Four ways SMEs can prepare for the festive season

Another year has come and passed, and preparations for a new one are already underway. While it is an exciting time for businesses as they soak up the festive cheer, a lot of preparation is required before we can call it a day.

Including in-store and online promotions, marketing efforts to support them, and preparing everything you need to fulfill the in-betweens, we’ve outlined the four key elements SMEs need to consider in preparation for the festive season.

Strategise your sales tactics.

The most competitive time of the year calls for competitive product pricing to ensure people are walking through your doors. This is a time when SMEs need to determine which products they’d like to include in their festive sales, and which pricing strategies are going to work best for them and their customers.

The first thing any SME should consider is the holiday costs involved with additional inventory, marketing expenses and technological investments. Once you have the full scope of this, you can confidently plan your sales tactics.

These can include price anchoring, product bundles, exclusive deals for regular customers or upselling premium products.

Plan your marketing efforts.

Pricing strategies and sales tactics are one of the most important aspects of pre-season preparation, however, they won’t mean much if your audience doesn’t know about them.

Enter your marketing efforts; the primary driver behind getting people to see you among the pool of your competitors. Marketing can be one of the most exciting parts of your festive season as you plan in-store activations and watch as you reap the rewards of your paid media efforts.

Think outside of the box this December by considering experiential marketing for your in-store customers, decide on a festive theme for your marketing collateral and ensure you’re leveraging all the tools and features your favourite social media channels offer you.

Set yourself up for the festive season.

With a solid strategy in place, it’s time to roll out the logistics. For one, planning and managing your inventory plays a significant role in what will make or break your festive season. Making sure you have sufficient stock is only one piece of the puzzle, while the other is ensuring you select the right suppliers who can also offer goods to you at competitive prices.

Further to that, you need to update your systems to reflect updated price points and train your staff to be able to manage the force that is festive cheer.

Something many businesses don’t consider is offering a variety of payment options. For instance, buy now & pay later works best for more expensive purchases such as TVs or furniture items, while contactless payments are ever popular among shoppers. 

Top tip: don’t forget to test your payment gateways to ensure seamless shopping experiences for your customers.

Get business funding.

As an SME, it can be challenging to come up with the funds needed to support the demands of a festive season. And that’s completely understandable. Whether it’s needing funds for more stock or hiring seasonal staff, business funding could very well be the best option for you.

With Bridgement, you can apply for a once-off business loan, or line of credit, giving you access to a flexible, revolving credit facility. We even offer generator and inverter finance to support you during load shedding.

At a time like this, the quote “failing to plan is planning to fail” couldn’t ring more true. So, be prepared, consider everything and make sure you can take advantage of everything the festive season has to offer.