Using shopping seasons is a very successful marketing method; for example, the bank Tyro referred me to a study of the Australian holiday Click Frenzy here. Even for a minor hioliday, it is impressive. 

The big one is, of course, Christmas. I have many clients that will do about 40% of their yearly trade in this shopping period. What many have noticed is that this year the Christmas shopping season is six days shorter than last year. As this shopping season is considered to start on Black Friday. This year this is 29/11/19, while last year it was on 23/11/18. That means retailers have lost six days of holiday trading. This will hurt. 

However, marketers are very astute so what they are doing is extending the holiday. The days are long gone when this season was a few days before Christmas.

Here are some exciting ideas for you to consider to extend the shopping seasons.

At the DFO shops, Black Friday sales are celebrated over three days. Maybe you should offer a similar deal.  

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But why wait till Friday, take a look at Aldi, Black Friday sale starts on Wednesday. 

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Woolworths is not waiting till Wednesday. They are into Black Friday deals now with a banner

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If you look at the majors, many are acting similar, I have noticed that Amazon is already holding a Black Friday sales early deals as is eBay with its Black Friday deals too.

I hope this gives you food for thought. 

A big challenge with online selling now is called the last mile problem.

It is easy to sell the product online, it can be delivered to an address at a cost, but is there a person at that address to accept it. This is needed as if I am sending a $500 item, I do not want to leave it on a door.

For this reason many deliveries, customer request to be sent to their work because there is no way to guarantee that someone will be at their home to accept it. Many people do not have this option, plus many people do not want people at work to know what they ordered, if its a present you often want to present it to them, not they pick it up and see what it is first and many workplaces will not do it. 

As such many large retailers have set themselves up with Click and Collect so their customers can pick it up.

This option is not available to large online retailers and many SMB businesses, so what they use hubs. Currently, these hubs do about 30% of all online deliveries. So these hubs do bring many people. It is a lot of traffic and now this extra traffic it is going to IGA supermarkets, Priceline pharmacies and some shopping centres. So I was pleased to hear that Amazon is extending its hubs to many of my clients.

Knowing Amazon, I am sure their payments are not going to be much for providing this service, but the real question is just how good will be this extra foot traffic be for the shops that offer these hubs.

Product bundling is probably the most successful and common marketing tool in business today. Ours is one of the few retail packages that does it really well, I have noticed. So please follow the logic and the solution below.

You go to buy a TV cable plan. It will have a set of channels and access to some loyalty club all with one price. Another example would be if you go a restaurant and get a special price if you buy a full meal. In both cases, if you add the items up and you will find it cheaper to take the bundle.

From the business point of view, the fact is that you were unlikely to pay for six (6) news channels. Once they sell you on one, the rest is a bonus. Few would buy a full meal at a restaurant, so they package a few of the high margin items selling at a low price and give you a bit of a discount, so you buy more. Both are classic examples of product bundling.

Where it often works well in retail, is to take an item that is a hot seller, add an item that is not selling well, so you intend to discount it to get rid of it,  then put the two items together and make a bundle at a special price. What you often find is that you can sell more as a result of the hot sellers and get a better price for the lousy seller together then you could obtain individually.  

Try it out. I think you will find its a lot better an idea then discounting.

You will find it one of the most effective ways to generate traffic in your shop and generate sales.

Here is where you do it. In this example, one ordinary father's Day card was used to sell four good sellers in one bundle.

If it works, try experimenting with different combinations. 

PS Try and link the bundles to seasonal holidays and charities, once you get going you will find your imagination only limits you.

We are entering now the holiday season, the next major one in the rank is on the 29 November, Black Friday which as you can see from google trends now has overtaken in interest in Australia Fathers day. It is a shopping holiday,

As you can see from the graph, Black Friday in blue has overtaken in Australia interest Fathers Day.

While the sales aren't quite so big in Australia as in the USA where it is the biggest shopping day of the year, it is a big shopping day whose sales are growing every year here. Last year on Black Friday, Australian shoppers spent about $320 million. I bet its more this year as interest in it this year appears to be extraordinarily high

I noticed that most of the larger retailers, eg Woolworths, IKEA  and Priceline are all doing something. Why not you?  

Easy to set up in our system a special!

Pick a few products and advertise it as a Black Friday special with an offer like  

* XXX dollars off - What people like on Black Friday are expensive items on discount

* BOGO - Buy <some quantity> and get one free. This has proven to be a very successful method of selling 

* Double points - Can often work

Give it a whirl and see how you go.

Update: In a South Australian, retailers across the Adelaide CBD and suburbs will be given the opportunity to trade until midnight on that Friday, as a result of strong demand from consumers.

I was listening to a video newsletter. In this video what the presenter did was did an interview with a small business owner who owns and runs a successful lotto agency in Dandenong. 

She is clearly an experienced business owner, running a business not too dissimilar to many of my clients. Now, what when asked did she think was so important to her business success. Her response was social media in particular Facebook and Instagram and being involved in the local community. When I looked up her business Facebook account, I could see that yes she was regularly posting information relevant to her customers on the latest in lotto and her community. Clearly based on her interview here, it is working for her business. 

Too many people today have not caught on that the traditional methods of marketing advertising or direct mail are less effective. Today much of the world largely connects, as she states through the social media community.

PS: What is weird about social media and shows how different it is, is although I do not know her or her business, through social media, I can see that she is a friend of a very close friend of mine. It is a small world.

What is amazing with such powerful tools like Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, Instagram, Pinterest, etc which are free to business what amazes me, is too many business people do not use it. Yet the reality is that these have fundamentally changed the way we are now connecting, communicating and collaborating.

If you have one of our websites, it is easy to automatically connect these social media to your site.

Here are some benefits of doing social media:

Customers: 

It can bring more customers to your shop. Most people are looking regularly at their social media accounts if you are there, it brings your shop to their attention.

Create more Sales:

Have something to sell them, why not offer them something. New products are coming in all the time. It does not have to be earth-shaking, a new shipment of pet food, a new range of cards, some cooking pots that are now on sale, some new magazine, etc 

Cost: You cannot beat FREE. 

Builds Relationships with your Customers: People on social media are communicating. You can answer questions, give advice on a product and talk to potential customers quickly and efficiently. 

Still unsure

The first point is to look at facebook to see what similar business to yours are doing. Then if you like what you see and want something similar and need help and are a supported user of ours, we do offer a free setup of a facebook account for your business.

Today, a customer display is something that anyone with a Point-of-Sale should consider. 

Here are some advantages and some points to consider if you are thinking of getting one.

The advantages are:

- That your customers like to see what you are charging them and appreciate you being transparent as they can see that they are being charged fairly as they can see what is happening now. This inspires confidence among your customer and in practice, can boost customer loyalty. 

- It also gives them something to do, so making them feel less than they are waiting. Instead, your customer feeling like a spectator, they think they are a participant.  

- It reduces the problems of queries after the transaction is done. Time is saved as most queries can be done when they happen. 

- Finally, a customer display in our system can be used to convey important messages to customers to consider as they are waiting their turn, like here. If you are interested in *Discount Vouchers*, this is a better way to go then receipts which very few customers get in real-time in modern retail.

If you are looking at such a unit!

Here are some points to consider.

-Workout what the screen size should be for you, maybe look at a few that other shops have before deciding. The screen size, once selected, can not be changed. As a general rule, a bit bigger is better.

-You need something hardy. Retail is a harsh environment for computer equipment. It will be knocked, if it is flimsy, it will smash. It will be in the open, so it gets dirty, and dust will get into it. Make sure it can handle this.

-Over the lifetime of this screen, it will be moved and adjusted, so make sure that the screen can be lifted up and down, and the angle of the screen can be changed. Ideally, you should be able to change it from vertical to horizontal and anywhere angle in between.

In your point of sale software, it is straightforward to change prices.

What several of our clients do, eg cafes and hairdressers have specials at certain times of the day! For example, after 2 pm, a cafe starts offering the remainder of the sandwiches and a coffee on a special deal. The sandwich that is not sold today, will probably be in the rubbish bin tonight. 

A hairdresser if she is quiet in the morning often offers a special on haircuts for seniors.

Make a Happy Hour 

If you want to experiment with such a limited-time promotion which last on a few hours, then it is worthwhile looking into the price changing facilities in our POS system as it can handle such changes effortlessly on the fly. 

Just a few taps and you are ready to go. 

Good luck and let me know how it goes.

_{Note the Image is by Gerd Altmann}

Retail websites

Your thinking of getting a website, the first point most people wonder about is will people come to buy off me if I have a website?

The technical term for this is SEO, and it is a problem. For any product that you sell, the odds are that many people will list it on the web for sale too. 

The first point to say is just because your product is not unique does not mean that it will not sell on the web. There are very few companies that have such unique products; almost everyone has competitors that make claims of having a similar product or service to them.

Ask yourself if you search online for a product or service, what are you looking to find out? Generally, it is either a location if they want to go there and/or a price if they want to buy and get delivered online.  That you are big or small is often a fairly minor question? If your fax paper price is $8 and the same brand is in Officeworks at $10, almost no-one will buy at Officeworks and pay more.

On the net, David can and does beat Goliath.

However, what you need to do is make sure that you are seen on Google. Today in Australia, Google has 94.7% of all searches.  

Now how do you get up high, well for most people the best strategy is to act local, and Google is built to do this. In its searches, it takes this into account, your location.

What you need to investigate is what words do people search on Google to find a business like yours. The best ones to ask are your customers, ask them "Say you were on Google and trying to find a business like mine, what would you put in?" There are also plenty of websites and tools that can help you if you want to get more technical.

Once you have your list to get up high in Google so you can be seen with "fax paper" as a search term is probably impossible without serious money but "fax paper near me" is not hard. Put in your website that you sell that fax paper and your location. Make sure you list the suburbs you handle, and Google will do the rest. Similarly, this will happen with any other product you see, eg dog food, lipstick, newspapers, etc. 

A decent web designer or service provider like what we have will be able to offer you practical advice on this.

Some fine-tuning will need to be done, some words you will find it very hard but many will be very easy.

Well if anyone wants an example of the power of Facebook in today's world, well here it is Storm Area 51, They Can't Stop All of Us. Over 2 million people have signed up to go, although it is highly doubtful that anywhere that number will show up. 

Even if an alien or evidence of any alien technology is there which I doubt, I am sure it will not be found. If it is there, it will be moved and/or hidden today. And I doubt that any of the demonstrators will get anywhere near the base. They are quite a distance from the wall, and the wall encloses an area of 8,000 sq miles. Area 51 is about 150 sq miles and is well inside this wall. The area is protected by many guards who are instructed to shoot to kill and people have been killed trying to break in. There are good reasons for the guards' concerns to keep people out as we do know that the area has highly toxic materials lying around and two people who work in Area 51, probably died from this. I just hope no-one gets hurt.

Still, it has proven to be a significant business event, many businesses and merchandise related to this event are on offer. If you have some items that fit such an event, you should put it in front as there is undoubtedly a lot of buzz about it.

Try using email in your point-of-sale system to market

Most of our clients use social media, mainly Facebook, to market their business, but I would recommend although it is more work to look at email. On the basic version, email is also free so several of my clients take advantage of this to send email newsletters free.

It is one of the best solutions for small-business owners who are just starting email marketing campaigns, mainly because of its free service for small businesses. So my advice is to try it first and if it does not work out after a while and you find you want something better well at least you will have acquired the necessary experience and knowledge to move on.

Now the first step is to collect emails, lots of them. Consider running a contest in your shop, to build up your email list. Some ideas my clients use, a free second chance at lotto, a cake, a gift voucher, a special offer etc. To enter the customer needs to fill out a form or deposit your business card. What you need to start are about 500 accounts to kick start it.

If you require, we provide a free service to our clients which supplies you for your geographic area a list of email addresses for the local businesses too to help out. But please 

Note about Spamming

There are strict laws in Australia about spamming and maybe check with your association first before sending any email newsletters to these businesses.

Our understanding of the law and we are not solicitors nor experts in such matters is that if a person gives you, an email address on a business card, then it is okay to send them an email newsletter. If they are in a business that you supply goods that they require like a tap supplier, you can send an email newsletter to a plumber about taps without permission but a solicitor even though they use taps too in their office, you cannot send without permission.

Ready to start

Now once you have about 500 email addresses, the next step is to get our existing client's email addresses into the newsletter system. The most popular method of sending such newsletters by far with our point-of-sale system is with MailChimp although there are many others that do similar tasks and from my research, they are all technically about the same. Not one stood out to me in functionality. 

Now to get them into MailChimp please go to cash register reports.

Then go to customers.

Once there select

Customer List (Excel)

Now run the report, and it will give you a listing of your customers and their email addresses. This you import into MailChimp. I would recommend doing this regularly in that way as then your email marketing has the latest email addresses.

Now what you need to do is write an email newsletter. This will take some time at first but get easier as time gets on.

The read rate is about 20+%, so on 500 emails, you will have 100 readers which is a good start to build on.

Now the next step is to figure out what is the best times to send these emails. The same email can vary up to 20% readership. There is no getting around the fact that every business is different and both the best day and time varies. After a while, you will work it out. 

Also, what you need to consider is that promotions can be especially useful; a newsletter before a significant event or holiday shopping season can be very effective. 

By timing your emails right, you will get maximum results from your efforts.

Make sure that each of your email newsletters has your name and address, and an unsubscribe note; you can get into big trouble if you do not. 

Your POS System can tell you what has sold well in a department and it will tell you what has sold well with another product. This is all good stuff for upselling. The problem is that you are looking at is what was in your store, which is only a tiny subset of the products available plus it is only telling you what *WAS*. What you need to know is what is *NOW* and what will *BE*!

Here is a tip to help you to do this which you can do.

In Amazon Australia, you will find the best seller's list here. 

Now pick a department say "Pet Supplies" and out will pop all the top sellers here 

These are the top-selling items updated hourly, so it is current information.  

Now go through the items and see which ones appeal to you. You will see the sales ranking. If you click on the items, you will see a lot of details, including what people think about these items.

I am sure it will give you a lot to think about them.

The best part about it is these are local products.

Now if you wanted to see what people in the US were buying, after all, they are not that different to Australian consumers, you can check the US website here

Be careful as although many think, that the US market is more advanced than ours. I am no so sure of this in my experience. It is an odd combination of being more advanced and more behind us plus it's a different market with different costs, benefits and requirements so be cautious about using it. Still because of its Winter/Summer being reversed there many of you will get many goods ideas of where the market is moving.

As a benchmark, the average basket size in an SMB retail business in Australia is about 2.54. If yours is below that, you need to look at cross-selling.

https://www.wikiwand.com/en/Cross-selling

In any case, even if you are over that figure, I would say that proper cross-selling techniques will increase revenue for your shop.

Now in retail there are two ways to cross-sell, the one is active ask a customer "is there anything else you want?", the other is passive which is making sure that the appropriate goods to the person buying are brought to their attention.

So how do you identify the goods that you can offer? Well, you go on history, you see the past shopping behaviour of people that purchased items have brought in your shop.

It is very easy to do with our point of sale software.

Firstly get your top ten sellers, you can get more but we will start there.

Go to Register reports.

Now select "Top N Stock Sales for a Given Period"

Now put appropriate dates (say last three months) and ask for the top ten, like I said you can put more in but let us start there.

Now go to sales register reports section here

and select the stock companion report

Put in the same dates, put in your top-selling items and now and ask for a full listing.

Now go through the list and there is a fair bit to look at there. Now take notes of those items that sell well with these items. 

Now check in the shelves, where these items are these companion products close by, can the customer for those items quickly see these items? If not, then you have to start rearranging stock because that is what is selling. 

The recent cold and wet wave sweeping across Australia show how weather can affect retail sales. The effect is stated to be 3.2%. 

Which I can believe as a while ago, I did a study of my clients sales data and the weather. What I showed was that changes in temperature much more then the rain made impact sales of many products. I guess that people can reschedule in the day when they go shopping or pick a place which is covered if it is raining but if its too hot or cold many will cancel going shopping today.  Also, I found that specific products do sell well if the weather is appropriate.

This a smart retailer can take advantage of, for example, have a stand filled with goods that are suitable for a hot day, another if it is raining, etc.  In the appropriate weather, bring that stand to the front and move the inappropriate one to the back.  Also, they can check that their drink fridge, is full on a hot day. I have seen figures of 200% increase in drink sales during a heat wave.

This is all too easy to do as seven-day forecasts are reasonably accurate nowadays.

Here is a step by step plan to take advantage of the weather.

Create a list of your products based on the weather; all you need to do is check the days that were unusually hot, cold, wet, etc. Now see what happened using your sales report from our system and your experience to see what sold well on those days.

Now bundle these products together by hot, cold, wet day etc.

Now every week, get the seven-day forecast here, select your area and see what coming days are abnormal.

Now you have a coming sales window, make sure you are prepared as by matching your product to match the appropriate weather conditions, you can increase conversions and sales. 

Years ago, there was a stocktaking sale, rapidly however this has expanded, and now we have an EOFY sale too. If you look up google trends and do a search on "EOFY sale" in Australia

This is the graph you will get. In the past seven years, it has grown dramatically from nothing 

Ask yourself, why do companies, like us do it? Mainly because of supplies as they are doing deals, why?

) They are budgeting for the end of the financial year, they know they need money to pay taxes, payroll tax, insurance, etc. So they want to liquidate stock to pay the tax bill.

) Managers need soon to justify to their stakeholders what they have done. This is their last chance as soon the financial reports will be done and with it their annual performance report card. They need excellent performance if they want their promotions, jobs and bonuses. You do not want to be a sales manager with a flat sales figure what you want to do is show I have sold well and now sales are going up. If their sales are low, they know they need to get cracking.

) Organisations are starting to implement changes to the next financial year. We see, for example, a supplier will say to us, we are moving out of these lines and going more into these lines are you interested in......

) Companies are now starting to organise their stock for a stocktake. They can see now stock that is getting old, looking obsolescent, that they have ranges of stock that is fragmented - a lot of one item and not enough of another item, damaged stock and were slow selling/overstocked assortment items. They are very conscious of the stock they need to lose. I had one come to see me a few days ago, "Bernard, we have a $300,000 worth of old monitors, can you move some of them?" 

) If you are into seasonal products, it is the high selling point of winter, from now on winter stock will start to drop. Now is probably the last chance you get to get rid of this stock in bulk, so it is a good time to clear stock from this season to make way for the new.

The result is that the consumer does see real deals here, so it becomes to them an exciting time. Many have tax reasons why they should move now e.g. Instant Tax write off. They can see retailers trying to move stock. The trick here is that consumers have to navigate through the deals to get to the ones that are good for them.

So it does work.

What I suggest is that consider doing all the above, look at your stock, see how it looks then support, run and promote your 'end of financial year' sale. I can tell you that it works for us.

Jurek Leon is an Australian consultant in retail. He certainly knows his stuff, often talks on TV and puts out an excellent monthly newsletter for retailers which I recommend you subscribe too [Website removed] here.

His current edition has a fascinating post. 

Say we have an item in your shop which was $9, now maybe you buy a whole lot at a low price or perhaps you want to get rid of them, so you decide to reduce the amount to $5.99. Note like many good retailers you are not going at $6, but $5.99 plus you are not going to say 33% off because you know that dollar amount discounts work better than percentage discounts.

So you make a label to sell them and say you have these two options.

Option A: The reduced price is shown in big letters

Option B: The old price is shown in big letters.

Now, have a good look and decide which one is better?

Please, after you have worked out which one is better and decide why you think its better scroll down to the answer below. 

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Most people go for the first one, I did too as its the new price I want people to see, but studies show that it Option B that works better.  Why? Well according to the study. 

"It’s because the discounted price is literally smaller than the original. Behavioural economists like Bri Williams call this the ‘size-congruency effect’. She says you are better to go with your marked down price in smaller font (Option B) than the conventional stand out (Option A), proving yet again that our assumptions about how best to influence customers can often be incorrect."

This is an example to her that retailers need to test and measure results. I agree with that too, how else are you going to find what works best with your business.

I was asked a few days ago about whether I thought it was worth it for a retailer to hire a digital display? To do it, they were quoted $3,000 which they believe is a reasonable price.

Here is an example, which I think you will agree with me looks effective. 

These displays are currently being used to push retail content to drive purchase decisions. What is great is that as hanging such a display is relatively easy with simple mounting it can be placed as in here in a relatively useless position, high up on the wall. Just make sure the screen is big enough to be seen easily from where people stand. This allows you to keep valuable floor space uncluttered while still having a way to spread the news on what’s happening in the shop.

To me, it looks like a lot of money for what it is, which is what I said.

HI-RES pictures to make the display are often freely available from the supplier of the goods. What you need is about 15 pictures, if you want to, you can use your smartphone to take these pictures too. Just take plenty of pictures and carefully pick the best.

Here is why I say fifteen (15) images. If you display each for say twelve (12) seconds each with second (3) seconds change over, this will give you four (4) minutes, which for a start should be long enough. 

Now if you know how to use some package like proshow, which if you don't know how to use it it is not that hard to learn. I have found it well worth to learn it personally too. For example, I take a heap of pictures at weddings, then make a video and everyone been very appreciative. If you must a trained photographer can for a few hundred dollars make you a professional video. Put it on a small USB stick.

Now all you need is a TV which many of us have spare at home or get a cheap second-hand TV. 

Now hang up the screen and your up and running. 

I would be surprised if it comes in at much over $500. 

You can then improve and change it as your shop changes without asking anyone permission.

One point that surprised me when I went to the New Retail ’19 conference which is considered  Australia’s largest retail gathering was directed I think at the medium to large retailers was the importance that these people saw in the Chinese market. 

What became apparent is that almost every Australian retailers there is looking at this market, now are you?

Currently, Chinese students, tourists and residents are responsible for up to two-thirds of luxury retail sales in Sydney and Melbourne in some places like Far North Queensland even more.

Here are some more figures:

There are about 165,000 students of Chinese descent coming to Australia a year (31%), 17% of them have family investments in Australia and their total economic contribution in Australia is over $7 billion dollars. 

There are about 28,000 migrants of Chinese descent coming to Australia a year (16%)

Australians of Chinese descent make up about 5.6% of the population. 

And here is the big one, there are 1,425,800 Chinese tourists every year in Australia (15.5%), and they are big buyers almost twice as big as the average. Today Chinese tourists in Australia spend 26.5% of the tourist trade. In the retail sector, they spend about $2,500 each.

I think every retailer should have a China strategy?

Here is something you can do immediately, put up a welcome sign in Chinese like this one in your shop.

Then why not walk around your area and see what retailers are marketing to this market.

The question often raised is, do I have the right stock NOW in my shop.

Well, it is a good question now that Valentine's Day is tomorrow and in this 11th hour, it is an excellent question to ask. 

Firstly how does Valentine's Day look this year?

Well according to google

I checked the public interest from 2016 to 2019 (in blue) shows a slight drop but nothing dramatic, however, unlike other years, attention is more uniform across all states. What I find particularly interesting is that the public still do not know what to buy and that includes women looking at what they should buy their guys.

Now we have established that we are looking at something similar to what we are used to, we can use the mirror marketing functions in our point of sale software. This works if you have a similar situation to previous years although I have my doubts whether Russell Zimmerman, Executive Director of the ARA  [link was removed] is right that it will exceed last year

Still, Valentine's Day is a good example to show mirror marketing as it requires specialised stock and the BIG question now is, do you have the right stock? 

Go to Register Reports marked in green.

Now select in stock, "Stock Sold During Period(a) Not Sold in Period(b)"

Now out pops this.

Select the report what was sold in a previous period (a) last year but has not been sold in a period (b). 

This is an old database, so I used old dates, but you should use 1/2/2018 to 28/2/2018 as (a) and 01/2/2019 and 28/2/2019 as (b).

Now in brown, you will see that there is a lot more option but let's keep it simple here. 

Now you will get a report with what you sold over the period (a), but you are not selling in your current period (b). Why is the question for you to investigate now?

What to do in future

I suggest you run this at the start of every month because once you get to know it, you will find mirror marketing very useful and if you do this you will miss almost no marketing season.

I noticed this is what one of our clients Nextra Forum West has done

Seasonal marketing is a great way to advertise your shop.

For example, those of you in shopping centres would have seen how the centres went all out gone all out to welcome the Chinese New Year 2019, the Year of the Pig to attract visiting Chinese who number annually about 1.4 million and Australians with Chinese ancestry who number about 1.2 million. Visiting Chinese tourists spend about $11.5 billion here, it is estimated to be about a quarter of all tourism expenditure in Australia. They are big spenders, particularly in quality items. 

Here are some more seasonal marketing days over the first half of this year from this list but I am sure everyone in an area will be able to take more than just these. 

Feb 14th Valentine's Day

March is considered the start of the Autumn wedding season

17th March Saint Patrick's Day

April has a few days

1st April's fool day (alway good for a laugh)
19th Good Friday
21st Easter Sunday
22nd Easter Monday
25th ANZAC Day
 
12th May Mother's Day

June is considered the start of the EOFY/Stocktake sale also good for Winter Sale

30th June End of Financial Year

There are also some community-minded days that you can leverage too as attaching your shop to a charitable cause works well as shoppers now increasingly choose to give their dollars to causes.  

Then there are Fun days

these often work well too in promoting your shop. For example, tomorrow is "Send a Card to a Friend Day", I am sure people that sell greeting cards could sell a few cards promoting this. 

Promotional packaging is all about making your product stand out from the crowd.

If you go to the supermarkets, you will see it filled with many special promotional packs.

You will find that they are a better way of moving dead stock then discounting. The idea is to take some stock that is not selling make a bundle with something that is selling well. 

The software tools to set it up can be found here. 

The improved single transaction detailed report which several people contributed too is proving extremely useful in monitoring how the promotion is going. See the blue arrow.

If you are going to do something like this, I suggest that you should try to make something about the packaging to make it look unique, eg special string or wrapping paper.  

One problem that people do get into is if they mix GST and GST free items together, is they produce can weird GST rates. I suggest that you do not do this mix.

See how you go and as always let me know.