How Do You Maximize Revenue This Holiday Season While You Sleep?

The holiday season can kick in a surge in sales across several retail sectors, while some may experience a lull. That’s because businesses face multiple challenges in the busy season. There's much to juggle, from managing customers to handling long work hours and mounting expenses to pay higher wages to staff for pooling in extra time.

It’s the annual festive time, and you just cannot afford to lose your share of potential profit. However, capturing more sales is demanding. You have to deal with a huge volume of shipping orders, exchanges, and returns, and for that, your customers need increased assistance. Despite these challenges, you wouldn’t want to miss out on opportunities to optimize your revenue.

If you seek a surefire way to boost your sales this holiday season while keeping your spirits high, don’t miss reading this blog.

Before we discuss tips on maximizing your revenue, let us talk about some challenges that impact your sales.

• Supply chain bottlenecks caused by slowdowns in purchase processes and payments or system crashes can damage your brand's reputation.
• Mismanagement of online and offline business operations and outdated systems can make it challenging to keep up with the rising customer demand and fail to provide a seamless shopping experience.
• A labor shortage during the holiday season can make handling the customer load difficult. Moreover, unskilled seasonal workers are not adept at handling large crowds and the stress surrounding them, which could lead to burnout. 

Tips To Boost Your Sales During Annual Holidays

Streamlining your operations can help maximize your business's efficiency and service delivery prowess during the holiday season. Here’s how.

Track Your Sales Around The Holiday Season

Tracking sales around the peak season every year can give you a decent idea of what your sales activity will likely look like. This will require you to record your sales data systematically.

Solutions like OrderEm can help integrate your POS (point of sale) and accounting. This can help manage your sales and inventory with necessary updates every time a sale is recorded. This data can help you make informed decisions about workforce hiring and other inventory requirements. It can enable the projection of yearly growth during an upcoming holiday.

Keep Your Inventory Updated and Hire Staff

As you project your holiday sales, you might be better positioned to gauge the employee requirement to handle the anticipated rush at your retail establishment. You can use your sales projection to estimate the additional workforce needed and hire accordingly in advance. Moreover, if your past holiday sales data projects the need for increased inventory, stock up to meet customer demands.  

Announce a Seasonal SALE

Customers love SALE and frequently step out to enjoy the festivities. It is the time when people go on a shopping spree. Retailers use this opportunity to attract customers by launching discounts and promotional offers. These could be a buy-one-get-one offer, a percentage discount, or a bundle deal. You can also give away gift cards or holiday vouchers to grow your loyal customer base and boost your sales. Also, consider extending your holiday sales beyond Christmas to capture customers seeking good deals for New Year's.

How will your potential customers know about your discount deals? You will need a marketing campaign for that. You can use social media marketing platforms, email marketing, or local marketing channels to promote your business and announce lucrative seasonal offers to customers.

Campaigns are a great way to attract customers. For instance, you can create a fun environment while hosting an event or a workshop at your offline store. Online stores can use varied gift ideas with a points-based system, cashback, or promo codes.

Optimize Downtime

The holiday season will undoubtedly be frantic, with some days busier than others. A little preparation for the hectic season can go a long way in funneling more revenue for your business. You can begin with data analysis of year-end inventory, check stock, process all pending returns, and tally task completion with proper bookkeeping.

Reach out via Multiple Channels

Tapping customers and reaching out to them is a great way to generate revenue, and it can work wonders during the holiday season. This will require expanding your online marketplace and promoting your business on social media platforms. With different channels to cater to, you can reach out to a larger number of prospective customers from varied segments.

Diversify Products and Services and Seek Cost-saving Ideas

If cash flow concerns your business during the peak season, simply diversify products to enhance your revenue streams outside the holiday season. For instance, if you own a coffee shop that serves only beverages, consider introducing pizzas to your menu around this time of the year. Or, if you run a bakery, you can always ramp up your sales around Christmas with a food truck.

Check if you can upsell or cross-sell products. For instance, you can recommend matching accessories or footwear for your apparel collection to customers. Including gift-wrapping services for a nominal fee is also a viable idea to add to your services checklist. Depending on your budget and planning, consider offering complementary products during checkout; this is likely to increase the order value.

The idea is to keep your costs low while amplifying your revenue. So, keep a close watch on your business’s financial health. For this, get technological help, as automated functions can cut costs. For instance, you could opt for an automated billing service instead of hiring more staff to handle billing during peak season.

Enhance your Brand Visibility Online

In the thriving e-commerce space, you must recognize your presence online. While a custom website can give your brand an exclusive space online, you can use social media platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, etc., to market your services and products and promote new offers and deals. This will enable increased traffic flow to attract new customers to your business, boosting potential sales around the holiday season.

Concluding Thoughts

The strategies discussed above can significantly boost your sales. However, you will need careful planning to achieve that. A reliable and robust online ordering system can give your sales that much-needed boost.

OrderEm can help you devise a strategic approach to building your business. Generating more revenue can help you stay ahead of competitors in the marketplace, and with OrderEm, you can easily create a strong online niche for your business.

From handling pickup and delivery logistics to managing payments and keeping customer records, OrderEm offers a seamless system integral to the successful operation of your business, even in the busiest seasons. With OrderEm, you can set up your online shop for your e-commerce brand, add a self-service kiosk for your restaurant, or launch a custom mobile app for your retail store to maximize revenue this holiday season.