It’s coming down to the wire but you still have holiday merchandise to move. Although you may have visions of inventory collecting dust dancing in your head, you still have time to pull off a holiday sales victory. Here are some tips to help successfully make a last push for holiday sales.

Hold a “Days of Christmas” Sale

A “Days of Christmas” sale can be a great way to not only move merchandise, but also get customers excited about the deals they know are on the horizon, says Jen Linehan of Beautiful Blooms by Jen in Sylvania, Ohio.

“We do a 12 Days of Christmas promotion, so in the 12 days leading up to Christmas, we have different specials and it’s something we post ahead of time,” she says. “So, if someone’s really looking for ornaments, they know to come in on ornament day. It’s something that customers are able to plan on and the deals are all different.”

Linehan publishes the deals on the business’s social media accounts, and passes out a calendar in store so people can plan for those sales.

Leverage Technology

For Monique Garcia of Mitten Floral in Wyoming, Michigan, a large part of the push for last-minute holiday sales takes place on social media, which she has found to be extremely worthwhile.

“When it comes to advertising, I really think the power of social media is just so great,” she says. “That has really been where we see our sales… I would say the majority of our customers are from social media, whether that be Instagram or Facebook. We’ve had people coming from over an hour away just to visit our shop because they saw us on social media.”

Similarly, when Jennifer Barnard of Tillie’s Flower Shop in Wichita, Kansas, wants to get certain items out the door, she places them prominently on the homepage of her website, which helps these products garner more attention so they sell quickly.

“I would say the majority of our sales come from items on our homepage, and then when you go to our Christmas category, which is the top row, that product placement always outsells the others, so I tend to put higher-dollar items on there or items I want to get rid of.”

Pricing Strategically

Sales are best saved for items that aren’t hot sellers, or popular items that a shop has in large volume, Linehan says.

“The things that I don’t put on sale are things like our hat items or gloves,” she says. “People come every year to look at our gloves and people love them, so that’s an item that’s not typically on sale at all. There are certain ornaments that I know are probably going to fly off the shelf, but I have so many ornaments that I can still put ornaments on sale.”

Barnard cautions that florists should focus more on profits than on sales.

“What we do is always make sure we get our full profit margin, but to the consumer, it looks like they’re getting a sale,” she says. “We look for deals on flowers and containers and then pass on that deal to the consumer.”

For instance, she will look to flower auctions to get deals on flowers, or buy containers on clearance but use her regular markup to determine price.

“We’re basically passing that savings on to the consumer, but we are still getting our full profit margin,” she says.

Kenya McCullum is a contributing writer for the Society of American Florists.