Online Holiday Marketing Tips for Small Businesses

The holiday season is the busiest selling time for many businesses. If you haven't started, now's the time to plan your holiday marketing campaigns to maximize your seasonal selling success!

Here are a few marketing tips to help you make the most of your online holiday sales:

1. Holiday Season Kick Off

The official holiday season begins right after Thanksgiving. Keep in mind these key shopping dates when planning your marketing campaigns:

• Black Friday 
• Small Business Saturday 
• Cyber Monday 

2. What's the Deal?

Your customers and prospects will be looking for great holiday offers, deals and discounts.  Put some thought into creating the most compelling offer for your target audience.

Try attracting new customers by offering holiday specials on daily deal sites such as Groupon and Amazon Local.  Offer deals that are only redeemable for a short time and extend discounts on high margin products or services.

Email continues to drive traffic and sales. It's consumers' preferable method of contact with brands. Use email to offer holiday coupons to your targeted list of customers and prospects. Treat your customers to specials, free shipping and secret sales tailored just for them.

3. Social-ize

Social campaigns should play a significant role in your holiday marketing. Your customers and prospect will be scanning social networks for gift ideas and the best offers.  It's crucial to create a social posting schedule to ensure that you don't miss a beat. Map out all of your posts for the social networks that are right for your business during the weeks leading up to and through the holiday season.

Remember to balance your promotional posts with useful information. Offer product advice, tips, and include fun stuff like videos and photo contests to keep your audience engaged.

4.  Stay Connected

Don't forget to build your email list! Capture contact information of any new customers and prospects and ask permission to send specials, tips and newsletters, etc. throughout the year so you can drive business beyond the holiday season.

Need help pulling your holiday marketing campaigns together? Contact Jocelyn Murray to set up a complimentary consultation to see how I can help!

How to Use Custom Facebook Tabs for Marketing

If you're using a Facebook Page for business, are Facebook Tabs part of your marketing strategy?  The Tabs (or Apps as they're sometimes called) are the row of boxes under the Cover Photo that allow you to give your followers are better experience on your Page (only four show up in the top row but click the small arrow to the right of the boxes to see up to twelve).  Drive traffic to Tabs through your News Feed or your ads to make your campaigns more productive.

Promote Your Brand and Campaigns
Create a Tab that prompts visitors to "Like" your Page in order to download information, enter a contest or see a video. Use Tabs to make special offers that tie in with your current campaigns. I've seen restaurants drive traffic to a Tab that offers a free appetizer for all who "Like" their Page.  Link prospects directly to your custom Tab through your Facebook ads, Tweets or other social media posts.

As I did on my Facebook Page, use Tabs to build your email list. My "Join My List" Tab encourages all my Facebook visitors to sign up for my marketing tips emails. To encourage action on other social media pages, see how I set up a Tab that links to a sampling of my Twitter account and encourages people to follow me there too. 

Tabs can be used for almost anything.  See how brands like Coca Cola and Target use Tabs for creative ideas.

Check out applications such as ShortStack which let you easily create your custom Tabs to meet specific needs.  Or let us help you incorporate Tabs into your next marketing campaign.