Aaargh! It’s that time of year again… It seems like only yesterday I was packing away the baubles and vacuuming glitter off the rug, but now there are less than 7 weeks till the Big Day.

With tinsel garlands and Christmas bells festooning the shops, it’s time to for you too to get into gear for the Christmas shopping frenzy.

Here are a few ideas to market your store over the festive season.

Create a Christmas collection

Attract online Christmas shoppers by creating a collection of items from your store that make great gifts.

Choose products for a broad range of tastes and budgets, from little stocking fillers and Kris Kringles to bigger family gifts. Categorise your products with tags like “gifts for mum” or “gifts for him”.

Offer a Christmas gift-wrapping service

Help your customers out by offering gift-wrapping over the festive season. If you’re offering wrapping at no extra charge, you can limit it to orders over a certain value, for example. That might encourage buyers to get more goodies in the one place.

Offer free delivery

Nothing makes my day like free delivery on my purchases. It’s a gift in itself! If you want to limit the cost impact, you could make the minimum order value for free shipping above your average order value and put a time limit on it.

Communicate your businesses seasonal information

Update your website well in advance to let your customers know when you will be closed over the holiday period. Make the cut off date for Christmas orders very clear to avoid disappointment.

Add your festive promotion to your email signature

Businesses often overlook this opportunity. Every time an email goes out, it can carry a promotional message in the signature area. Update your email signature over the pre-Christmas period to highlight special deals.

Create Christmas gift vouchers

Christmas is a great time to offer gift vouchers for your store. It’s a nice idea for shoppers who may not know exactly what to buy for a fussy friend or relative.

You can design a festive gift voucher yourself in a program like Word or PowerPoint and associate each value ($20, $50 etc) with a coupon code. Coupon codes are available on our Business and Enterprise plans and applied to your store through the “Marketing” section of your Toolbox. Find out how to create a coupon code here.

Email to your list to let them know what’s in store this Christmas

Design a festive email layout and send a Christmas newsletter to your subscribers and customers. Offer them gift ideas and let them know about any seasonal promotions. Include important information like order cut off dates and any holiday closures.

If you’re not already using email to connect with your customers and subscribers, here’s a quick guide to email marketing for your Spiffy Store.

Write Christmas-themed blog posts

Blog posts are a great way to attract traffic to your store and Christmas should give you a lot of topical ideas. How about a post suggesting ideal gifts for the hard-to-buy-fors (which you of course sell)?

Get busy on your social networks

Don’t forget to promote your offers on your social networks like Twitter, Pinterest and Facebook using hashtags like #giftsforhim and  #christmasgifts. You could attract a lot of extra traffic.

As the Big Day approaches, post shipping reminders so your customers know the last day to order for delivery in time for Christmas.

Remember it’s all about the customer

Christmas is a huge retail opportunity and the chance to make a lot of shoppers happy. Build good relationships with your customers during this busy time and you could have repeat business throughout the new year.