A lot of the year’s big celebrations (and sales opportunities) are already behind us, but the biggest of them all is just around the corner. Christmas, Hanukkah and New Year’s are a great opportunity for small businesses to catch the eye of shoppers before the mad holiday rush by differentiating themselves from big brands.
If you have a small business, then surely you want to get on that holiday action, but perhaps feel overwhelmed by the abundance of options. Here are ten tips you can follow to effectively market your small business during the holidays.
Here are Some Great Holiday Small Business Promotion Ideas!
Act fast
Most big companies start marketing their brands for the holidays earlier each year, and you shouldn’t wait for all of your consumer bases to make up their minds and shop elsewhere. Get an early start this year by outlining what you’ll have on sale or the days on which your prices will be lower so that people will have a reason to keep your business in mind when the season actually starts.
Set goals
Meet early with your team to define what you want to accomplish during the holiday season before putting any strategies on paper so that you start on clear terms. While agreeing on sales goals is important, both minimally acceptable and stretch ones, don’t just focus on revenue as a marker for success. Try reaching new targets, such as followers on social media, customer engagement, and repeated business.
Mail it out
Email campaigns were seen as a dying trend a few years ago, but it’s actually now stronger and more effective than ever. Why? While people have become desensitized to billboards, ads and many other big-budget marketing tools, the majority of working adults likes to receive promotional emails from companies they do business at. A tool that can help you with that is MailChimp, which is free as long as you have under 2,000 subscribers and send less than 12,000 thousand messages per month.
Stay active on social media
Stay active on all your usual social platforms, especially on Facebook. Post plenty of material related to your upcoming holiday sales (but not so much that you bore them), and use Instagram to share some lifestyle photos of your products/premises in a casual light, something that engages people into looking you up. You can even try some targeted ads to more directly reach your consumer base, get creative!
Give your business some personality
Remember, one of your goals is to differentiate yourself from the big retailers or brands. That means that you can show a lot more personality when marketing your business, and infusing some all-inclusive holiday cheer into it can work wonders for you. You can do it on your digital platform, emails, or any other way you can think of, and the more attractive that identity is to your customers, the more business you’ll do during the holiday season.
Customer service comes first
Everyone’s a little stressed out during the holiday shopping season, both the shoppers and the store employees, but your focus should always be on going the extra mile with customer service so that shoppers or customers feel comfortable doing repeated purchases with you. You can extend this by offering free samples, discounts, free trials for your services, offering to wrap gifts as a complimentary service, free shipping for items over a certain price, and many more depending on your type of business.
Improve your online reviews
While people may trust big-name retailers easily, they might have some reserves about smaller businesses. The way many people decide on this is by way of online reviews, so make sure yours are very positive for the holiday season. You can ask customers to leave one after every purchase, especially if you helped them along before checkout.
Make your storefront stand out with decorations
If you have a physical location that’s important for your business, everyone will have a soft spot for a colorful and lovingly decorated storefront. Whether your business is online or not, you can never rule out catching the eye of passersby as an excellent way to get new customers. You don’t have to spend your entire budget on mile-long lights and 15-feet inflatable snowmen, just something to reflect the cheerfulness of the season.
Make a plan to quickly re-stock
If your plans worked out great, congratulations! This means that your business will receive plenty more traffic than usual during the holidays. Now, just make sure to have a backup plan to stock up your inventory in case your sales surpass what you had projected. That way you won’t leave a bad taste in a customer’s mouth that they’ll surely remember for the next holiday season.
Don’t hesitate to seek help from a local digital marketing agency for best advertising for small business either for keeping your business up to date or in front of the competition during the holiday season. Or any season!
Tags: best advertising for small business, small business promotion ideas
