Have you planned for your holiday sales activity? It is not tool late still. If you are a small retail business, you probably make most of your profit in the last quarter. Have you got your advertising in place? Have you allocated your expense for local paper ads, brochure mail box drops, radio spots etc? Have you displayed your online advertising prominently in your website? And maybe some ads in Google AdWords to boost your sales? I was talking to a friend of mine today who is a financial planner. She said she is very busy with clients. The market turmoil has affected a whole bunch of people. They don’t know what to do with their money and she has seen a sudden spike in her business.  Her business is cyclical like most self employed people’s business. One month she has 4-5 clients and she makes good money. Next month no clients. It goes up and down. I suggested to her to get herself a website that she can update herself and keep it fresh with content. Looks like that whole niche has websites that never get updated! Some of the material I saw was dated more than a year old! Why do people get websites done and never update them at all. If used properly websites can be a good lead generating funnel. That way you will have clients round the year and not be cyclical like most self employed people. Staying in touch with your clients through email, blog, newsletter is the smart way to go. What I am getting at is if you are planning to get a boost to your holidays sales maybe this is a good time to get a fresh look for your website and update it with some fresh content, images and some good advertising. Think of even getting some quick traffic to your site with Google AdWords. Contact me if you want a good content management system set up with a fresh looking website. You can easily update the site yourself. Get good rankings in search engines and keep in touch with your clients as well.