The winter holiday season is rapidly approaching and it’s time to begin mapping out your holiday marketing plan. For the majority of small business owners, the holidays can make or break your business. Your customers are already flooded on a daily basis with promotions and deals from major retailers and internet sites. Just how can you, the hard-working small business owner prosper? By planning your marketing campaigns early, you'll make the most out of this holiday season. To help you to promote your business, I've come up with 40 unique marketing ideas to help you make the most out of this holiday season.
- Feature gift certificates or cards as an option for your shoppers who do not know what gifts to buy.
- Connect to local retailers and organizations that aren't direct competitors to cross-promote complementary products.
- Write a website article rounding up the most requested “wishlist” products.
- Build gift sets and categorized gift suggestions for him/her to make it much easier to get the perfect gift for people on their list.
- Tie in free assembly or a similar bonus with a purchase.
- Give discount vouchers with in-store purchases to encourage customers to come back and shop with you AFTER the holiday season is over.
- Feature a product or service of the day or week on your social media marketing feeds. For example, put up an image of the biggest selling product on your business Facebook page with a brief description of whom it would probably make a great gift for or why it will be a fantastic gift.
- Offer a free in-store service like gift-wrapping.
- Host a caption contest on Facebook. Take a picture of a gift-wrapped item and ask your viewers “Guess which one of our products is in the box” and award the item to the best guesser.
- Ask your customers to share humorous or moving holiday anecdotes on social media to boost engagement on your business’s page.
- Set up an open house event for customers and their friends to take a look at upcoming products and present a special price for attendees.
- Make the most of commerce holidays like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Small Business Saturday.
- Focus on providing great customer service throughout the season. An excellent small yet successful gesture like putting out a bowl of candy at the door or checkout is a great touch.
- Boost visual cues to emails to set a festive mood. It might be as easy as changing the color of the text to reflect a specific holiday, authoring creative copy, or adding themed holiday graphics.
- Join forces with local business owners or community organizations to create a small business event calendar for the holidays.
- Post a video tutorial to help your potential customers. For example, do you sell merchandise that’s challenging to wrap? Post a video on Instagram or Facebook on how to wrap it.
- Offer family discounts and package deals during the holiday season to give a boost to sales. This might also connect with large companies in close proximity that have a whole lot of employees.
- If you're an avid blog writer, write holiday-themed blogs. It’s a great way to connect with your audience with a timely subject in an engaging way.
- Come up with a holiday music play-list for customers and share it on social media.
- Contact your customers while they’re out and push a mobile strategy during the season. Increase the frequency of your social media posts to talk to your potential customers as they are doing their holiday shopping over the weekend.
- Send out custom-made greeting eCards from you and your team to your email list.
- Ask your followers in social media for recommendations of what products or services they'd like to see added to your store.
- The holiday season is all about giving back to the community. Work together with a non-profit. Consider giving a small portion of your profits to a local charitable organization and showcase the cause in your social profiles.
- Present a special for pre-orders and early holiday transactions.
- Have fun with social media and get your potential customers enthusiastic about the holiday season. Post fun topics like “What’s the perfect hiding place for gifts?”
- Supply gift bags, boxes, or bows to help make holiday shopping simpler for your potential customers.
- Mail postcards with special offers during non-card oriented holidays to stand out over your competitors.
- Set a festive feeling in your store with floral centerpieces or window displays.
- Share a family holiday recipe on social media to exhibit a personal side to your business. Tell the story about how you patiently waited all year long for it.
- Set up a toy or can drive drop-off at your retail store and publicize it on your social channels to get customers to visit your business.
- Consider using a different marketing angle. While people are shopping for gifts for their family and friends, you can encourage them to pick up a gift for themselves.
- Compile a list of the year’s best sellers (or your most popular services) and promote special offers on them.
- Reap the benefits of an expanding national trend boosting local small businesses and learn how you can participate in Small Business Saturday at the end of November.
- Create holiday-themed Pinterest boards to both encourage your customers and to flaunt your products and their usability or longevity.
- Change your Facebook cover page and social media banners on a daily basis to reflect a different holiday promotion.
- Produce a stress-free help guide for the holidays for your customers. Send it out to your email list, offer it as a video, or post it on your social media channels.
- Give out a holiday voucher or coupon to use for future visits with purchases to leave a good impression with store visitors that aren't purchasing anything yet.
- Run a Facebook photo contest for the top holiday-themed “Ugly Sweater”.
- Deliver a hot and friendly atmosphere at your store and try to make the shopping experience at your location as stress-free as possible.
- Feature free shipping or priority delivery with or without a minimum purchase.
