The holidays are great, aren’t they? Spending time with loved ones, shopping, and enjoying the festive decor. But when you’re running a business, the holidays become more than just the holidays. This is Q4, the biggest push of the year to make sure your sales goals are met. What happens after the high of the holidays, though? Consumers become lax, they take a short stint of spending little to no money to recover from the typical overspending of the season. As a business, how do you overcome this? Well, I’m glad you asked because that is exactly why we’re here today.

One Time for the Plan

As you know, the end of the year is not only the holiday push, but it is also the planning season for the next year. If you didn’t think you were going to go crazy enough with the holidays alone, now you have something else to plan for. At this point, we should all be used to this preparation, right? The answer should be yes, but it seems to be a struggle every year to come up with something bigger and better than the year before, the quarter before, the month before, the day before, and so on. With the internet being such a vast bucket of marketing, how do you stand out, and stand out more than you did during the holidays, to keep your sales up? Let’s dive in!

Goals, Goals, Goals

To start, set clear and attainable goals. Obviously, that is everyone’s first step in any business. The key to this is doing it right. Don’t sell yourself short or set your sights far too high. Start from your business, evaluate the skills within. You’ll never succeed if you have the greatest ideas but don’t have the skillset to execute them. Determine the powerhouses and the shortcomings, assess them on a scale and learn improvements needed if you haven’t already. If you need newcomers, don’t wait until the new year to start hiring, do it now! Have them ready to hit the ground running in the new year and well versed in what your business has to offer. You will need strong assets to start the year off right, not trainees that slow down your speed. Make sure all of your veterans are ready for the new quarter, that they know the ins and outs of your business, and that they have individual goals set that align with your business goals.

This Place About to Blow

Most importantly, have a plan that blows everyone else out of the water. Make your business stand out and do what no other business is doing. Digital marketing is the way of the future, if you haven’t started marketing your business online, are you really running an effective business? Word of mouth and referrals aren’t the way to go anymore, online has made it so easy to purchase a product or service with just one click. It doesn’t matter if you’re a small business in Greenville, North Carolina, someone in St. Helena, California can easily hop on your website, order that perfect product, and have it shipped to them in a matter of a couple of days. STAND OUT, make those amazing offers to your consumers, get creative with your marketing and push it out there as much as possible. Get your name out so, after the holidays, people remember who you are. Plan ahead for the year, set a theme for each quarter that you can adjust as the trends change. Speaking of trends, make it easy and carefree to navigate your website and social media channels, a potential customer doesn’t want a challenge when trying to learn who you are. A difficult site or social media channel can deter possible future customers and could kill your profits.

Let’s Get Personal

Last but not least, get personal. Build that emotional connection and reel your audience in. Nothing screams that you’re a business with morals and integrity like connecting with your consumers on a personal level. Get the laughs going, the tears flowing, and watch your sales skyrocket!

Now, Go Ahead and Slay

Enjoy the last season of Q4 and reap the benefits of what the holiday spirit instills in everyone, but make sure you are prepped and ready to go for 2018! When in doubt, don’t underestimate the power of the internet. Happy Holidays, from your friends at Red Shark Digital, we know you will kill it using these techniques in the New Year!