It may not feel like the holiday season quite yet, but soon enough Black Friday and the holiday shopping season will be upon us.
Is your local business prepared?
Guarantee your local business gets a piece of the pie this year by going into Q4 with a holiday marketing strategy that will reach consumers in your area and bring them into your store.According to the National Retail Federation, the average consumer spent $800+ during the 2014 holiday season and 20 to 40% of yearly sales for small and mid-sized retailers take place during the last two months of the year.
While no local business wants to wait until the very end of the year to meet their sales goals, the abundance of holidays in Q4 (Halloween, Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas and New Year’s Eve, to name a few) makes it difficult not to rely on increased sales October – December. All these holidays make having a strong holiday marketing strategy essential for your business.
Create a marketing plan for holiday sales
The type of shopping done during the holiday season is entirely different from everyday shopping (even smaller holiday shopping, such as Labor Day and Memorial Day). The sheer volume of consumers that are shopping, combined with the wide variety of products and services they are seeking out (many of which are gifts), makes the Q4 shopping season a prime time to meet sales goals — if you can drive traffic to your store.
The key to driving traffic and increasing sales during the holiday shopping season is knowing exactly who your target audience is and marketing to them well in advance of the holiday season (and, no, I’m not referring to September Santa and Christmas tree decor). Businesses that communicate with their target audience year-round have more successful holiday marketing campaigns (and, thus, sales) because they took the time to build relationships with shoppers.
Incorporate your holiday promotion ideas into a year-round marketing strategy
Once you have defined your target market, you should set up a long-term marketing strategy that includes how you will reach customers before, during and after the holiday season. By continually messaging your audience, you keep your business top-of-mind during the entire customer journey, whether they are creating wish lists for Santa or buying gifts.
Your holiday marketing strategy shouldn’t drastically the online marketing efforts you already have in place; rather, it should focus your tactics. Below are some of the top holiday marketing ideas that your local business can use to to compete with big name stores (that have the ability to offer equally as big discounts) and keep your business top-of-mind with consumers.
Holiday marketing ideas for small businesses
Provide a storewide discount
During the holiday season, shoppers visit stores for both gifts and inspiration; having sales and discounts on certain products/services can feel limiting to consumers, the exact opposite of what you want a holiday shopper to feel when the set foot in your store. To eliminate any feelings of restriction, offer holiday shoppers a storewide discount. In fact, research shows that 41% of consumers prefer storewide discounts vs. other types of holiday promotions.
Black Friday hours and sales
If having a storewide discount doesn’t make sense for your local business, consider having a one-day storewide sale on Black Friday.
As much as people criticize Black Friday, 22% of consumers brave the crowds and go shopping on this infamous day. Black Friday shoppers expect that businesses will give them the best deals possible on this day, whether that is a steep discount or a free product/service when they spend a certain amount.
While I don’t suggest you open your store at 5 pm on Thanksgiving, your holiday marketing strategy should plan for extended hours and special sales on Black Friday in order to capture shoppers who are ready, willing and eager to spend.
Use local advertising
FACT: the average time that a consumer is willing to travel to a local business is 17 minutes.
As a local business this gives you a competitive edge, but only if consumers in your area know about your business!
One way to quickly build brand awareness with a new audience is with online advertising, such as pay-per-click (PPC) or social media campaigns. PPC campaigns have been shown to increase awareness of a business by 63%, making it an ideal channel to help you reach a new audience (quickly!) before the holiday shopping season even begins.
Social media advertising can also be an extremely effective tactic to add to your local business’s holiday marketing repertoire. 29% of consumers have gone on to purchase from a local business after seeing an ad on Facebook.
Unlike other types of advertising (such as TV, billboards, newspapers), online advertising is extremely cost-effective because shows your message only to qualified buyers — not everyone — so you know your ads are being seen by those most likely to buy from you. 
If you’ve never used PPC or social media advertising — or just don’t have the time to manage another marketing channel — there are a lot of different options available to you. I recommend The Berry Company because every customer receives a dedicated marketing manager (that you are on a first name basis with!). Your marketing manager will work behind the scene to optimize keywords for your advertising campaign 24/7 and report back to you with results and recommendations about how to make your campaign more effective.
Mobile matters (and not just the iPhone you’re asking Santa for)
From planning what stores to visit, to comparison shopping in-store for products, mobile devices are playing a larger role in the customer journey and decision-making process. 82% of consumers report that use mobile devices while they shop and one of the main things they are searching for is store information.
Leaving mobile out of your overall marketing strategy is the equivalent of limiting your holiday sales before the season even begins (yikes!). Make sure your company website is mobile-friendly and is easy for a customer to use from any type of device. If your site isn’t mobile-friendly, consider investing in a responsively-designed website and it will render correctly on any type of device (mobile phones, tablets, desktop computers, etc.).
To incorporate mobile into your holiday marketing plans, consider running an online mobile-exclusive coupon or discount that requires a customer to redeem in-store. When a shopper receives your mobile coupon, they’ll add it to their Passbook and add your business to their list of places to shop at during the holiday season.
Ramp up your social media marketing
In addition to being accessible on every device, you want your local business to be present on all online platforms — social media included.
65% of shoppers use social media to find the perfect gift, so help them accomplish that task — in your store, of course.
Below are a few ideas for great social media posts during the holiday season:
Gift guides
Wish list items
Creative ways to use your business’s products/services
Seasons greetings from your staff
Party planning and event ideas
Managing your social media posts should be the easiest part of your holiday marketing, especially if you use a tool such as LocalVox Social. LocalVox Social lets you manage all your social media profiles from one central dashboard and helps you prioritize your social media activities.
Create gift guides
Holiday shoppers don’t always know what they are planning to purchase and often seek out guidance and direction regarding certain products and services that they might give as a gift.
How many times have you gone into the holiday season and not know what to get for your dad, employees or friends?
Help shoppers make gift-giving decisions by giving them some ideas in a gift guide — and they’ll be more likely to visit your business to make that purchase.
If you aren’t a brick-and-mortar retail store, don’t cross gift guides off your holiday marketing ideas list; gift guides work well for all types of business, from retail stores restaurants to service providers and seasonal businesses. Service providers and seasonal businesses can use gift guides to pre-sell and package services for future use, giving you guaranteed business in the year ahead. For example, a home decorator that falls into the service provider category could offer a free 1-hour consultation with every design package purchased from October – December. If you’re a seasonal business, such as a water park, you can sell passes for the upcoming season at a discounted rate. The sky is the limit, so get creative with your holiday marketing gift guide ideas.
Partner with other nearby small businesses
Partner with other local businesses in your area and promote one another’s products/services during the holiday season. Partnerships with other local businesses will spread awareness about your business to a new audience of highly qualified buyers.
For example, if you are a hair salon, you could partner with the nail salon down the street and agree to put business cards, brochures and flyers in the customer waiting area. Or, you could go as far as putting together special holiday packages that combine products/services from each of your businesses where you share the revenue.
I’ve seen also seen a lot of local restaurants and movie theaters offer “dinner and a movie” packages to their customers during the holiday season. Get creative with your partnerships, but make sure that you go in with clear objectives that you want to accomplish in mind.
You holiday marketing plan shouldn’t be a last-minute scramble in October, rather it should be a part of your year-round strategy. 47% of consumers start thinking about holiday shopping in October (or earlier) and 74% start shopping in November. It’s important that your business is top-of-mind when consumers start thinking about holiday shopping so that you make the list of places they need to visit. From mobile coupons to new partnerships, your small business holiday marketing efforts matter and will directly influence your year-end sales.
Lots of local businesses have successfully managed their holiday marketing strategy (and grown sales) by using the LocalVox platform. LocalVox gives you the ability distribute all of your great holiday marketing ideas across the Internet — search, maps, email, social, coupons and deals, reviews — with the touch of one button. Get started today.
Looking for more holiday marketing advice? Check out our webinar, next Thursday October 1st, to find out how to maximize your holiday sales to end the year strong. Register today!
What holiday marketing strategies have you used for your local business? Which ones will you use this year? Let us know in the comments below!
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