Three Things Small Businesses Should Do In November

I’m a bit of a purist.  I don’t think that the Christmas season should start until the day after Thanksgiving at the earliest.  But about a week ago, I got my first Christmas season coupon–from Chevy’s of all places!  Because nothing says happy holidays like a chimichanga or a sizzling plate of fajitas.

The first Christmas coupon of the year got me thinking about what small businesses do to prepare for the holiday shopping season, especially now that the economy is in the tank.  So I’ve put together a list of three things that every small business should do in November to get ready for the Christmas shopping season.

1. Define your holiday value proposition.  Are you a quick and convenient place to buy last minute gifts?  Do you sell unique gifts that they’ll always remember?  Do you sell hard to find things that everyone wants?  Are you a one stop shop with something for everyone?  Do you have a personal touch that makes for a great shopping experience?  Your customers need to know the ONE BEST REASON why they should come to you rather than any of your competitors.  And when you think about your holiday marketing, this value proposition should be the lead for everything you do.
2. Plan your search engine strategy.  You should start November by doing an evaluation of how you rank in the search engines for the terms that your customers are most likely to use to find you.  Are you on the first page for your most important terms?  If you’re not, good luck getting visitors to your website–and to your business.  You’ll probably have some terms that you’ll be able to improve your natural position on, others you might want to think about buying ads against.  You can target ads specifically at the geographic region where you do business.  Your goal should be to show up as high as possible for the top 20 terms you think your customers would search on to find you.
3. Develop a couponing strategy.  Face it, the economy is in bad shape this holiday season.  People aren’t going to be spending as much as they have in years past.  This will have an especially hard impact on small local businesses.  But the upside of this is that people are doing more searches for coupons.  This gives you a great opportunity to leverage some of this traffic.  Determine what items you have high margins on, or where you have excess inventory you need to clear, or if you have “hot” items that everyone will be looking for, and figure out how you can offer discounts on these items for bargain shoppers.  Make sure that you include these offers in your online materials and optimize your search engine strategy around them.

It’s critical to get your holiday strategy in place now so you’re not caught off guard in a month.  Or worse yet, watch your competition get the jump on you and start pulling in your potential customers.  What are you doing to get your business primed for the holiday shopping season?