Once Labor Day rolls around you should be thinking about getting everything in order for the Holiday season. Why so early you ask when the holidays are still 3 months away? Because 1) time flies and 2) it’s better to get prepared now than scramble at that last minute. Having your e-commerce store ready for the Holidays before they actually arrive helps set you up for a successful season.
Finalize Your Sales and Holiday Promotions
Figuring out what sales and discounts you want to offer can be a time consuming process and that is why it’s important to get this part of your Holiday season done first. Map out what you want to offer on Black Friday, Small Business Saturday and even Cyber Monday. Maybe it’s 50% off or you can offer free shipping for spending over $100.
Whatever you plan on offering will be used to create the sale creatives, the social media posts and even what is in your email campaigns. That is why it’s imperative to lock these sales details in place before moving on with your Holiday season planning.
Update Your Products, Pricing and Descriptions
Prior to the Holiday season is a great time to go over all the products in your online inventory and make adjustments as needed. Whether it be adding or subtracting products, updating prices or descriptions, now would be the time to get these updates in. You should also review your website and tweak that accordingly as well. A well functioning website with accurate products and product description will help your customers navigate to the products and sales that they’re interested in.
Get Your Sale Creatives in Order
Once you have figured out what your sales promotions will be you will then need to start creating sales graphics for your emails and social media posts. You want consistent messaging, colors etc. with all your creatives. You don’t want your customers guessing is the creative from you or someone else.
Your sales creatives need to be done by the end of October so you can start getting your emails and social media posts ready to go for Black Friday.
Map Out Your Email Campaigns
In theory you should be starting to send out emails letting your customers that the Holidays are quickly approaching and start laying out the groundwork for what to expect from your e-commerce store. You can drop hints of what to expect or announce a pre-Holiday sale just to get the momentum building.
For the Holiday season set up your emails to announce you Black Friday sales on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving. And each subsequent week send out emails talking about this weeks sales and don’t forget to stress the importance of ordering from your e-commerce store early to make sure shipping is out on time.
Have Your Social Media Posts Ready to Go
Aside from your email campaigns, your social media posts will be what your customers see the most. Since Instagram and other social media apps are now more pay to play, you will have to think about paying for ads and sponsoring posts to have your social media reach increased.
Whether is be stories, tweets, reels, tiktoks or what not you need to have all of those posts ready to go a week before Black Friday. Scheduling these is also vital as the Holiday season is always go go go, you probably won’t find the time to post everything at once to all social media accounts. Using tools like the Buffer App or Hootsuite will help get you scheduled and ready for the Holiday season.