Plenty of retailers spend time making their stores look nice, get the staff trained up well and have the ideal roster on board to minimise costs, but don’t actually do very well at all. And that may be because they are selling the wrong products entirely.
Kogan Tech founder Ruslan Kogan says you need to put the effort into making sure you know what products consumers want to buy.
“You don’t need to spend millions on market research to know what your customers want. Engage with them in store or on Facebook and Twitter, use those two-way conversations to see what they want.”
“We pretty much base every product decision on that. You find there is no better tool than doing that, but you also need to check what they say against your actual sales data as well.”
If you haven’t already done so, you should be ramping up your AdWords campaigns and ensuring you put as much effort into them as you can. Chris Thomas says SEO takes awhile to get going, and if you put the effort in now you may see some results when December comes around.
“Get cracking. Definitely increase your budgets, but also keep a close eye on your return on investment if you’re using AdWords. I’d be doing a lot of pre-Christmas conversion optimisation work.”
The other key aspect here is mobile. Start filling out your location data and ensure customers know exactly where they can go to find you, but also ensure you optimise your sites for smartphones and tablets.
“We’re already starting to see eCommerce rates and transaction rates double from what you’d get on normal browsing. People see a TV ad, pick up the iPad, and go surfing.”
“Look at your website on a mobile or tablet, and then figure out what works and what doesn’t. Then optimise them.”
Fong agrees, saying you need to be collaborating with your marketing managers on how to take the most out of your ads.
“Google AdWords sees a spike in keyword searches for Christmas specific terms. Does your pay-per-click campaign contain a plan for this? How about running Christmas only promos for your email newsletter guys, or people on your Facebook page?”
During this time of year all the attention seems to be on retailers, and with good reason. But services businesses have plenty to do during the last few months of the year as well, and experts recommend they take advantage of this busy time.
Paul Quinn of Quinntessential Marketing says businesses offering a service or product should think about planning a big marketing push in October and November, before businesses start shutting down for Christmas. He says businesses are more likely to take you up on an offer before December, when managers start thinking about managing the holidays.
“We’ve always known that November and December is traditionally the slowest two months of the year, and being in the B2B space we find prospects just start putting stuff off and say they have more time in the New Year.”
“What we’ve tried to do, with varying degrees of success, is have a huge promotion in October/November and push a specific product line.”
Quinn says while businesses don’t necessarily want to commit to a new project before the end of the year, they’ll be more likely to at least commit in 2012.
“We try and incentivise them to think about it and commit, so we get some revenue over Christmas. It’s not an easy thing, but it’s all about pushing through and seeing what you can get.”
Heading towards the end of the year, services businesses may find the work tends to dry up. Rob Nixon of Nixon Advantage recommends getting busy in order to stave off the lack of business, and start planning your year ahead.
“Don’t think about Christmas. Think about January,” he says.
“A lot of services companies tend to go super-fast, and then slow down for two weeks. Then all of a sudden January becomes a horrible month because they haven’t planned anything.”
“We spend all this time planning for the next quarter coming up, when our clients are madly going around and operating silly hours. So I think if you have a focus on January rather than Christmas, you’ll get a lot done.”
Nixon also says you need to start planning not only the quarter in advance, but also the year. Make sure you know – if you can – when employees are taking leave, when your big meetings will be, and block out the busiest times of the year.
“I will spend a few days in December just blocking out the year ahead. I’ll plan holidays, school holidays, training events, and everything else. As the year goes forward, we move around that.”
This isn’t something that will help you get sales, or train your staff, but one you’ll definitely need to consider – taking a break.
Brian Walker says business owners really need to look at getting themselves – and their management staff – on break before the busy period hits. You’ll be better rested, and able to think more clearly during the most important time of the year. Your staff won’t be burned out either.
“At the end of the year, you really need to dial it up more than ever. And you should really look at giving yourself, and your managers, a bit of a rest before Christmas. Take that into consideration when doing your rosters.”
Patrick Stafford is a freelance journalist and a former deputy editor of SmartCompany.
