We’re now down to the wire for this holiday shopping season. You have just a few remaining days to ring in as many sales and help as many holiday shoppers as possible. How are your sales looking for the season?

If you’d like to kick it up a notch here are a few tips you can implement by the time you open up tomorrow morning.

Offer free shipping
Whether you sell online or not, anything you can do to create greater convenience for your customers, the better. Offering free shipping is a great promotion to not only draw customers to shop with you, but also an opportunity to offer great customer service that will have customers returning to your store after the holiday season is over.

Events
Host a few special shopping events, like a men’s shopping night, a “We Love Procrastinators Day,” or a kids shopping event. If you don’t already offer gift wrapping, offer it for free at your special events. Offer free hot chocolate and cookies to give your events a festive flair.

Sampling
If you sell anything that can be sampled, try sampling a different item each day and promoting that you are offering free samples.

Price themed displays
Create a few tables or display areas in your store to arrange various gifts in a certain price range. Last-minute shoppers love this kind of convenience and helping them stay within their budget may actually spur them to spend more on other impulse items, which usually carry a larger sales margin for you.

Email marketing
Any last-minute promotions such as those listed above are all great reasons to send out an email blast—and don’t be shy about sending them out frequently (even once a day).

If you’ve been looking for a new retail concept that has less start-up costs than a traditional store front and can be profitable much more quickly, consider selling out of a truck. I recently read an article about a couple of entrepreneurs in Boston, MA, that renovated a van they bought off of Craigslist, outfitted it with laminate floors and wood paneled walls and created a rolling t-shirt and sneaker store. The van pumps out hip-hop tunes and sells streetwear as the guys announce their locations using Twitter. Could this be a retail concept that might work for you?

I’m passionate about promoting independent retailers, especially during the critical holiday shopping season. Here are a few points of inspiration to help you jump start your holiday marketing plan today.

Develop an online marketing campaign.
Be sure to include email marketing, your website, social media and your store enewsletter to communicate the exciting events and promotions that are going on in your store and community during the holiday season.

Utilize direct mail.
Direct mail is not dead, and postcards are very inexpensive to produce. Mail one to every customer in your database and drop one in every shopping bag. Use the postcard as an opportunity to promote all the holiday events that you have planned.

Host in-store promotions to take place throughout the holiday season.
Consumers will be on the lookout for good deals this season. Drive more traffic to your store with special in-store events (a class on how to trim the tree, event with Santa or special Men's Night Out).

Pick a special day, like Small Business Saturday, to offer a substantial store discount.
Consumers are conditioned to believe that after Thanksgiving retailers offer the good deals. Take advantage of all the buzz around SBS and offer a big discount on your customer's entire purchase (or on one item) on November 26th.

Develop strong visual merchandising displays.
Amazing holiday visual merchandising displays will ensure that your customers spend more time in the store because it's enjoyable. Plus, word travels fast and your customers will share their fun experience with family and friends, driving more traffic.

Create a fun holiday contest on Facebook.
Engage your customers through a fun and exciting promotion on Facebook. Choose a few lucky winners to receive gift certificates to your store.

Support a cause this holiday season and invite your customers to join you.
Non-profits will need all the help they can get. Select a charity and start a donation bin in your store, encouraging customers to buy something there to donate to the charity. Include signage above the donation area about the charity and think about offering a special discount on the charitable purchases.

With the end of the year looming, I’ve taken a few minutes to look back at this year’s goals for my business, and I encourage you to do that as well. Now is the time for us to get fired up, kick it in to high gear and finish this year strong.

Here are a few tips that I hope can inspire you to achieve a successful fourth quarter:

Consider your health and the health of your staff
For your business to finish the year strong and healthy, you must also be strong and healthy. Shore up your immune system, get enough rest and make it a point to eat well. Encourage your staff to do the same.

Know where you are
Take some time to examine your sales, financial and inventory reports so you know exactly where your business stands. Once you know where you stand, you can make plans for how you will achieve your business goals for the rest of the year.

Assess your amenities and services
It’s always easier and cheaper to grow per customer sales than to win new customers. Grow per customer sales by creating greater value for loyal customers, like offering free delivery, free gift wrapping or a free customer loyalty program.

Schedule an exclusive shopping event
Consider hosting a holiday shopping preview event for your best customers to boost holiday sales. Events are a great way to create exclusivity and excitement, especially during the holidays.

Cheers to a great end of the year!

Recently a retailer sent an email to me about wanting to initiate a "shop local" campaign. Even though I've blogged about this in the past, I thought I would bring it up again since it’s a fantastic tool. Launching a shop local campaign, whether on your own or by banding together with fellow retailers, is a great way to boost community awareness of your presence, increase community goodwill and boost your bottom line.

Here are the simple steps you can take to kick off your shop local campaign:

Decide who will participate
Ideally it would be great to have a large group of retailers getting together to launch a shop local campaign. You can go it alone, but the resources and time that others can pitch in will likely make your campaign more successful. Consider talking with the neighboring retailers and don’t forget to approach your local Chamber of Commerce or local business groups for help and support.

Create a theme
Shop local themes are as varied as the imaginations that create them. It’s most important to create a cohesive theme that all of your materials will revolve around. Some great ones I’ve seen are pointing out where local dollars ends up, such as three cents of every dollar goes to supporting the fire department. Another one profiles the people that own local businesses, highlighting that they are our neighbors.

Create promotional materials
If you have a budget to work with, consider creating your own promotional materials such as posters, window decals, bag stuffers and bumper stickers. There are also organizations that produce these types of materials like the American Independent Business Alliance.

Launch
Remember to promote your campaign with press releases, press alerts and invitations to the press for tours and launch receptions.

Measure success
The whole point here is to build your businesses, right? So, how will you know if it works? Create metrics that all participants will measure the success of the campaign by and be sure to have a post-mortem meeting to share with each other the success of the campaign, and how it could be improved in the future.

Here are a couple great resources for Shop Local ideas, inspiration, and materials: Amiba.net or The350Project.net

Yes, it’s hard to believe, but back-to-school season is happening and experts expect sales to be more robust this year. According to an online article at CNBC.com analysts are predicting back-to-school sales will grow 6.2 percent over last year making this the best year since 2006. This can be a perfect opportunity for you to jump-start your store sales and begin creating some positive momentum headed into the all-important holiday season.

Here are a few tips:

Make sure to have the right products
Take a fresh look at your product selection and make sure you are carrying the latest, most unique, most novel items for back-to-school. Make any inventory changes to better meet this year’s customer demands and desires. Make sure your inventory is adequate so you don’t run out of important items. Your unique, thoughtful product selection will bring customers in and the service you provide will keep them coming back.

Provide the value-add your customers want
Speaking of service, what are the value-added services you can provide for your back-to-school shoppers. Whether it’s having the school supply lists for your local schools or free delivery. Providing the service that your customers want will help create loyal customers who will hopefully spend their holiday shopping dollars in your store too.

Set the stage for sales
Create a welcoming, easy to navigate store layout that helps back-to-school shoppers find exactly what they are looking for. Spend some time out on the floor observing how your shoppers move through your store and taking a fresh look at your store layout. Create some in-store excitement by engaging as many of the five senses as you can.

Promote your efforts
Now that you have a stellar product selection, great value added services and a well-presented store, it’s time to promote it all. Launch a campaign that will bring shoppers in such as a free-gift with purchase. ITunes gift cards are popular with young people and parents alike! Try to avoid deep discounting until later on in the back-to-school season. Start promoting your products, services and special deals online through your website, social media, blog, and email newsletter. Also, contact your local papers offering yourself as a back-to-school expert. Write a press release about the top back-to-school items (that your store carries, of course). Hopefully they will feature you in a local back-to-school article.

Looking to boost sales with your customers? Here are a few tips:

Be a retailer without borders.
If your customers are not coming to you, perhaps you can go to them. Consider setting up a table at a local farmer's market, street festival or swap meet. Consider hosting a sidewalk sale or your own mini-festival outdoors.

Give customers a new reason to come in.
Come up with a compelling promotion to bring customers back, such as a free gift with purchase or a shopping party that has free food and drinks to all shoppers. Don’t forget to market your promotion widely. Once customers are in your store, increase per transaction sales numbers by including great impulse buys at point of purchase and promoting items on the wall directly behind checkout.

Generate buzz.
Slower summer days are a great opportunity to step up marketing and promotion efforts. Consider using print advertising in your local newspapers and magazines. And step up your public relations by writing some press releases. Of course, remember to keep up with your online marketing efforts (blog, social media and email newsletter) too. Perhaps you can try some new tactics and see what works.

In a move that will offer your customers another way to pay for your products online, in-store and via mobile, I read a few days ago that AmEx will begin offering a new digital payment system, called Serve. It is basically a PayPal-like service with an AmEx card for offline purchases. Serve allows customers to send and receive digital payments online; and for offline purchases, customers will also have a Serve card that customers can load, much like loading a PayPal account, and use the card to pay for offline purchases. There are some minor differences with PayPal but many of the opinions I’ve read believe that the Serve card may help digital payments become more ubiquitous with the American Express name backing it up.

What does this mean for you? First, if you accept American Express cards you can accept the Serve card, too, and promoting your acceptance online may make online shoppers just that much more confident in buying from you online. Also, from what I’ve read, American Express says that merchant fees to accept Serve are less than those for traditional American Express cards.

You can check it out for yourself by visiting the website.

As you may have heard, recent news reports stated that according to MasterCard Advisors SpendingPulse, which tracks retail spending, retail sales grew 5.5 percent in the 50 days before Christmas, beating forecasts and beating last year’s sales. The report said that apparel, jewelry and luxury goods were the biggest winners, but gains were seen in just about every category.

From what I’ve been hearing and reading from independent retailers, although most had a good Christmas season, they did not experience the best sales since 2007 as MasterCard’s report touts. Some of this may be due to bad weather on the coasts, but if you did not experience the best holiday season in years, you’re not alone. It will be interesting to see what subsequent reports on retail sales numbers will say in the coming weeks. I’d be also interested in hearing about your holiday sales trends.

I’m not quite ready to say we’re out of the woods yet in terms of the economic and retail recovery. I predict that 2011 will be a year that retailers remain cautious, as do consumers and until more people get back to work and have more disposable income to spend. Although the news sounds encouraging, it also serves as a good reminder to keep using all the great lessons we learned during the recession: to value each customer, hire great people, pinch every penny and creatively promote our stores.

November’s Retail Sales numbers were released this week by the Commerce Department showing a 0.8 percent rise, the greatest increase since November 2007, just before the recession started. And last week, the NRF (National Retail Federation) predicted that overall holiday sales will be up 3.3%.

The Commerce Department’s report says apparel sales were up the most followed by sporting goods, hobby items, books and music. Internet and mail-order sales were up by an encouraging 2.1 percent. Are you selling online or via catalog? If not, you should consider adding catalog or ecommerce sales to your store in the New Year.

As we head into the final holiday shopping weekend before Christmas I hope you are hearing the plentiful jingling of your cash register.

Stay tuned, I’m working on my next blog post with some final tips to boost last minute holiday sales.