4 Tips for Getting your Business Ready for the Christmas Period

While Christmas is an exciting and wonderful time, there can also a lot of stress involved, especially for those running a small business. Whether it's trying to finalise your jobs and tasks for the year, planning your break or trying to reach out to clients, it can start to become overwhelming. Luckily, there's a few easy things you can do to make the most of the Christmas break and stay on top of your business's needs.

1. Look into running a Christmas Promo for your business

December is notoriously the month of the year where people spend the most. Buying gifts, getting their houses ready for hosting parties or running functions, people are spending a lot of time looking online for the best deals to lower costs. Why not try running a special Christmas promotion for your business to capitalise on this fact? You could offer a discount to target those looking to decrease their spending, or even offer a special Christmas gift along with your services so the customer feels like they're getting more bang for their buck.

2. Send out personalised Christmas cards to your loyal customers

There's nothing more essential to making sure a customer is happy with your business than making them feel special and valued. The littlest gestures can go a long way to ensuring a customer views your brand in a positive light. Try sending out some personalised Christmas cards to your loyal customers with a nice little message telling them how much you appreciate them. If you have a large customer base, look into mailing software that will allow you to send out an email with placeholders to still keep the personal touch while reaching a wider amount of people.

3. Set your Christmas operating hours and notify your customers

It's extremely important to set your availability and let your customers know so that they can reach out before you close up for the year. There's four key areas you will want to highlight your Christmas availability for maximum exposure:

• Google Business Page
• Email Footer
• Website
• Social Media

Bonus tip: Don't forget to set an away message on your email for anyone who does try to reach out over the break.

4. Set client expectations

It's likely you'll have jobs or tasks that you simply won't have time to get to before the end of the year. While this can be frustrating for your clients, it is often quite understandable. All you need to do is reach out to every client you have business with that may be impacted by the Christmas period and explain what the situation is clearly and you'll find that a lot of them will understand and are happy to wait until the new year for works to resume. If you find yourself losing track of what jobs need to be wrapped up or clients need to be reached out to, try using a job management system like Trak to set tasks for you and your team to check off before the year's end.

5. Have a break!

Mental health is incredibly important and often small business owners will struggle to find time to relax and unwind. The Christmas period is the best time to slot in some leave so make sure you turn your phone's off, stop checking your emails for a bit and take the time out to spend Christmas with your loved ones and most importantly, enjoy yourself!