Five Minute Friday: Holiday Retail Tip: Make It Easy

Foreign. Business can be a lonely game.

But it doesn't have to be. Welcome to Boutique Chat where we explore community over competition and how to scale your company with the balance and the happiness that we all seek. We'll hear from product based businesses of all types, retailers, e commerce and wholesale brands, along with industry experts shaping the future of our industry. I'm your host Ashley Alderson from the Boutique Hub and I can't wait to chat.

I mean, why don't I have a Santa hat for this episode? I'm gonna have to go find one instead. I have a cold sore. I would take the Santa hat over the cold sore any day by the way. Well, let's dig into it. We are kicking off a series of quick holiday tips for the season. And I wanted to start with this one for today's 5 Minute Friday because it's so easy and it's kind of like a, oh yeah, of course I should do that kind of a concept. And today I want to talk about just how important it simply is to make it easy over the holiday season. See, this is customer acquisition season, right? Everybody is buying. Everybody has the potential to be your customer to a certain extent. The riches are in the niches. But I want to talk about how to just simply make someone's life really easy and convenient. This goes back to my days in economic development. Even before the boutique. I'll never forget there was an awesome flower shop on my main street in my very small town in North Dakota. And she was so great at always like around the holiday season or whatever, like, you know, quote unquote social media holiday. It was administrative assistance day. Was one of them to send out an email to everyone who she knew was, you know, a business owner and had employees in town or who had a professional position in town. We'll say, and she would just say, hey, it's administrative assistance day. Here's three bundle options that I have in the flower shop. Like you can spend 25, 50, 75 and I'm happy to set it up as delivery for you. Just reply back to this email and I'll make it happen. And I remember right away thinking like, oh, this is so great. I don't even have to leave my desk. I can make this decision. She's done all the work for me. I can simply respond to the email and everything's done. And I look like I'm a great boss, right? She made my life easy. And it's that same concept that I really want to encourage you as a retailer to think about for the holiday season. What are you doing to make your customers lives easier? I am a hot mess when it comes to being a mom. Rolling in on the last day before Christmas break and forgetting that I did not get my kids teachers a gift. Maybe this year I'll do better, I don't know. So then I end up getting them some crap from the drive through coffee shop or Starbucks or whatever because I have not like well planned this out. So how can you let your customers know that you have pre bundled options for them ready to go? You've got gift for teacher bundles, you've got gifts for your mom bundled. You've got gifts for dad bundled. You've got gifts for your best friend bundled. You've got gifts under 150 and 25 bundled and ready to go. They don't have to think about it, they don't have to go through your store and go oh this would be a good gift. And this would be a good gift. You have already done the work and you have let them know on social media and you have let them know an email, this is done. All they have to do is click the link. All they have to do is respond to the email and you will literally take care of the rest. This is another reason why during the holiday season I love the concept of a stocking stuffer bar. Such an easy concept to come in and to have stockings, right? Like free stocking. When you purchase the stocking stuffer bar and maybe you have packages of, you know, you get the 50 stocking stuffer bar, you get the 100 stocking stuffer bar or you get the complete DIY, right? You can pick as many items to go in stocking as you want, but the idea of having all of that like done for you, grab and go make my life easier is what converts to sales over the holiday season. And if you're doing vendor events and pop ups, the same is true. Make the bundles, make the gift wrap, get the cute cellophane wrapping. Make their life easy because this is customer acquisition season. So you want to get as many, even if it's a small purchase in your door as possible. Because then you have all of next year to continue to market to them and bring them back to be a customer for life. So in anything that you plan this season, events, pop ups, promotions, marketing, just remember everyone's busy, everybody's busy. So make that their life easier. That's it for five minute Friday. I'm going to be back with a whole bunch of holiday tips. Just quick tips, quick reminders that hopefully make your holiday season the most profitable one yet. Talk to you guys soon.

Thanks for listening guys. I hope you took away all kinds of nuggets and new ideas from this week's episode. Don't forget to subscribe and leave a rating and review. We love to hear your feedback and give you a chance to be featured on the show each and every week. For more information on our spirit of community over competition, and to access guest downloads and bonuses and all the resources we talked about on the show, head on over to the boutiquehub.com and join the community. We'll see you next week.