The Festive Season is Here! A Very Good Time to Grow Your Business

Festive Season: The most awaited time of the year!

The much-awaited festival season of Navratri, Durga Puja, and Diwali comes in October and November. Many consider the festivals in India to be an auspicious time to make new purchases.

Why are festivals so important for businesses?

Many brands including apparel and jewellery are upbeat about sales growth in the festive season. As customers gear up for Dhanteras and Diwali, traders are also pinning hope on cars and home appliances. Businessmen are trying to connect with consumers and focusing on customer convenience and value. Inventory and production levels are up and traders expect this season to see changes in purchase patterns, a welcome development amid the pandemic.

Online platforms announce long festive season sales in anticipation of higher consumer spending. The festive season also sees a big demand for the puja segment. Other categories that see a big demand during the festive and wedding season are apparel and silks. But this festival season will be unlike the previous years since Chinese goods are missing.

Since household budgets are squeezed during the festive season, many retailers are trying to offer value-for-money items in categories like gift items or groceries.

People go on a shopping spree during festive times. In this article, we will show you how to take advantage of this and give a boost to your business.

A top business person can adopt E-commerce and Social Media partners like Facebook to boost festive sales further. Many have focused on digital campaigns due to consumer sentiment transition during recent times. Some traders are also pursuing influencer marketing for communicating with their target consumers. They are also preparing to meet the demands of the home-bound as well as risk-averse customers.

What adds to the festive cheer is that many brands are increasing their ad-spends this year. Top businessmen are stocking up anticipating a pick-up in sales and automakers have ramped up production. The demand for other consumer durables apart from cars and two-wheelers are expected to pick up in the coming days. The index of industrial production data has shown that there is a marked increase in the production of consumer durable goods, in anticipation of a pick-up in sales.

The Central Government Pitches In

Some of the announcements by Finance Minister Nirmala Sitharaman is likely to stimulate demand for white goods. To encourage discretionary spending on items like grinders or refrigerators, she announced a scheme for government employees to cash in on their leave travel concession. A festival advance scheme is also on the cards.

Don’t ignore mobiles

This festive season, mobile continues to play a significant role in driving purchase decisions. Leading E-Commerce brands are adopting mobile-first approaches to tap into the millions of online shoppers. Items like home decoration, gift articles, and electronic equipment see an increased demand.

Tips for E-commerce business

The pandemic has fuelled the acceleration of e-commerce across India leading to considerable changes in consumer behaviour. The E-commerce acceleration has been very rapid in categories like fashion, food deliveries, and groceries. Accelerated adoption of E-commerce calls for aggressive customer acquisition and efficient retention strategies. An E-commerce business can prepare for the festive season in the following ways:

1. Offer Free Shipping

Free shipping may be the deciding factor for customers who are undecided from which store to buy from. It will work for any retailer and can be regarded as the cost of entry. One good tip to make this work is to add a ‘Free shipping button’ very close to the ‘Add to cart’ option.

2. Engage Digital Media

Brands should communicate and engage with customers through hyper-personalised experiences through social media sites like Facebook. Since people spend a lot of time on their smartphones, that is also an important avenue to engage with them. Many retailers are leveraging digital tools like WhatsApp to engage with potentially purchasing consumers.

3. Set up pay-over-time solutions

Brands and e-commerce retailers should have exclusive partnerships with banks or digital payment platforms to avoid any dent in the consumer’s finances. There are many good third-party service providers to set up pay-over-time options.

4. Make a mobile-friendly site

An E-commerce site has to optimize itself for mobile since social media influenced shopping is all the rage. People tend to buy more from mobiles as compared to desktops and laptops.

5. Make them compel!

Marketing tricks like flash sales, expiring discounts, and pop-up offers create a sense of urgency in shoppers, inducing them to buy.

6. Good content

You should polish your content to build trust with the consumer. The product description on your website should have details and be easy to understand. You can also add additional information in the ‘About Us’ section.

You can make your content SEO optimised to attract more customers. Also, change your design to make it appealing. A top business person should invest in dynamic images like 360 rotations and zoom-in features to make his website beautiful to buyers.

Hire seasonal staff

To support the rise in customer demand, top businessmen employ additional, temporary, seasonal staff. If you hire seasonal staff to focus on important tasks such as customer service and sales, will free your core team to manage business operations.

Planning is critical

For ensuring that deliveries reach customers on time, retailers need to purchase stock in advance. To manage cash flow and demand and supply in the festive season you also have to plan for additional costs like extra resources and staff. You must have enough stock on hand to fulfil orders, and for that, you might have to make payment upfront.

What is the stay-at-home customer buying?

With many people working from home amid the pandemic, there is a marked change in the buying patterns of the customers. They are aggressively buying things like home appliances, laptops, and large televisions. For certain segments like kitchen appliances or premium smartphones, retailers feel that this festive season could be better than last season.

Since most people are not venturing out much, they are trying to make their homes more comfortable. So, the need for a bigger and smarter television, or a bigger refrigerator with more storage.

Low-value jewellery

Since customers may not favour high-value purchases, many jewellers are expecting a good demand for lighter weight gold jewellery. Retailers expect low budget items ranging from 1 gram to 20 grams to do very well and are concentrating on small items like nose pins, rings, and bracelets.

Discretionary purchases are dependent on positive sentiments, which the festive season brings. The festive season is the time when people look forward to seeing family and friends. Many top businesswomen believe that the festival season can bring positive changes in the business environment.

For this festive season shopping e-commerce platforms and retailers are giving enticing offers to shoppers to maximise their savings. Businesses must focus on planning to ensure smooth and profitable operations. We hope that the above article would share some light on this aspect.

Also read:
OkShop- India's Online Digital Dukan!
Best Seasonal Business Ideas In India
Best Tips for Small Business Owners