How Do Holiday Seasons Affect Small Businesses?

The many festive seasons we experience in Malaysia bring plenty of joy to people all around. However, they also come with intense challenges that small businesses must understand ahead of time. 

If handled correctly, those festive season challenges can quickly become opportunities to attract more customers and increase revenues.

So, before we dive deeper into the ways you can prepare your business for the holiday season, let’s look at the challenges they bring:

• Demand: Firstly, the festive season causes an increase in demand. Families are ready to spend their hard-earned money during the holiday period, whether buying food and beverage products, clothing, electronics, or even basic household supplies. That increased demand will test your capacity, whether you sell in-store or online.

• Competition: Micro, small, and medium-sized businesses have anticipated the increased demand well in advance. As a result, everyone will put in their best efforts to attract customers and increase sales, making competition much more intense during the holiday period.

• Marketing: The two challenges above (i.e. increased demand and competition) also affect another aspect of your business: your marketing efforts. Remember: customers are searching for the best deals, and competitors are pushing harder to catch their attention. Therefore, discounts, promotions, and special marketing campaigns will help your business stand out.

• Staffing: The festive season doesn’t just affect your customers and competitors, but it also affects your team members. While many will want to take time off to enjoy the holiday season, you must also ensure there are enough to keep the business running.

Considering the above, it’s no surprise that many businesses plan for festive seasons months ahead of time. Doing that is necessary to cope with the challenges that come with them while benefiting from the opportunities they offer.

How Can You Prepare Your Business For The Holiday Season?

The holiday or festive season challenges you read about earlier can initially seem overwhelming, but there’s no need to worry. 

Firstly, these periods are highly predictable well ahead of time. That means you have plenty of time to come up with a plan and prepare for them.

Secondly, there are many ways you can ensure your business is ready for the holiday season when it comes around, such as the following:

1. Develop Marketing Campaigns

As you read earlier, competition will intensify between businesses during the holiday season. You can prepare for that by developing marketing campaigns to attract customers to your business instead of going to your competitors.

The point of these marketing campaigns is to highlight why you’re the better option for customers. That could be due to your special discounts, product offerings, or anything else you consider your unique selling point.

In other words, a marketing campaign developed for the holiday season will give people a reason to buy from you instead of other sellers.

2. Optimise Staff Scheduling

The festive season shopping rush means more work for your business, whether you have a physical location or you’re shipping out online orders. Simultaneously, several of your staff will likely want to take time off to enjoy the season with their friends and family.

Carefully optimising your staff schedule ahead of time will ease that burden in several ways. 

Firstly, it helps manage staff expectations. They’ll know when to work and when they can take time off, allowing them to plan their personal schedules more effectively.

Secondly, careful scheduling ensures that your business can continue to operate through the holiday season with as few challenges as possible.

3. Update Online Channels

Potential and actual customers will be doing plenty of research before and during the holiday sales season, primarily online. They’ll search for crucial information like product availability, pricing, and even your operating hours.

Due to that, it’s an excellent idea to update your online channels with all the necessary information ahead of time. 

Furthermore, your updated information should be the same everywhere you have an online presence, whether on social media, your official website, or your e-commerce profile on Dropee.

4. Spring Cleaning

In the days or weeks before a holiday season, you also have an excellent opportunity to perform a spring cleaning of your business. Simply put, this is the perfect time to eliminate clutter and reorganise everything in your physical shop and office area.

Spring cleaning your shop will make it much more welcoming to customers during the holiday season rush. Meanwhile, organising your office and the paperwork inside will make handling the rush more straightforward. 

After all, you’ll likely be processing more invoices, receipts, and other paperwork than usual. Wouldn’t it be much easier to do in a neatly organised office?

5. Order Extra Stock

You know your business better than anyone else, so you know which products are most in demand during the holiday season. That knowledge can be incredibly helpful as you order extra stock to prepare your inventory for the holiday season surge in demand.

Better yet, you can use Dropee to compare suppliers, order bulk supplies, and secure additional savings. 

From there, you can use those savings to increase your margins or pass them on to your customers with even more attractive discounts!

Final Thoughts

Overall, you’ve read here that festive season shopping comes with plenty of challenges to face and opportunities to take advantage of.

For starters, the holiday season brings increased demand, intensified competition, and the need to stand out with special marketing efforts. On top of that, it also comes with staffing challenges, as your team members will want time off to enjoy the festivities themselves.

However, you can prepare for those challenges by developing unique marketing campaigns, optimising staff scheduling, and ordering extra stock from platforms like Dropee.