It’s the most wonderful time of the year!

Isn’t that what they say? There’s a reason that Christmas stuff arrives before Halloween in the stores. They want you to start thinking about the holiday season RIGHT NOW!

According to Deloitte: there is $3.8 trillion about to be spent on the holidays, and it’s time to leverage yourself to get your share of that bounty.  Now, of that $3.8 trillion expectation, here’s how they expect it to distribute:

• 65% will be influenced by sales and promotions
• 73% are likely to be influenced by price when selecting a retailer
• 49% plan to start their gift purchase with an online search
• 59% of consumers intend to make an online purchase for holiday items
• 94% plan to take advantage of free shipping offers
• $165.8 million will be spent between Thanksgiving and Cyber Monday
• 71% of smartphone owners plan to shop on their phone, and 40% say they will be researching products and prices on their phones.
• 3% increased revenue expected for November and December (from last year)

Are you ready to claim your piece of the holiday pie? Let’s get primed with some great ideas:

Get your website in the spirit of the holidays

Help your customers get into the holiday spirit with some decoration right on your web site and social media. Show off your brand personality with decorations with holiday colors and elements for the holidays. Customers love to see pages sharing their holiday spirit. 

Leverage your influencers and professional bloggers

Maybe you don’t follow any, but there are droves of people who do, especially Millennials and GenZ. These bloggers often post the holiday gift guides of their favorite products. You can get your product featured on their list of favorite things, and sometimes it’s as easy as sending them a free sample of your product. 

Get your audience involved in your marketing

An excellent way to get people excited about your company and a buzz around your product is by the collaboration of your own customers, otherwise known as user-generated content (UGC). From Google’s daily home page art to Starbucks’ campaign for original drawings to use in holiday cup designs, they drummed up huge electricity around customer engagement. 

Dream up something genius, creative, and fun for your brand and create a challenge or contest to build excitement and engagement from your social media followers. The next thing you know, your community of followers starts to grow at an unbelievable rate.

Continue the spirit of giving by partnering with a charity

The holidays are also a peak season for charities, as people give good tidings and help those in need. Give yourself an edge by doing good in your community. Pair a charitable element to holiday purchases, encouraging customers to do business with you as a way of contributing to community causes. It’s a win for your customer and a win for you, too!

Watch your exposure grow like crazy with a social media giveaway

Offer a contest or giveaway to ignite a frenzy of activity on your social media. Whether they use their prize as a gift for someone or themselves, it’s the increased exposure and new customers that is their gift to you as they like and share your page. For your legal protection, make sure to be clear and very specific with your rules and requirements of the contest.

Got email addresses – start some holiday email campaigns

Start with getting your email audience linked into your social media and that contest giveaway we just mentioned. Start with a campaign highlighting a holiday gift guide featuring your company’s products and services. Expand your campaign to run a few rounds specifying “Gifts for her,” “Gifts for kids,” or “Our best stocking stuffers.” You get the idea. Wrap up your season with “Last minute gifts for the procrastinator that we can ship right now” with your easiest to pack and ship items.

Another tip for your email audience: They are already primed to your brand, and likely customers already. Give them a bonus sneak preview opportunity for being valued customers already to boost your sales before the big day.

Grow your email list with a holiday lead magnet

A lead magnet is an exchange of something valuable in exchange for email information to add them to your email marketing lists or qualify and nurture those contacts into sales. You place this magnet on your website or social media to attract contacts.

This lead magnet should have three qualities:

1. It is action-driven, meaning they must give you their information for the free goodies.
2. It is useful and provides information that your readers can apply right away.
3. It solves a problem that is relevant to your target audience.

Hold their interest with purchase incentives

It’s natural to compare a few different sites for prices and offers when gift shopping online. Give an incentive offer to sweeten the deal and bring them back to your site to purchase.  Free shipping is used pretty regularly, so think of other incentives like gift wrap, guaranteed delivery dates, or gift with purchase. 

Remind your customers that you’re all people too by telling stories

Public relations are as important as sales, especially for small community businesses. Take advantage of the holiday season to put a personal touch to your marketing by sharing stories. Have your team take turns sharing their favorite part of the holiday, family traditions, and funny stories of holidays past. Pretend your Santa and give a behind the scenes tour of your “workshop,” showing employees having fun and sending gifts. Reminding your audience that you’re people like them tells them that they are supporting the home team buying from you.

Optimize for searches

For those shoppers with a particular product mind, their first way to compare is with an internet search. If you only operate online, it’s time to beef up your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts to make sure your company is well represented in those search results. 

If you are a small community business reliant on foot traffic, make some effort to optimize your local presence. Look to the local search sites and social boards and make your business presence so customers who didn’t know about you are compelled to come and take a look. 

Need more ideas? Joseph Studios can help!

It’s not too late to contact Joseph Studios and get us launched and busy for your holiday windfall. If you’re thinking of a fresh look and reset for 2020, we can help with that too. Let’s talk!