The holiday season leads the mad dash to the end of the year for businesses, but this year’s dash may look entirely different because of the pandemic.
“Especially the grassroots efforts, connecting with them face-to-face. Unfortunately, right now, we can’t do that. So, we need to be thinking about now, ‘How can we get in front of people more frequently?’” said Lacey Book, a business consultant specializing in helping small businesses succeed. “Essentially, we need to get in front of people and cut through the noise of everything else.”
In these challenging times, she offered specific tips for navigating through December.
Among her ideas:
- Make sure your business has a web presence that is easy to navigate. It's critical to reaching customers, who are now mostly shopping online.
- Reach out to repeat customers you’ve had over the months and years through email and social media.
- Create connections with other businesses by collaborating on marketing and see how you can help them. Being benevolent, she said, goes a long way.
- Discounts help as well
“I think it would really be important to look at, ‘Where in my business can I offer maybe a discount or extend the opportunity for people to buy something at a lower price point?’” Book said. “Because people are also price shopping, where in the past, people were really able to find money for the things that they really wanted. But now, what they’re doing is spending money on what they actually need.”
While these tips are aimed at helping businesses get through the pandemic, Lacey Book said it is likely some of the advice will be relevant beyond that, because our shopping habits and expectations may have changed for the long haul.