With the Christmas Season fast approaching how can you, and your business prepare for it?
The best way to be ready is to keep awareness about your business high. This means that customers will know about your product well in advance and may even have it on their Christmas lists months in advance! Here are some tips to help you get the most from your customers this season:
Gather Information!
Keep up to date with your customers, know buying trends, efficient promotions even look into what’s worked well in the past. Keep a record of what works and what doesn’t and refine it each time. So you have a home made system that keeps your business on the minds of all your customers year round!
Have a look at your store selling patterns now more than ever. If a certain product is already increasing in sales it’s probably because people are wanting it for a particular reason. And, in the next weeks and months more and more likely it’s for the Christmas Season. Search through your POS data using our reports manager to find buying patterns and cater to your customers latest buying trends.
An easier approach is of course to just to ask your customers yourself! Have conversations at the till or around the shop with potential customers to see what’s influencing your customer’s spending. Especially around the Christmas season many shoppers are “Just looking” and could do with a slight nudge of encouragement towards a purchase.
Needless to say social media is key to this as well. Not just regular posts about upcoming events or sales, keep pushing items that are selling well. Or following from that, push sales of bundles, or items that work well together. If it’s shoes, offer a show stretch, or spray that works particularly well with leather.
Expanding to other social media outlets is always a good idea. The above example works particularly well on the likes of Instagram and other image centric social media websites.
Put yourself out there!
With the Christmas Season approaching it’s the perfect chance to get your name out there. There are plenty of festivities, events and gatherings going on everywhere and plenty of stalls and the like that you can sponsor. Or you can even open up one yourself!
Get involved with charity work or with groups that relate to your business. If your shop supplies fitness equipment sponsor upcoming sporting events or provide equipment / food to a shelter or veterinary clinic if you specialise in pet goods.
Advertise, advertise, advertise! Get your name and logo in as many places as possible. Newspapers, boards, public transport, anywhere you can! With the Christmas season fast approaching the price will go up and you can be sure your competitors will be jumping onto all advertising space they can find. The sooner the better, especially now while people are still considering what to get friends and family for Christmas!
About Opus Retail Solutions
Opus Retail Solutions specialise in providing Retail, Wholesale, & Integrated e-Commerce Solutions through its Software suite Opus Retail Manager. The entire EPOS operation is managed from Opus’s Headquarters in Belfast, Northern Ireland, along with regional development and support offices in the UK. Opus has been developing software for over 30 years and was one of the first Windows based EPOS systems in 1997. Opus Retail Manager is hardware independent and we offer hardware depending on client requirements, policy or budget.
The key to Opus’s success lies with its ongoing investment in Research and Development and Training to keep our Software products and services and staff world class. Services range from specifying client requirements to providing custom modifications, system implementation, training with a special emphasis on after-sales support so our customers can get the most from their system. The Company invests c £100k pa in R&D to ensure it’s software remains world-class.
The entire Opus operation is managed from Opus’s Headquarters in Belfast, Northern Ireland, along with regional development and support offices in the UK and Russia. Opus has partners all over the world and currently ships the software in five languages. Please contact us if you would like to discuss a partnership.
Although our Retail Manager Software and services procedures have evolved over the years from DOS through Windows enabling us to stay ahead of the curve, our core objective is still to provide innovative, best in breed, easy to use and robust EPoS solutions, no matter what the industry, the size or the individual need.
