Unless you’re a big box retailer or a highly niche craft business, there’s a good chance that your traffic and business start to stall around the holiday season. Customers are concerned with arranging holiday parties or planning promotions for the next year.
So you could sit back and wait for February to roll around. Or you could double down on your marketing efforts to squeeze some revenue out of the holiday months.
Here are four ways to promote your business this winter!
1. Create an Irresistible Offer
With tighter budget during the holiday season, you’re going to have to give your customers a deal so great that they won’t be able to resist taking out their credit card.
For physical goods, this definitely means free shipping. “Free shipping” is an extremely powerful phrase. According to a study from Wharton, shoppers will spend, on average, 30% more per order when they receive free shipping. That’s huge!
For non-tangible goods, like training or ebooks, a substantial price cut may be needed to move more of your products during the holidays. If a price cut just isn’t plausible, then consider giving your customers an additional bonus. For example, if they buy an hour of your consulting time, you’ll email them an ebook that you generally sell for $4.99.
2. Take Advantage of Black Friday
Black Friday isn’t just for brick and mortar stores or Amazon Gold Box Deals. Any business that wants to move goods or services can offer a Black Friday deal to their customers. Shoppers are already geared up and looking for deals, so why not add your business into the offering?
Need an online business example? Copyblogger Media doesn’t ship books or articles to your door, but even they offered a Black Friday deal last year.
3. Emphasize Why Your Product Rocks
Your product already rocks, but emphasize why your customers should be buying it now during the holidays as opposed to any other time during the year. Perhaps you could market your service as a great non-traditional gift. People may not think to purchase an hour of digital marketing consultation for themselves during the holidays, but perhaps they have a friend who just launched a new business.
Sell some kind of training? Remind your prospective clients that since the holidays are a generally slow time for business, they would have plenty of time to focus on your program and start applying the new knowledge for the next year.
For my company, Quality Logo Products, we know that our clients aren’t attending many trade shows or throwing promotions in the winter. But we do know that December and January are great for planning your springtime promotions. Our customers can get a head start while it’s less busy and then feel far less overwhelmed when spring comes.
4. Make Social Media & Email Your New Best Friends
When the holidays roll around, there are fewer blog posts, social media updates, and email blasts to wade through. So this is a great time for your offer to grab some extra attention. Craft a great offer email with a clickable headline to cut through the noise of other holiday deals.
Write a blog post about your offer and then post it on your Facebook, Twitter, Google+, and other social networks. Keep your copy short and to the point so that your customers don’t feel like they have to work to read your deal. Use photos where/if you can to attract more attention.
Consider creating an offer on Facebook. Offers cost money to setup, but they have a higher tendency to go viral than if you promoted a post or page. Offers like “Get 50% off best-selling ebook” or “Get one extra consultation hour free” will have business owners and entrepreneurs clicking in no time.
Do your sales take a dip during the holiday season? Do you have any more tips to share for marketing your products and services during the winter months?
Mandy is a content developer for Quality Logo Products. By day she writes product descriptions and blogs over at their promo products and marketing blog. A self-professed nerd, her interests include video games, sitcoms, superhero movies, and shockingly, writing.
"You’re such a smart boy!" were his first accolades heard. So, it’s no wonder that this phrase became the title of his business, Smart Boy Designs.