I’m writing this blog a few days before the biggest shopping holidays of the year. Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday are the unofficial kick-off of the holiday shopping season – the critical period that can represent as much as a third of many retailers’ annual sales.

It’s make or break time.

Who’s going to do the best at attracting customer attention and successfully converting attention into sales? Without a doubt, it’s the companies that have done the necessary groundwork and preparation well in advance of the holiday season.

This means several things, including:

• They have a well-designed, fast, mobile-friendly website.
• Their social media presence is authentic and engaging.
• Their advertising is crafted to appeal to their target customer & has a strong call-to-action.
• Their email marketing campaign is dialed into what makes loyal, enthusiastic customers buy again and again.
• Their in-store team is aware of digital marketing campaigns & knows how to communicate them appropriately to shoppers.
• Fulfillment systems are flawless.

This sounds like a lot, until you realize it’s exactly what you expect from retailers when you go shopping. Your customers hold you to the same standards to which you hold other businesses. The problem with the list of essential groundwork is that there’s a lot involved, and it takes a lot of work. There’s absolutely no way to create all the necessary components at the last minute.

Am I telling you it’s too late to make the most of this holiday season? No. Realistically, you have to do the best you can with what you have, identifying and remedying problems quickly in order to achieve true customer satisfaction.

But once this holiday season is over, it’ll be time to take a deep breath, look objectively at your holiday sales and your digital marketing infrastructure, and make a plan for how you’re going to improve things for 2020.

Building your business is a lot like training for a marathon. There’s a lot involved, and realistically, everything can’t happen at once. You don’t start by running 26 miles. You start by taking a single step.

Most business owners realize greater success by strategically improving their digital marketing presence over the course of a year. Taking the time to improve things step by step honors the fact that you’re very busy running your business. It’s also easier on the budget.

The first step – and one you can work on now, to lay the groundwork for next year’s efforts – is to use your digital data to create customer profiles representative of your best, most profitable customers. Everything else flows from there. If you need help making this happen, give us a call.

We’re here to help.