As a business owner, you’ll know full well that your busiest times of year are during the holidays. If you’re based in India or a country with a large Indian population, you’ll want to position yourself for increased sales during Diwali.
Diwali is one of the most well-known and widely-celebrated holidays associated with Indian culture. It’s primarily a Hindu festival, but it’s also been incorporated in various forms in other religions in the region. What ties them all together is the use of light as a motif, as Diwali celebrates the victory of light over darkness.
In order to take full advantage of the festive spirit, your company needs to actively and publically involve itself in celebrations in the lead up to Diwali. You can do this by utilising templates on easy-to-use sites like Adobe Express to make a Diwali poster to hang in your shop window, discount Diwali-related items and turbo-charge your marketing budget in the days leading up to the festival. Participating in holidays is one of the best ways of connecting with your audience and personalising your customers’ experience of your brand
So, with Diwali coming up and millions of potential customers posed to celebrate it, here are some ways you can prepare your business to make the most of the holiday.
Run Diwali-Specific Campaigns
Marketing is the heart of your business. Prepare for the upcoming Diwali season by designing holiday-specific campaigns. This can involve running updated Google Ads and starting various social media campaigns using captivating Diwali-related visuals to drum up interest and attract scrollers to your site or store
SEO plays an important role in online advertising. During Diwali, people will be searching up terms related to the holiday. You can prepare for this by creating relevant Diwali-themed content both on your own website and on third-party blogs linking back to your website including Diwali-related keywords
A big part of online marketing is being able to advertise discounts. It’s always a good idea to offer price reductions on holiday-related items, though this will depend on what sort of business you are and what you sell. Get creative and think of how you can tie your products to concepts surrounding the Diwali themes of celebration.
Plan Your Budget and Inventory Around Diwali
As a business, you’ll need to anticipate a greater demand for your goods and services during holidays like Diwali. Because of this, you’ll need to increase your inventory to make sure you don’t run out of stock. Speak with your suppliers well beforehand to make sure they can handle the extra production. You may also need to rent third party warehouses to store all this extra stock
On the budgeting side, you’ll want to allocate extra funds for holiday overtime pay, increased marketing spend and the costs of keeping more stock. Weight up when your busiest times are likely to be, and consider planning your opening hours around them, to off-set the cost of higher staffing rates.
Dress Up Your Store to Celebrate The Festival of Lights
In order to let your customers know that you’re fully invested in Diwali, decorate your store with visuals from the season. These can include rangoli, lamps and candles, posters and certain flowers. The most important thing to keep in mind is that Diwali is a happy festival: the more colourful your decorations, the better. And the more eye-catching and over-the-top, the more people will simply have to stop and take a look inside.
Decorating your store is for more than your customers: it can also spread festive spirit among your employees, especially those from a culture that celebrates Diwali. After all, you’re working around a holiday, so help your staff get into the right spirit, and it will undoubtedly affect your customers’ shopping experience too when interacting with them.
You’ll also want to make sure your website is ready for Diwali from a design perspective. With e-commerce being more relevant than it ever previously has, your site acts almost as a second storefront for you. Incorporate the same visual motifs to your online store.
Prepare Your Workforce
With all these steps in place, you can expect an influx of sales during Diwali. Anticipate this by making sure your workforce is ready. This involves early planning and creative problem solving
You may have to ask some of your employees to work overtime during Diwali. Frame it as an opportunity to make more money and see if anyone is willing to take on more shifts before you allocate a rota if that’s how your business operates. But be respectful; your workers may also want some time off to celebrate with their families. Get creative with how you allocate the workload, pay your workers extra for working through the key holidays dates and remain sensitive to any specific needs they might have
For businesses with more standard working hours where leave is given, ensure you have dates in place far in advance, so you can adjust the workload and make sure deadlines are met or moved around accordingly.
A possible solution to an increased workload is to hire part-time workers just for Diwali. You’ll find lots of people, including students, who’d be willing to work a few hours here and there for some extra cash. You may be able to retain them for additional future seasonal or festive work demands.
Conclusion
Diwali is one of the most important holidays in Indian culture. It’s also one of the most widely celebrated, not just in India, but over the world. This being the case, it’s absolutely crucial that your business incorporates Diwali into its marketing and other business activities; both to show your company as a global player, but also to accelerate sales.
In this article, we’ve given four practical suggestions for preparing your business for the upcoming Diwali season. By boosting your inventory and budget, running specialised marketing campaigns, preparing your workforce and decorating both your physical store and your website, you’ll be giving yourself the best possible chance to make the most of Diwali.
