3 holiday season business blunders to avoid

The pressure is on this time of year. So if you’ve left everything to the last minute, here are some tips to keep your business running smoothly while you take a break.

Every year, it feels as if the Christmas countdown starts earlier than the year before. Never mind that Christmas is at the end of December — businesses are getting into the Christmas spirit and spruiking their seasonal deals right after Halloween.

Yes, planning ahead for the holiday season is very important. With some forward planning, you can make the most of potential customers who like to get into the sales early and have gifts ready well in advance.

But don’t panic if you weren’t one of those businesses with Christmas decorations out in October. There’s still time to avoid making these three massive holiday season business blunders and ensure you can actually relax at the beach this year.
 

1: Leaving the scheduling of your employees’ shifts for the holiday period until the last minute

The last thing you want to be doing before going on leave is manually scheduling your hourly employees, which is exactly what more than half of service organisations do.

To help ease your load, try using a cloud-based employee scheduling app to do it for you. Take a look at:

• Workjam a cloud-based, mobile and web-accessible employee relationship management platform. It’s best used for sourcing, qualifying, hiring, onboarding, scheduling and evaluating hourly workers.
• When I Work is designed to get you away from your desk. This app lets you manage everything on-the-go from allowing employees to set their own availability, get automatic reminders about when they work next, and even swap shifts with coworkers and request time off.
• ShiftPlanning is the winner of both employee scheduling and workforce management in GetRank and GetApp’s quarterly independent ranking of business apps. It’s great for employee scheduling, time clocking and even payroll.

2: Failing to plan (and launch) a great holiday deal

Think about launching a holiday deal. Know your customer base and what deals will intrigue them most this summer. Take a look at any data you have from last season’s purchases to understand how your customers operate at this time of year. Marketing discounts for goods and services around the holidays is always a great way to get the attention of new or potential customers.
     

3: Forgetting to schedule your social media posts

You might be kicking back on the beach, but your customers are always online. Use social media scheduling apps such as Hootsuite or SproutSocial so all of your holiday season social media posts, blogs, deals and incentives are promoted without you needing to rub the sand from your hands. Don’t forget to use great images, native advertising campaigns, and segment your posts to suit specific consumers (if you have more than one target market).

If you’re across these three vital things, you’re closer to having a stress-free holiday instead of scrambling around in the last minute with administrative issues or coming back to chaos.

Happy holidays!