you’re old school!
Ways you can make your marketing stand out amongst the many other shops is to:
- Create Urgency with choice words
- Try using eye-catching words like (LIMITED OFFER, LOW PRICES, THIS MONTH ONLY, etc.) in order for customers to want to click and see what’s up.
- Saturate the market
- Post EVERYWHERE. Anywhere you have followers you should be posting. Don’t be afraid to post too much, just mix it up every now and then. Be like Oprah giving away cars with your ads.
BOSS TIP: Take your BEST SELLER and figure out how you can market it in a holiday specific way. Maybe adding some product photos to the listing that suggests it would be a great holiday gift!
3. Creating Holiday Specific Items Within Your Niche
Your products are great! You’ve found your niche! NOW is as good a time as any to start brainstorming how you can make products within your niche that are specifically for the holidays.
For example, I sell personalized stationery year round, but during the holidays I offer personalized letters from Santa stationery. This is a product still within my niche, but holiday specific and limited time!
Why?
- Helps create urgency to buy, since it is only available once a year.
- Easy to make – You already have the basis of your product, just give it some holiday spice!
4. Improve SEO for the Holidays
SEO is and will ALWAYS be your best friend. You may have worked on SEO for your products when you first listed them, which is great, but now it is time to do some more research and refine where you can.
DO NOT MESS WITH ITEMS THAT ARE ALREADY DOING WELL!!
If you want to try out holiday keywording with a Best Selling product, I highly suggest you duplicate the listing and do it that way. Trust me, you’ll thank me later.
5. Cross-Selling On Etsy and Amazon
Cross-Selling is the process of encouraging your customers to purchase other items similar to the one they are wanting to purchase.
- Make it extra easy for them by putting the link right there!
I usually do this in the description box, listing photos, and Etsy will let you add a "buy together to get free shipping" to your listing as well.
You can also up-sell by utilizing your drop down variations. Offer the customer different options of the same product that may cost a bit more.
For example, I offer sets of 10, 20, 30, 40, etc. of stationery. This gives the customer a quantity option, then I also ask if they would like to add return address printing to their envelopes, which is an upsell of 5.00 flat fee/set of 10.
This is a seamless, friction-free way to get customers to stay within your shop.
6. Reach Out to Past Customers
This one speaks for itself, but if you already have loyal customers that love your stuff, utilize that to your advantage!
Simply,
- Remind them that you are still in business if its been a while since they last purchased.
- Encourage them to gift your products.
- Notify them of any special deals or limited time offers you've got going on.
7. Study Your Mistakes
As a small business seller you should always be seeing in which ways you can improve your shop, so before the holidays I recommend you study a little extra on what you did last holiday season.
Identify what was lacking and make the proper adjustments. Learning is growing!
Reminder: It is okay to change things up and accept when something just is not working. Every shop is different.
I hope you were able to take away from this article some things that might help you increase holiday sales this holiday season! Good luck, and happy holidays!
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