This year, holiday season sales are projected to reach $1.328 trillion, representing a modest 4.5 percent increase over 2022. With minimal anticipated growth, competition for holiday season sales will be fierce, especially for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) going up against larger competitors with deeper pockets.

Fortunately, ISVs and VARs can help their SMB clients make the most of milestone opportunities throughout the season to help reach revenue goals.

• Early Shopping
  
  Consumers are starting their holiday shopping earlier than ever, with one in four beginning shopping in September. But even if they don’t launch holiday campaigns until Halloween, it’s not too late to help them capture sales. Encourage them to use customer relationship management (CRM) software to capture data about their customers and use it to target campaigns to the shoppers with text or email messages. This will help them deliver the right message at the right time to the right buyer for the best outcome.
  
  Another strategy that can help merchants capture revenues early in the holiday season is implementing an omnichannel gift card solution. With 76 percent of Americans purchasing gift cards in the last year — 40 percent of which were digital – merchants can meet the annual demand for holiday gift card giving with a flexible solution this year. An omnichannel gift card solution allows consumers to buy, load, send, and use gift cards conveniently on any channel.
  
  
• Black Friday and Small Business Saturday
  
  Big box retailers often rely on price-slashing to win over Black Friday shoppers. However, SMBs often can’t compete on price, making it difficult for SMBs to gain an edge during that annual shopping event. So, it’s common for SMBs to offer Black Friday deals but to focus more on optimizing sales on Small Business Saturday. It’s a day set aside for shoppers to support small businesses, and many will make a point of visiting their favorite merchants and spending some of their holiday budgets that day. Help your merchants leverage Shop Small marketing materials to spread their message to their customers and communities.
  
  Additionally, ISVs and VARs should remind merchants to capitalize on the social shopping trend. Salesforce predicts that social media will be ten times more effective than traditional marketing in winning holiday season sales. Couple this with the fact that one in five consumers under 30 plan to do half or more of their shopping through social media platforms, and the opportunity is ripe for the picking for SBM merchants deploying the right strategies and technology.
  
  
• Cyber Monday/Cyber Week
  
  Online shopping grew last year, reaching a historic high of $211.7 billion in holiday season sales. SMB merchants must offer fast, convenient, and friction-free e-commerce experiences,
  
  It starts with a user-friendly website. It should deliver a great experience whether users are shopping on a laptop, PC, or mobile device. Remember, more than half of all online sales are made from mobile devices, so prioritizing the mobile experience is crucial. Ecommerce checkout experiences should also be fast and easy, with as few clicks as possible, and allow shoppers to use their preferred payment methods.
  
  Payment tokens can help merchants provide a faster and more convenient checkout experience for returning consumers by saving payment data securely so that customers can make future purchases without having to re-enter their card data. 
  
  
• Last-Minute Shoppers
  
  Last year, 78 percent of consumers used buy online, pickup in-store (BOPIS) when they placed online orders – especially shoppers who waited until the last minute when online ordering and delivery were no longer an option.
  
  ISVs and VARs can help SMB merchants prepare for last-minute shoppers with technology solutions that seamlessly enable the fulfillment options consumers demand. This may require you to expand your portfolio and form new partnerships to provide solutions that not manage not only sales and payments also fulfillment and more complex inventory management.
  
  
  

Deploy the Right Tools for the Job

Taking the role of trusted business advisor this holiday season will help you build stronger relationships with your SMB clients – and help them stay viable through what’s sure to be a competitive season. The right solutions and integrated payments will help SMB merchants make the most of every opportunity to capture more holiday season sales this year.

To learn more about an omnichannel payments platform that helps make it happen, contact us.