From major national holidays to local celebrations, running seasonal sales offers around upcoming holidays provide small businesses with many additional selling opportunities.
Yet, coordinating your sales activities with all of the upcoming events on the calendar can seem like just one more “nice-to-have” in your long list of things to do.
Capitalizing on small events, though, can be just as impactful as major holidays and often requires less groundwork to pull off. Here’s how to slowly start incorporating seasonal events and holidays — big and small — into your business:
Determine the profile of customers you want to attract with seasonal sales offers
Seasonal offers should capture the attention of your core customers, and ideally, bring new customers into your business.
Choosing which holidays and events make the most sense for your business begins with identifying the profile of customers you hope to reach and taking stock of the local or regional preferences that affect how people shop in your neighborhood.
Are you in a region where outdoor sporting is popular? Events like Earth Day may be a good time to run specific seasonal offers. Are some religious holidays more important in your community and mean many customers won’t actually be out and about? These nuances should influence how you cherry-pick the right holidays and events for your business.
Choose broader seasonal themes
You can also consider sales offers that revolve around an entire season rather than specific holiday days.
Instead of running a special offer for say, Easter, approach the season with customer behavior in mind. As the weather warms up, customers will have more opportunities to window shop in their local neighborhoods. General seasonal themes like spring cleaning, spring break, and growth can all be broadly applied to your business and connected to different kinds of promotions. Tangential, seasonal themes can enable you to reach a broader profile of customers over a longer period of time.
Create seasonal sales offers and incentives related to your business
Connecting a seasonal offer or partner gift that directly relates to your goods and services can also give a sales offer a much longer shelf life.
If you sell athletic gear or sporting goods, you might consider hosting a giveaway for local sports tickets when customers sign up for your email list around college or pro basketball seasons.
If you own a restaurant, you could offer a special meal or happy hour on certain days to coincide with the season. You might also consider partnering with another local food or beverage supplier to create limited-run menu items that capture a new audience of buyers.
Refresh your online and in-store imagery around seasonal sales offers
No matter what seasonal sales offers you decide to run, the most important thing is letting your customers know about them at the right time!
You don’t have to wait until the day of an event to roll out new information on your website and/or social media sites. Capture customers’ attention before they even leave their house with an online offer on your social channels or website. If you don’t have a website or a social profile in place, registering for a Facebook or Instagram account easily allows you to tell more customers about your seasonal offerings.
Supporting online activities with related in-store flyers and cards also enables you to reach customers in your store and reinforces offers what customers may have seen online.
No matter how you choose to approach seasonal events, unique sales opportunities existing throughout the calendar year. Take a look at the upcoming holidays and events, consider your ideal customer and kinds of offers and partnerships that might be attractive to them, and leverage all of your customer touch points to promote them.
Learn how to run season sales offers with the Fanbank platform.
