Retail Christmas Promotions: 7 Ways to Drive Sales Without Discounting Everything

The first thing I wanna say as well is that when I use the phrase promotions, for me, a promotion is just an opportunity for you to start a conversation with your customer.

It does not have to relate to being a discount.

So for example, new stock coming in, that is also a promotion.

That's just a conversation you get to start with your customer.

And it can be a really noisy time of year, the fourth quarter.

It has become reputationally very promotionally driven, especially around Black Friday.

But what I wanna talk about is how you can come up with a blend of promotions, a blend of messages throughout the fourth quarter that will allow you to hit your sales goals, delight your customers, but not leave yourself broke at the end of it, or have you damage your brand.

One of my favorite phrases is saying, "Discounts are like spices.

A small amount of them makes things interesting, but t- too much of them ruins the whole dish." So it's not that discounts are bad, it's just that they're overused.

And another misconception is that people think that discounts are for the customers.

The customers are getting 20% off this or 20% off that.

But actually, discounts are for you as a business owner.

The discount should only ever be used to achieve something that you want to achieve, whether that is an overall sales uplift with a blanket discount, in other words, money off everything, or whether that is for you to clear a particular patch of sticky stock that you would love to get rid of.

The discount is really for you.

It's for you to achieve your business results.

It's not for the customer.

You want to use them deliberately, so for example, to clear stock, to reward loyalty, or to create urgency.

And you don't wanna just do them just because everybody else is discounting.

You also want to be really careful and make sure that you have a nice mix of discount messages across the fourth quarter, as opposed to repeatedly using one of the hard-hitting ones, like money off everything.

What I'd love to talk you through is seven different types of promotions.

The reason I want to bring this up is because I believe that your job as a business owner is to come up with a lovely mix.

Just like in a recipe, you want the perfect blend of lots of different elements to help you make this promotional calendar that works for you and works for your business.

And different business owners will have a different tolerance.

Some people will want to do more discounting.

Some people will want to go through the Christmas season with zero discounting.