How Seasonal Marketing Opportunities Can Drive Sales

As many retail businesses have discovered, holidays and special events are perfect opportunities to run limited-time promotions. E-commerce and brick-and-mortar stores alike make concerted efforts throughout the year to attract customers with sales and markdowns coinciding with major gift-giving holidays like Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day and Christmas. As New York and New Jersey-based businesses recently experienced with this year's Super Bowl, local and regional special events like this can also serve as an opportunity to drive sales.

 Any seasonal sale you choose to host can be a potential profit-booster, but it must be properly publicized.

"You need to have an internal marketing calendar and make sure customers know [about sales] ahead of time," said David Goldin, president and CEO of alternative business financing company AmeriMerchant. "Don't wait until the last minute."

 Goldin offered four more tips to help your business make the most of seasonal sales opportunities.

•     Make sure you have enough capital. Before you dive headfirst into planning your sale, it's important to make sure you have the capital to do it. Marketing, inventory and seasonal hires all require money, so if you don't have enough, you'll need to seek loans or other funding to pull it off.
•     Give yourself enough lead time. All campaigns require time to work out the details. Months before your sales event occurs, you should be determining how much of an inventory and labor increase you'll need, as well as what kind of tactics you'll need to spread the word 
•     Have a strong team. Business owners tend to think they need to do everything themselves, but an entrepreneur's best role is as a strategic visionary, Goldin said. Having a trusted team of people in place to delegate some of the smaller tasks of the sales event is crucial to success.
•     Keep up with industry and tech trends. Business tech is evolving quickly, and small businesses need to be more nimble than ever to keep up with the most recent trends. Using the latest technology can help you stay ahead of the competition.

Source: http://www.businessnewsdaily.com