2020 has begun and customers are willing to spend money on trending quality products, or maybe find a brand or two that they can become loyal to.

For businesses, both big and small, a number of steps have to be followed to guarantee that conversion marketing efforts translate into purchases and profits.

We outline a 7-step process that will help your business get ready for the New Year.

 1 . Plan Discounts and Freebies

The New Year is an extremely busy time for businesses, so certain aspects need to be planned out in advance.

For instance, what discounts, sales, or freebies you will be offering need to be defined—this is not something you can decide on the go if you want to optimize your sales funnel.

There are numerous kinds of promotions you can offer but you need to get the right mix so as to encourage more customers to visit your online business.

You may find more success with bundled offers, BOGOF, or a straight-forward discount. You could have promotions on all your items, or on select high-end items.

This could be the time to introduce customer loyalty programs that people can use to get further discounts on their purchases—which incentivizes customers to purchase more.

If you are planning to have New Year sales—and you certainly should—you need to define which items you can discount, and what kinds of promotions you are ready to offer.

2. Adequate Inventory

By offering promotions on products and services, you will be seeing an influx of purchases. Which is great. Until it isn’t.

What is the absolute worst thing that can happen when items are popular? Running out of inventory.

Whether your business is online or in-store, the last thing you want is for popular items—especially ones that you have actively advertised—to run out.

This is the kind of thing that gives your brand a bad reputation and sends people to social media to complain about you.

Avoid any such mishaps by planning your inventory properly—you should already have a good idea of which products have been your bestsellers, so ensure you have plenty of those ready.

Additionally, if you are planning to actively promote some items, those need to be well-stocked, as well.

Look at previous years’ sales to determine which categories of items become more popular during peak seasons.

The same goes for ecommerce shipping—check that your shipping staff or company are well-equipped to handle the delivery orders you will be sending.

If customers purchase items online only to find out that it will take weeks to ship, they will not be pleased.  

While you can always try to order items as they sell out, with the busier seasons, wholesale prices and shipping costs increase—eating into the profits you are working for.

 3. Start Marketing in Advance

How are customers going to know that your business is giving discounts and offers? Through your marketing efforts.

There are a number of ways to do this and most won’t cost you much money. 

For instance, on social media, you can change your banners to something festive. Use a YouTube banner maker to create a simple but attractive header.

Share posts on social media about the upcoming discounts you will be offering. You can also go live on Facebook or Instagram to announce your sales.

When creating landing pages, give them a festive flair and remember to announce your discounts on them.

You want customers to know that your business is ready for 2020 and so take every opportunity you can to tell them.

 4. Advertising Budgets

Aside from social posts, you should be putting aside some budget to spend on advertising. 

Ads help you reach a wider audience, and aren’t as expensive as many people fear. You can set up ad campaigns fairly easily on Facebook and Instagram.

Use your Google ads manager to set up SEO-optimized ads that will direct potential customers to your website, or to product pages.

It is important to note that if you are investing in advertising, you should be examining the results. This will help you create better targeted ads during the campaign and after.

You can also monitor your digital marketing spending and analytics with business tools and resources available online. 

 5. Behind the Scenes Requirements

New Year sales is all about attracting a massive influx of purchasers, which will mean more people in your brick-and-mortar store and more visitors for your online store.

As great as that is for your business, if you don’t have the staff capabilities to handle these additional customers, you will end up losing out on the profits of the season.

Schedule your staff so that you have enough people during peak shopping times—after 5pm and during weekends.

Additionally, if you have online sales, you should have a dedicated online customer service team or customer support tools to handle any queries customers may have.

Investing in chatbots is also a good idea—the chatbots of today are very sophisticated and can handle complex queries. With machine learning software, chatbots learn on the go.

Making sure your customers can reach your business when they have any queries addressed needs to be a priority.

Also consider investing in CRM software that will help you personalize your marketing, management, and interactions with customers, so you can encourage repeat sales.

6. Optimize UX

Whether your business is completely online or you have a brick-and-mortar store, your website needs to be completely optimized for the visitors and drive good organic traffic.

You need to make sure that your website is in peak condition—check that the customer journey is intuitive and encourages people to visit product pages and make eventual purchases.

Are there any hitches in the cart and checkout pages? Those have to be rectified before your sales begin.

Can your website be viewed on multiple devices? Mobile marketing has become huge in the past few years, and people are now making purchases on mobile devices more than desktops.

Ensuring that your customer experience is comfortable and exciting and you will see profits this New Year.

7. Create Gift Ideas

A fun way to get your business ready for 2020 by creating gift guides. It’s the beginning of this year and everyone is looking to buy gifts for their loved ones.

But with so many options available to them—from your business and others—a little push in the right direction is exactly what will boost the customer experience.

Which is why making a gift guide is an ideal way to attract customers, as well as foster a sense of customer loyalty.

Gift guides can easily be created using an infographic template or brochure templates—all of which are customizable and can be branded. 

A gift guide is the kind of value addition that your customers will love , and definitely worth spending time on.

Key Takeaways

With the above 7-step guide, you can get your business 2020 ready. It does require some forethought and planning, but this is the kind of strategy that will bring in the profits.