MIke Iedema by MIke Iedema

Businesses both big and small thrive during the holidays. The holidays are simply the perfect opportunity to grow your brand. This is the time of the year when people are most willing to part with their hard-earned money. Small business can take advantage of the holidays just as well as big corporations. Holiday marketing for small businesses involves being creative and paying attention to trends. This article lists six holiday marketing trends to pay attention to.

Focus campaigns around November and December

Research shows that businesses make most of their sales during the last two months of the year. Holiday shoppers can significantly boost your numbers. November and December sales can help you meet or even surpass your annual sales targets. This is simply because of how packed these two months are with holidays. Plan your marketing strategies ahead of time. Your marketing efforts should be going into overdrive during the holidays.

Donate a percentage of your sales to charity

Share the holiday cheer by donating to charity. But don't just donate to charity and announce it on social media. Instead, let your customers indirectly participate by promising to donate a percentage of your sales to a charity of your choice. Doing this incentivizes customers to purchase from your site by making them feel that they are contributing to a good cause. This approach is much more effective if you aim for a local charity. Choose a charity that is well-known by your community.

Offer holiday perks and promos

During the holidays, most of your sales are going to be from gifts people purchase for their friends or loved ones. Draw your customers in with perks such as free shipping, free gift wrapping or by promising to shorten delivery dates. Make a point to emphasize that these perks and promos are for a limited time only. Display a countdown timer on your website to encourage urgency. But be prepared. Get your stock and packaging ready for the inevitable influx of sales. You don't want to fail on any promises you make.

Reward repeat customers

Encourage customers to keep clicking that "Buy Now" button on your website. You should be aiming to make sure that your customers make multiple purchases. This is especially important during the holidays. You can encourage sales by offering small discounts the more items a person purchases. You can also offer free shipping or free gift wrapping after a certain dollar amount is met.

Prepare holiday-specific landing pages

Prepare holiday-specific landing pages ahead of time. Landing pages are always great for driving conversions. To make them more effective, consider creating landing pages tailored specifically to certain holidays. Create landing pages themed specifically for holidays such a Christmas, Valentine's Day, or Thanksgiving. More importantly, don't forget to pay attention to holidays from other cultures as well. Don't just rely on generic holiday landing pages.

Prepare holiday social media posts ahead of time

Social media will always be a staple part of your holiday marketing campaign. Make things easier for yourself by queuing your posts on social media ahead of time. Most platforms like Tumblr allow you to schedule posts. If a platform does not have this feature natively, a service probably exists to let you do just that. Hootsuite and Buffer are great examples of these services. They are fairly affordable, and you can even try them for free.

There is a nearly endless number of ways to market your business during the holidays. Social media and content creation are just the beginning. If you really want your brand or business to get noticed during this time of the year, you'll need to be creative. Keep an eye out for trends and find a way to apply these trends in your next marketing campaign.


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