Because it is the Holiday Season, everything around us turn red and green, everyone is merry and grateful. Children and grown ups are looking at what Santa is going to leave under the tree. It is also the season of Holiday Parties between friends within your company, and you have to give gifts as a “Secret Santa”, or gifts to your employees.

Now the issue is, that you’re getting someone you know more or less, something that they might or might not like…

The Holiday Season starts early when it comes to marketing, if you are in a B2C environment, you need to get ready for Black Friday, which is spreading worldwide nowadays, and not only something happening in the USA. Your timing being impeccable, all your marketing collateral was scheduled to leave on time. This is key, if you send it out too early, people will forget, and if you send it too late, people will already have purchased something else…

Scheduling your operations for this specific event is based on an event that retailers dictated to the public. And it is behind us for this year, so that will engage more story telling next year if I get the time to write an article.

We are now reaching the actual Holiday Season, everything has been planned and ready for the big end of the year sales push. Do you think your business is reaching its full potential? Can you add anything more?

Are you setup for Gift Cards for the holiday season?

Let’s go back to Secret Santa and the corporate holiday party. Gift cards are a very popular item, we all know that. You can go the easy route and get someone something from Amazon or Starbucks… Or you can be more thoughtful, and look for a local restaurant and not a chain, a local boutique that makes an impact on the community.

The audience I am trying to appeal to with this article is specifically those people. Local Restaurants, Small Businesses… You have a reach throughout social media and connections that could help you. Getting your demographic to easily spend money with gift cards at your store is not out of your reach.

The easy way is to get your printer, your paper and you do something on a word processing app from a template. This is a great idea, specifically if we were in 1992. But it means that the purchaser would need to come to your location to pick up the said gift certificate and it takes time. Yes, we live in a world where time is the most valuable thing there is. Time can be alleviated by the use of technology. Of course Starbucks and Amazon have the technology to generate millions of gift cards. But did you know that you do as well?

Payment Processing Companies offer Gift Cards

A lot of small businesses use Square as a payment processing solution. It works pretty well from the feedback I have from current clients. Did you know that square offered gift cards you could customize for your business? Some of you will be telling me “Of course”. Others would be looking at their screen in awe (or at least I can hope). Ok, then we went through step one.

Now that you know that gift cards are available through a payment processing company, how do you sell them? Is your Online store equipped to sell gift cards?

Let’s make things quick, not sure what content management system you are using. I sure hope you are using WordPress as in my opinion it’s the most powerful system all around. If you are using Squarespace, Wix, Weebly, Godaddy, it might be time to up your game…

Using the Right Program.

Was recently talking with a personal friend who has a small business and was telling me that she was selling Square gift cards but there was no option for her to setup a rewards program. With the right online solution and the right content management system, what she was trying to achieve is easy. Did I try to PUSH this system on her, of course not. But I will get her to read this article.

We have developed some very easy gift card program for clients. Look at Ambrogio15 in San Diego, CA and Miso Phat in Hawaii. This way you can get an idea of how easy it is to get a gift card from them. And yes, there are many more powerful features to setup a reward program, either within Woocommerce, or you can do it through a program like Ekoma. If you are interested to get something setup, comment below. We could get it ready for the last minute shoppers in your connections… and yes, this is 13 days away…