CPA Advice to Retailers On Bouncing Back This Holiday Shopping Season

If you’re a small retail business owner in Nashville and have experienced difficulty due to the coronavirus pandemic, you’ll be happy to know that you can expect business to pick up leading to the holidays. According to a study made by Visa, around 86% of Americans plan to do their holiday shopping this year, and about 60% plan to shop for half or more of their needs at local retailers.

The pandemic, however, has changed the shopping habits of customers, so you should be prepared to adjust and adapt to their evolving needs. Your CPA can help you in making financial decisions related to this.

The Visa study further shows that around 60% of consumers plan to do at least 50% of their shopping online, and only around 20% plan to do their shopping exclusively in person. Around 33% plan to give digital gift cards this year.

With this in mind, consider doing the following to boost your sales opportunities this holiday season.

1. Enhance your digital presence

If you have an ecommerce store, it’s a good time to review its performance and see where improvements can be made to make it more efficient and responsive to customers’ needs. Perhaps you can incorporate AI solutions, such as sending automated responses to inquiries or suggesting products to site visitors based on their search histories.

Consider sprucing up your homepage with a holiday theme as well, and play up your strengths so customers will find a reason to choose your products over the competition.

2. Do email campaigns

Email campaigns can give you nearly instantaneous feedback, so you can immediately adjust your strategy if needed or optimize any opportunity that may arise. In planning your campaign, consider what customers would like to know, such as new products or services, sales, pre-ordering options, shipping and pick-up options, and so on.

Space sending of emails so as not to overwhelm your subscribers, but make sure to follow through on positive responses.

3. Engage customers on social media

Your social media accounts can help you stay connected to your customers and keep them informed about your current offerings and promotions. If you’re launching a new product or service, your social media pages will make a great launching pad as they are easy to update.

In addition, consider placing ads on social media. Review the ROI you can expect and see if such an expense will be worth it. With more people spending time on social media due to the pandemic, they could be the most effective advertising platforms for your business today.

4. Consider shipping concerns

If you’re selling physical products, you have to plan for shipping contingencies. With more people resorting to buying online due to the pandemic, and with the volume of online orders expected to increase exponentially for the holidays, you have to plan ahead to avoid late shipments and unhappy customers.

One way to address the said concern is by setting an order cutoff date for Christmas Day or New Year delivery. Another would be to kick off your holiday campaign early so you can get those orders out on time.

Consumers are upbeat about the coming holidays, and as a small business owner, you can take advantage of this enthusiasm to help you bounce back from any negative effects the pandemic had on your business this year.

Sources:

Three Tips for Holiday Marketing in 2020, Forbes.com
25% of Consumers Say They’ve Already Finished 2020 Holiday Shopping, CPAPracticeAdvisor.com