- 7 Holiday Promotion Ideas For Your Small Businesses
- 7 Holiday Promotion Ideas For Your Small Business Plan
- 7 Holiday Promotion Ideas For Your Small Business Online
- 7 Holiday Promotion Ideas For Your Small Business Cards
Nobody likes missing out on something big.
During the holiday season, marketing your small business could be a particularly arduous task due to time and marketing expertise challenges. As a small business, CMA understands those marketing challenges firsthand, especially during the holidays. Here are 5 holiday marketing ideas for small businesses on a budget.
Small Business Saturday is a community event, so go out of your way to celebrate other small businesses participating in the shopping day. Re-tweeting them and sharing their social content is a. Small Business Saturday is over, but it’s not the only opportunity for local small businesses to capture customers’ dollars this holiday season. 22 Holiday Marketing Ideas for Local Businesses. Get together with a few other local (but not competitive) shops and pool your resources to develop a small (10 items or so) buyer’s guide with unique gift ideas for different people on your list. Have each business pick something they sell in their store to feature as a gift idea for a specific persona (e.g. The Marketing O’ the Green — Another holiday with religious significance that’s been westernized, St. Patrick’s Day is an obvious marketing target for pubs and restaurants. But the tradition of wearing green on the day lends itself to all sorts of other promotions that apparel retailers can get in on.
But if you haven’t started planning your holiday promotions, you’re already late to the party.
And with holiday retail sales reaching over $730.2 billion in 2019, your business cannot afford to be shortchanged this holiday season.
If you’ve been sitting on the sidelines, it’s time to step up with confidence.
Create an irresistible holiday promotion and get the word out with a professional holiday email template.
Try out Constant Contact’s holiday email templates for free! Sign up for a free 60-day trial.
Need some inspiration for your holiday promotion? Here are five ideas that successful small business owners have implemented themselves:
1. Early bird offer
This 3 Kittens Needle Arts Small Business Saturday email campaign encouraged customers to come out and shop with them by thanking them for their patronage. In addition to serving tea and treats, the yarn store held a special poinsettia giveaway for the first 25 customers who spent $50 or more.
2. Holiday gift guide
Help your customers find the perfect gift with a holiday gift guide. Include a variety of ideas for different family members and price points.
Fashion retailer, No Rest for Bridget, included a variety of gift ideas in their holiday email — from jackets to shoes to jewelry.
3. Gift card bonus
Entice customers to buy gift cards from your business by offering a special bonus.
Prezo Grille & Bar rewarded customers who bought gift cards by offering a bonus $25 for every $100 spent. This provided the perfect win-win for shoppers who wanted to give and receive!
4. Free shipping
Drive orders on by offering free shipping.
You can even set a specific price point, like William Roam, to tempt shoppers into adding an extra item or two to their cart.
5. Photo contest
Have some fun with your customers this season by running a holiday photo contest, like Tasty Burger.
They created a special “12 Days of Ugly Sweaters” contest to inspire customers to show off their holiday fashion and enter to win a $150 gift card.
You have all the ideas you need for a great holiday promotion.
Now, all you need is to put your ideas into action.
Sign up for a free Constant Contact trial today to choose the perfect template and customize it for your business. Already have an account? Log in to put it to work!
It’s the beginning of November, which means conversations about Christmas haven’t just started, they’ve been going on for weeks.
My local Lowe’s started rolling out the Christmas decorations in October.
While I can’t stand how early the holiday season starts these days, for your business it’s essential that you plan ahead to ensure you get maximum value out of a season that makes up a huge portion of many businesses' annual revenue.
Here are some ways you can do that for your business.
1. Use Facebook to Remarket Holiday Specials to Existing Customers
You do keep an active email list of your clients, don’t you?
If not, forget the New Year’s resolution and start building one now so you have it to use next year.
If so, it’s time to use it.
One of the most powerful advertising features on Facebook is the ability to create custom audiences.
Facebook custom audiences allow you to import your email list and serve ads to anyone on the list that has a Facebook account using the same email address.
(This particular feature is far more useful for B2C companies as most B2B organizations likely have databases filled with work email addresses and not the personal emails that would be attached to someone’s Facebook account.)
7 Holiday Promotion Ideas For Your Small Businesses
Once you've created your custom audience, create your ad targeting the new list of customers you just uploaded.
Now you're only paying to show your ad to users who you know are interested in purchasing what you sell.
2. Then Do the Same Thing On Google!
Google offers the same ability to target users based on their email address.
These don’t have to only be Gmail addresses or accounts, Google will try their best to match any email addresses you upload (and they do a pretty good job).
To create one, click on the 'Shared Library' option on the left hand side of your AdWords account, then click 'Audiences' -> '+ Remarketing List' -> 'Customer emails' to upload your list.
After you've created your list, create your ad targeting the new audience you just created.
3. Take Advantage of “The Big Four”
The four big events to prepare for are Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday, and Giving Tuesday for non-profits.
All of them occur within a 5-day window so this is where planning ahead goes a long way.
Black Friday doesn’t have to apply only to large businesses.
People simply expect a great deal, but there’s nothing that says the smallest of businesses can’t find a way to offer those and take advantage of massive amounts of buyer traffic.
The key is not to give anything away for free.
Businesses exist to make a profit, so if you’re going to cut prices to the bone, you need to make sure you get something in return.
Remember the discussion of an email list earlier?
Maybe your Black Friday deals are only available to those who are on your email list.
Just be sure you have a way to allow them to sign up in the store!
7 Holiday Promotion Ideas For Your Small Business Plan
You could do the same thing targeting only those who check in to your store on Facebook, like your page, write a review on Google or Yelp!, etc.
Your other option is to only offer deals on loss-leaders or other items that encourage or require repeat business.
If you sell a product that requires individuals to regularly purchase supplies or services from you to continue using the product they bought (think the Swiffer Sweeper, Diaper Genie, DIRECTV, etc.), it’s pretty easy to justify selling these things at cost one day a year and make up for it on the repeat business from everyone that got such an amazing deal.
You can execute your Small Business Saturday and Cyber Monday deals in much the same way.
Just be sure to get word out about the great deals you’re going to be offering ahead of time.
Use social media, use your email list, hang up flyers, send out postcards, advertise in the paper, and definitely advertise in the local discount circular where buyers are already hunting for great deals!
For Giving Tuesday, set up a campaign with a goal to try to achieve throughout the day. Engage your followers and fans in helping you reach your goal.
Make sure you ask them to share the campaign with everyone they know, providing all of the creative and material they need to engage their own contacts.
Work with one or more of your larger or more regular donors to set the campaign up as a matching campaign.
People are much more likely to give with the knowledge that their dollars are going twice as far, and they're more likely to share if there's a consequence to not achieving the goal (i.e. you won't get the matching funds).
4. Develop a Holiday Buying Guide
Get together with a few other local (but not competitive) shops and pool your resources to develop a small (10 items or so) buyer’s guide with unique gift ideas for different people on your list.
Have each business pick something they sell in their store to feature as a gift idea for a specific persona (e.g. “For the New Mom” or “Great Gifts for Dad”) and work with a designer to put together a small catalog featuring the items, the price, and, of course, where they can purchase it!
Pool your mailing lists, use the USPS’s EDDM (Every-Door Direct Mail) service, and/or buy a new list of targeted prospects.
Develop a digital version with links to your website(s) and distribute it to all of the participating stores to put on their own websites and share on social media too.
7 Holiday Promotion Ideas For Your Small Business Online
5. Take Advantage of Post-Holiday Deals
The holiday madness is over? Great!
Almost everything is cheaper after the holidays when retailers are either looking to make room for new inventory or are simply trying to generate some revenue after everyone blew their paychecks in December.
One of the best (and least publicized) deals you can pick up is cheap advertising.
7 Holiday Promotion Ideas For Your Small Business Cards
Just about every advertising outlet will offer deals in January.
Radio stations need to fill airtime, magazines and newspapers have excess inventory, as do websites and social media platforms.
For the traditional outlets, it’s important to have an idea of what the rates are the rest of the year so you can decide if you should negotiate further or jump on the deal of a lifetime before it goes away.
On digital outlets, as long as your campaigns are still running you should get better deals almost by default since most digital inventory is sold at auction to the highest bidder.
Less bidders generally means lower prices; just be sure to adjust your bids on all of your campaigns after the holidays to ensure you get the best rates possible!