What You Need To Be Doing In Your Business This August-September

WEEK 1 / AUG. 1-5

MARKETING Organize your
back-to-school campaign. List
specials on your website by the
end of this week; email your first
promotion early next week.

ONLINE Clean up your digital
presence by closing down old
accounts. If you tend to use the
same username, services such as
namechk.com can help you track
down your errant accounts.

WEEK 2 / AUG. 7-12

OPERATIONS Launch a “wow
project” to add something special
to every step of your sales
process, from your greeting to
check out. Ask your staff for
examples of the best customer
experiences they’ve ever had to
get you started.

STRATEGY Holiday-season
planning starts. Contact community
organizations to get a feel
for potential fundraisers or other
ways you can help out. Make sure
your mailing list is up to date, and
begin thinking about this year’s
holiday cards.

WEEK 3 / AUG. 15-19

MARKETING Start looking into
gifts to hand out with receipts
during the holidays. Mini bullet
lip balms and store logo golf balls
always go over well.

OPERATIONS Watch how
customers move through your
store. Take advantage of your
customers’ natural instincts
to strategically place cases and
collections.

WEEK 4 / AUG.22-26

MARKETING Contact other local
small businesses to see if they
are interested in some reciprocal
social media action via Pinterest.
You could have boards like Coffee
Shops We Love, Florists that
Inspire Us and Bakers that Know
Our Weakness.

WEEK 5 / AUG. 29-SEPT. 2

MARKETING Design a postcard
for Grandparents’ Day (Sept. 11)
with an offer inviting customers
to your website for special promotions.

WEEK 6 / SEPT. 5-9

MANAGEMENT Develop a
standardized gripe response
formula. Be sure everyone on the
team knows how to execute it
perfectly.

STAFF It’s time for the second of
your biannual employee reviews.

WEEK 7 / SEPT. 12-16

BUYING Vision Expo West starts
Sept. 14. Encourage staff to build
ties with trade publications at
the show. Being featured in these
magazines helps distinguish you
from your competition and the
relationships developed help you
stay on top of what’s working for
other retailers.

TEAM BUILDING Life isn’t all
work, and a trade show shouldn’t
be either. If you’ve brought other
team members, why not take a
day to hang out at the pool?

WEEK 8 / SEPT. 19-23

TRAINING Have the showgoers
train the rest of your staff in what
they learned when you return. A
two- to three-page summary can
pay huge dividends.

MERCHANDISING Are your
windows working effectively
to support your sales? Here is a
good rule of thumb: If your store
gets foot traffic, use small props;
if it gets drive-by traffic, oversized
props and graphics work best.

WEEK 9 / SEPT. 26-30

INTERNET Today’s customers
demand a frustration-free
experience on all their devices.
Test your website on different
devices using 3G, 4G, and Wi-Fi
connections.

MARKETING Opt to send
“green” holiday greeting cards
this year. Recycled paper, sugar-cane
by product, soy ink … that
sort of thing.

This article originally appeared in the July 2016 edition of INVISION.