What to do when your competition closes

In my recent article – Do you close when your competition does? . . .  I posed the question,  “What do you do when your competition closes?”.

The scenario was the holiday season when all businesses in this particular industry closed down for holidays.

And yet it was a time of high demand for their products.

In that article we weighed up the pros and cons of opening during the holiday season.

OK

So you made the decision to stay open

You accessed the situation and made a decision to open during a holiday break.

Whether you have just decided to “give this a try” or you have facts on which to base your decision, you are going to stay open.

Now what will you do to maximise this opportunity?

To get the most out of this adventure you must be prepared.

Resources

Firstly, make sure you have enough resources to cope with the expected demand, which might be higher than your regular trade.

If you are the only business open for miles around, you will have your regular customer and local trade, as well as customers coming from surrounding areas.  So you could be quite busy!

Make sure that you have enough staff, enough products to sell and enough capacity to meed the higher than normal demand.

You are on show to new customers, as well as servicing your valuable existing customers.

There would be nothing worse than not being able to deliver.

Maximise the Opportunity

It is likely that you will attract:

• Your regular customers
• Customers from outside your region
• Customers from your local are who have been loyal to your competition in the past

It is this last category that you want most to capture.

You will do this by:

1. Providing a good service so that they want to come back
2. Staying in regular contact with them in the future

There are many articles in my Blog about email marketing,
– http://hotpinkwebsites.com.au/category/email-marketing

This is the simplest and cheapest way of keeping in touch with these people and attracting them back to your business on a regular basis.

So how will you collect their email details:

• Run a lucky draw or competition
• Prepare some information and offer to email this to them
• Add an email field on your order form or feedback form

Preparation is the key

So you see, some preparation is required to maximise the returns on your holiday break adventure.

You cannot just jump in and hope to do well with it.

Well, that is quite simple really!

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Watch this short VIDEO

Stores open on Christmas holiday

What should you do now?

1. Evaluate whether this strategy will work for you.
2. And then plan well ahead to maximise the opportunity.
3. Want some help or ideas? Just contact us at Hotpink Websites now.

Or, CLICK HERE if you need a new website – Website Enquiry.

Quote

As the holiday season approaches, may your home be filled with lots of love, laughter and yummy smells!!
~ Jesse Joseph

Remember – What to do when your competition closes

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Related articles

• Who says email marketing doesn’t work?
• Do you close when your competition does?
• Don’t be afraid of your competitors, study them so you can be better than them