10 Tips & Best Practices for Companies Preparing for the Holidays Now

The holiday season is just around the corner, and you know what that means – it's time to gear up and get ready! Not only is it busy for an individual, but it is even more stressful and busy for companies. This is the busiest time of the year for most types of industries. For this reason, I cannot stress enough how crucial it is for your company to be prepared. It can make all the difference in boosting employee morale and productivity while also ensuring a successful holiday period. Not only can you ensure that all your business goals will be met, but your employees and staff will thank you for such a smooth and productive time during this classical stressful and complicated time.

Now, let's dive into the 10 tips and best practices to help you navigate this festive season smoothly. Use our quick links to help you navigate through the most important ideas.

1. Reviewing Past Holiday Performance
2. Setting Clear Holiday Season Goals
3. Optimizing Inventory and Supply Chain Management
4. Creating a Festive Workplace Environment
5. Launching Holiday Marketing and Promotions
6. Enhancing Customer Service and Support
7. Streamlining Online and In-Store Shopping Experience
8. Managing Holiday Staffing and Schedules
9. Budgeting and Financial Planning
10. Conducting Post-Holiday Analysis

1. Reviewing Past Holiday Performance

Take a moment to look back at how your company performed during previous holidays. This is one of the biggest ways you can prepare for your holiday campaign or push this year. Analyzing sales and performance data from the previous years will give you valuable insights into what worked well and where improvements are needed. Learning from past experiences, both what worked and maybe even more importantly, what didn’t work so well, can shape a more effective holiday plan this time around.

Quick Tips for Success:

• Check past performances to help assist in what you can do this year
• Focus on the positives and the negatives too as both can give you valuable information

2. Setting Clear Holiday Season Goals

It's essential to set clear and achievable goals for the holiday season. Not only will it be easier to reach your goals if they are defined, but it can really help with an easier flow of communication. These business goals should be specific, measurable, and aligned with your overall company objectives. As mentioned, one of the most important parts about setting goals is to communicate them. Don't forget to communicate these goals directly with all your team members and other departments to ensure everyone is on the same page. Having everyone aligned and working towards the same goal will lead to more efficiency and overall better performance. One of the best ways to make sure everyone is on the same page would be to include more people in the planning process. While it might be a bit more complicated to juggle, it is important to get feedback from everyone and to see what other ideas there could be.

Quick Tips for Success:

• Set clear and achievable goals
• The goals should be specific and not too broad
• Communication is key once the goals have been set, if not even already before during the goal setting process

3. Optimizing Inventory and Supply Chain Management

If you work in retail or in the e-commerce business, don't be caught off guard by unexpected demand! Forecast your inventory needs and stock up on popular products. Like with tip 1, check what sold best last year. You can also check trends, see what customers are looking for and apply that to your business model. These tools can help paint a clearer picture for what you can expect the shopping season to be like. Then on the flip side, check which products didn’t sell very much either, as you don’t want too much of a surplus if it can be avoided. Ensure smooth coordination with your suppliers and logistics partners to avoid any supply chain mishaps. Which could mean calling ahead and checking to make sure they have the most popular items in stock. Having backup plans in place will also save you from potential headaches, as more often than not, unexpected things arise where you need to stay on your toes.

Quick Tips for Success:

• Double check what sold the best last year and what didn’t
• Check trends to ensure the most popular products are in stock
• Communicate between all parties to ensure supply is readily available

4. Creating a Festive Workplace Environment

While the first three tips were about your business, this tip is all about the workers who help make your well–oiled machine run. Bring the holiday cheer to your office by bringing some holiday cheer to your staff! Decorate the workspace with festive ornaments to boost the holiday spirit and employee engagement. This could include something as simple as red and green decorations or hosting a company holiday party. Organize team-building activities and holiday-themed events to foster a sense of camaraderie among your staff and to give them something to look forward to before the craziness starts. Since it is the end of the year, encourage everyone to get involved in charitable events like donation campaigns or volunteering opportunities to spread goodwill.

Quick Tips for Success:

• Increase employee engagement with festival activities
• Host a holiday event or company party
• Give your staff something to look forward to
• Organize volunteering events or donate to charities to promote the giving season

5. Launching Holiday Marketing and Promotions

A well-crafted marketing strategy is key to success, whether that is through print ads, online ads or promotional giveaways. Develop a comprehensive plan that includes social media with the use of reels or short videos to engage with customers. You can also run email campaigns to target your customers directly and more personally. Opt for content marketing to reach your target audience effectively through the use of themed blog posts or important website pages. Or give your target audience something tangible like a branded corporate gift or promotional item. Tailor your promotions to suit different customer segments and personas, ensuring maximum impact. This means, in order to run a successful campaign, you should use multiple means and channels to ensure all your target audience, both new and old, can get in on the action and be ready for your holiday campaign. Check out our full list of corporate Christmas gifts here if you need some inspiration.

Quick Tips for Success:

• Run campaigns on various channels including social media, email marketing, SEO and promotional products
• Engage with your target audience in personal and meaningful ways
• Check out some of these popular promotional items to use in your next campaign

6. Enhancing Customer Service and Support

One thing is clear, happy customers lead to repeat business and it encourages others to order from your company as well. Since this is often the busiest time of the year, be sure to train your customer support teams to handle holiday-related inquiries with ease. For best results, try doing this in the late summer or early fall months to be sure everyone is ready for peak season. It might also make sense to hire some seasonal employees who can help with the additional workload. Consider implementing a live chat or chat bot support function on your website for instant assistance for any quick questions from customers. However, with this function, be sure to respond promptly to customer feedback and reviews otherwise it will not be a successful way to communicate with your target audience.

Quick Tips for Success:

• Provide fast and meaningful support to customers
• Hire new or seasonal employees to help with the increased workload
• Train employees in the late summer or fall to be up to date on all tasks
• Consider implementing a chat or chat bot function into your customer experience

7. Streamlining Online and In-Store Shopping Experience

With more customers shopping online and more stores offering easy options for customers to do so, it's crucial to optimize your website for increased traffic. Not only does this mean optimizing for your business keywords through SEO texts, product descriptions and or blog posts, but also from the technical side. You need to ensure your website is mobile-friendly as many customers of today shop from their smartphones or tablets while on the go. You should also make sure your site has a smooth and fairly simple checkout process. If you have a physical store where customers can come in to shop directly, make sure the transition from online to in-store shopping is seamless for a consistent experience. You also need to be aware that you have enough products ready for in-store shopping so be sure to check out tip 3 again for more tips.

Quick Tips for Success:

• Optimize your website for your business keywords, product descriptions, blog texts, etc.
• Be sure your website is mobile friendly
• Ensure you have a smooth check out process
• For physical stores, be sure to streamline your products and actions with your online services

8. Managing Holiday Staffing and Schedules

Staffing can be tricky during the holidays because many people want to be off and this is often the time when people are more likely to get sick. Assess your needs based on expected demand, and consider hiring seasonal employees with proper training. As mentioned in tip 6, hiring additional workers and training them is a great opportunity to get more human power behind your end of year sales push. It is also important to create flexible schedules to accommodate employees' holiday plans. Allowing this type of flexibility is needed to keep your staff motivated. Another thing to consider is encouraging employees to take their vacation days or time off earlier in the year, to make sure you have enough people around to still fulfill orders.

Quick Tips for Success:

• Hire additional seasonal employees to help with increased demand
• Create flexible schedules for your staff
• Encourage employees to take time off earlier in the year

9. Budgeting and Financial Planning

The holiday season can be costly for many reasons, so we suggest you plan your budget wisely and in advance. By estimating and anticipating expenses early, you can plan for some wiggle room in case things, like your budget, change suddenly. When you are in the middle of the peak season, it can be tough to keep such a watchful eye on it, but it is important to monitor expenditures closely. One of the things you should keep an eye on is the return on investment (ROI) of your holiday campaigns, ads, spending and more. By keeping an eye on this, you can ensure you're getting the most of your spending as this is important for long-term success. A good ROI is important because if you are spending too much money and no one is buying, it does not make sense to continue with the marketing strategy you have and it might be time to change it up and try something else.

Quick Tips for Success:

• Plan your budget early and wisely
• Keep a close eye on your ROI
• Anticipate last-minute changes to your budget

10. Conducting Post-Holiday Analysis

After the hustle and bustle of the holidays and the shopping season, take some time to evaluate all aspects of your campaign and performance. This is often where most of your learning can come from, by seeing what went well and maybe what didn’t. By thoroughly looking at your performance, you can better plan for next year or even similar campaigns in the future, not just during the holiday season. Look at the success of your campaigns, but also the failures as there is something to learn from those too. Be sure to gather feedback from employees in terms of how the scheduling went, how the campaigns ran, how they felt and were they overworked. From the customers' side, you can do this by sending out feedback surveys to get their honest opinions. It might even be a chance for you to send out a code or discount for them to use on their next purchase. Use all the information you gathered to identify areas for improvement and refine your strategies for future holiday seasons.

Quick Tips for Success:

• Evaluate your performance after you run your holiday campaign
• Look at your successes, but also look at your failures to learn even more
• Gather feedback from employees and customers

Our Final Thoughts

So there you have it – 10 of the most important tips and best practices to get your company ready for the busy holiday and end of year season! As we mentioned throughout this blog, and one of the best and most important tips we can give, is to start early and plan strategically. This will help you save a lot of time and trouble in the future if you can have your strategy planned out. Of course, you cannot plan for everything, so be sure to factor in some buffer. Once you have your ideas and plans in place, everything else should easily fall into place afterwards. Not only can you have a successful campaign this year, but you can make sure that your employees and customers also feel the same way.