Getting ready for December is a big time of planning for small businesses. The holiday season, along with festive offers and deals, is a major commercial opportunity to end the year with a nice profit boost.
Whether you run a boutique shop, an e-commerce brand, a coaching or consulting service, or a café, there are strategic steps you can take early to make the holiday season profitable, predictable, and as panic-free as possible.
Below are smart, actionable moves brought to you by the experts at 1st Formations, the UK’s leading company formations service.
1. Get your finances holiday-ready before the chaos hits
Holiday season success lives and dies based on your numbers. Take time to audit your sales data ahead of time to get you on the best possible footing for the holiday season.
Look at your year-to-date performance and identify:
- What are your top-selling products or services?
- Are there seasonal patterns you can use?
- What typically doesn’t sell and could you bundle it with something popular instead?
Holiday bundles work because shoppers love the idea of saving money. If you normally sell something for £50 and you package two items together for £90, your customer thinks “Wow, I’m saving £10!” even though they just spent £40 more than they planned. Tactics like this can be a great way to boost sales and drive seasonal demand for your products.
Build a holiday-specific budget too. This should include:
- Extra inventory or supplies
- Holiday marketing spend (ads, email tools, social media promos)
- Possible seasonal staff or outsourced help
- Git-wrapping packaging
If you plan properly and keep your targets realistic, there should be no reason for you to overspend. Last minute planning and refilling stock at short notice is more likely to blow through your budget, so plan accordingly.
Forecast early, order early
If you’re selling physical products, order inventory before everyone else does. Supply delays are now a holiday tradition, and you do not want to be the business posting:
“Due to unexpectedly high demand (and my poor planning), your gift will arrive sometime in 2027.”
2. Make your online presence holiday-proof
Think of your website and social channels as your digital storefront. If someone lands there in November and it still looks like any normal time of the year, you could be missing a valuable opportunity. Add some festive decorations and highlight any seasonal sales on your homepage.
Segment your email list for specialised offers
Instead of sending all your customers the same 20% off coupon, find different offers to provide value to your different customer profiles. Examples include:
- Sending VIP offers to high-value repeat customers
- Sending gift-focused suggestions to customers who bought last year during the holidays
- Send “Hey, we miss you..” offers to customers who haven’t bought in 6–12 months
- Create automations so these campaigns can execute at pre-planned times for maximum coverage.
Your customer email list is arguably your most powerful data set. The holiday season is one of the best times to put this to good use and reach out to your existing customers.
Create a holiday marketing calendar
Create a plan for marketing campaigns ahead of the holiday season. Here you can map out:
- When your big sale launches
- Which products you’ll spotlight each week
- Which emails and social posts support those campaigns
- Whether you’re running paid ads (and when they start warming up)
Instead of scrambling for content at the time, plan your marketing campaigns in advance to help drive your holiday sales campaigns.
Make your website festive and frictionless
A buggy website can be all it takes to put a potential customer off making a purchase. For the holiday season, make sure your website can handle any additional traffic spikes you may encounter as shoppers hop online for Christmas shopping.
Also, did you know more than half of holiday purchases happen on phones? Double-check your website’s mobile responsiveness to make sure your website isn’t putting off mobile users with a poorly optimised page.
Your homepage should clearly answer:
- What do you sell?
- Why is it great as a gift?
- Can customers buy it right now without fuss?
Other smart moves:
- Add clear CTAs like “Shop Holiday Gifts,” “Order Before Dec 10,” or “Buy Gift Cards”
- Create a new Holiday Landing Page to showcase bundles, shipping cut-offs, and gift suggestions
- Use a banner or popup to highlight holiday discounts or deadlines
Your job is not just to sell – it’s to remove every possible excuse for someone not to buy.
3. Automate everything that doesn’t require humans
Once the holidays begin, customer support tickets, orders, and website traffic all spike. Automation helps prevent overload and burnout by allowing your human employees to prioritise human tasks. Automation ideas include:
- Email workflows for repeatable processes, i.e, new customers or refund processes
- Abandoned cart reminder emails
- Post-purchase thank-you note (add a cross-sell if possible)
- Shipment notification + review request
- Holiday cut-off warnings
The beauty of automations is you only have to build them once. They can then run at all times to handle repetitive admin tasks.
Automate invoicing and payments – if you run a service business, set up automatic recurring billing so you aren’t chasing December payments while also wrapping gifts and crying into hot chocolate.
Analyse your customer journey
Before the holiday traffic wave arrives, test your:
- Add-to-cart flow
- Checkout steps
- Confirmation emails
- Return policy visibility
- Customer service contact links
If something breaks now, it’s mildly annoying. If something breaks in the middle of December, it could derail your holiday sales campaign. Stress test as much as you can ahead of the holidays.
4. Make customer experience your competitive advantage
The holidays are emotional. People are stressed. They want smooth, fast, friendly experiences.
Pre-package options can be a great way to offer solutions, such as:
- “Gifts under £50”
- “Best sellers for parents”
- “Tech gifts for people you don’t actually know well”
- “Gift card + bonus offer”
If you ship products, publish:
- Shipping cut-off dates
- Clear return policy
- Holiday hours
- Whether gift wrapping exists (even if it costs £3)
If you sell services, offer:
- Holiday discount bundles
- Buy-now-use-later options (amazing for coaches, consultants, trainers)
- Instant-delivery gift vouchers
Humans procrastinate. A shocking number of purchases happen two days before Christmas. So be ready to fulfill last minute orders.
5. Plan for post-holiday revenue
Most small businesses drop off a cliff in January. But clever business owners…
- Capture emails during the holidays using discounts, lead magnets, or loyalty points
- Offer “New Year bonus” messages to turn one-time buyers into repeat buyers
- Create a seasonal downsell (“Didn’t buy the big thing? Here’s a smaller version!”)
January customer retention is pure profit. Your overhead doesn’t change – but customer loyalty can compound if you play your cards right.
Bonus tips
Use nostalgia. Holiday campaigns that reference 90s Christmas movies, classic songs, or wrapping-paper chaos perform extremely well. More bonus tips include:
- Partner with other small businesses for cross-promotions
- Use limited-edition products or colours – artificial scarcity is your friend
- Test your website speed – slow pages send customers elsewhere
- Reward early shoppers with better bundles or early-bird perks
- Batch-create social posts now and schedule them
Use these tips to give your website that extra wow factor for your holiday sales.
A strong finish to the year
Take just one of these strategies to improve an aspect of business, such as your budgeting, optimisation, automation, or customer experience upgrades. Doing so could put you in a much stronger position for holiday sales.
The holiday season can be a great time to register a company and go after those seasonal sales, so don’t delay and get in touch with an expert today. They can guide you through the legal requirements for signing up to Companies House, registering your business name, and provide you with a UK London address.
