The biggest small business shopping day of the holiday season is almost here — are you ready?
Once the Black Friday dust has cleared, shoppers who have had enough of big-box retailers will be ready to hunt for holiday deals on Small Business Saturday by patronizing small businesses, both in-store and online.
If you’re hoping to capitalize on the crowds this Small Business Saturday, one of the best ways to do so is to create a unique online offer that gathers real leads you can continue to market to long after the holidays are over and done.
Whether you’re trying to get more customers into your store, drive more sales online or simply collect more contacts to market to throughout the year, pulling off a successful Small Business Saturday promotion means you’ll need a sharp-looking landing page that compels visitors to opt in.
Since Small Business Saturday is rapidly approaching, the last thing you want to deal with is the hassle (and expense) of hiring a web designer last minute to create your page from scratch. You can’t wait for weeks for it to get it done — you need that page by Saturday (or maybe even sooner for Black Friday!).
Never fear: With ONTRApages you can get an absolutely stunning (and smart) web page online in time to have the best Small Business Saturday yet — no graphic designer or coder necessary.
Here are four web page building tips to help you not only survive Small Business Saturday, but absolutely kill it:
1. Create a Customized Small Business Saturday Offer
If you already have a few campaigns going that use Landing Pages to bring in new business, good for you! Small Business Saturday can be a great time to leverage what you’re currently running to bring in even more leads and sales.
But consider this: Try creating an exclusive offer just for Small Business Saturday — with its own dedicated web page. Think about something special you can offer your customers for just one day such as a generous discount on a product or a free ebook with every purchase.
Since Small Business Saturday is all about supporting the unique and creative goods small business owners design and produce, if you’re a brick-and-mortar business, build a web page that encourages customers to opt in for a coupon they can redeem in-store to drive foot traffic. This is a great way to capitalize on the holiday buzz while building up a valuable database of customers you can continue to market to long after the last holiday gift has been unwrapped.
If you’re an online business, try a similar strategy with coupon codes. Send traffic from ads or social media to a web page with a killer offer such as 20% off any item or free shipping. You get the picture. Have customers enter their name and address to receive their unique coupon code which ONTRAPORT can generate and send automatically in an email. Voila! Even if they don’t buy from you this Small Business Saturday, you’ve just collected the email of an interested lead, and you can continue to stay top of mind with more email offers.
2. Save Time with Pre-Built Templates
Once you’ve nailed down the offer, start building it with a little help from ONTRApages and the ONTRAPORT Marketplace.
Maybe you’ve got an artist’s eye which makes starting from scratch in the ONTRApages Landing Page builder easy. For the rest of us, who might not know where to start or what look to go with, snag a beautiful design template from the ONTRApages Marketplace. The ONTRAPORT Marketplace offers tons of free and paid templates created by other users — some even by generous expert designers.
For your Small Business Saturday offer, check out the “Lead Capture” category for a few incredible templates that are perfectly suited for your strategy. If you’re selling products online, don’t forget to look through the “Sales Pages” category for templates designed to encourage shoppers to see their purchases all the way through. Speaking of which, our next tip is…
3. Encourage More Purchases With a Secure and Attractive Sales Page
ONTRApages lets you easily process payments on your page (without the aid of a developer) by placing an order form (or pop-up form) on your page to securely send your customers’ payment information to your payment gateway for processing in order to complete the transaction. Who says you need a pricy third party shopping cart to sell products online?
To start building a sales page, create an account with a Payment Gateway provider such as Stripe, Authorize.net, Payjunction or WorldPay. (PayPal is an easy, affordable option; however, they require customers to leave your page in order to complete their transaction.)
Don’t forget to add security certificates and seals on the sales page to reassure customers that your site is safe and secure! This goes a long way toward increasing sales conversions on Small Business Saturday (and every other day of the year). And a few glowing customer testimonials will only do you good.
4. Set Up Long-Term Email Follow-Up
Okay, maybe this isn’t a web page building tip, but it’s important!
When you run an amazing promotion for Small Business Saturday, you don’t want to miss out on the opportunity to follow up with your new customers immediately via email to thank them for their purchase or send an upsell or cross-sell offer. This is one of the most effective ways to encourage repeat business and significantly increase your revenue in the days and weeks immediately following Small Business Saturday (not to mention Black Friday and Cyber Monday), but following up with each customer one-by-one will probably be impossible if your campaign is successful. What’s an entrepreneur to do?
Follow-up automatically! You can create messages in ONTRAPORT and set them to send automatically whenever a customer buys your product. This is one of the best ways to immediately make customers feel good about buying from you which, in turn, will make them more likely to recommend your product to friends!
The rewards of email follow-up aren’t only immediate: if you do it right, automatic follow-up will will also continue to bring in sales over the long term. Create an email funnel for your Small Business Saturday leads that keep them engaged over time with strategically timed offers for related products or services.
Even if you haven’t spent the year preparing for Small Business Saturday, you can still pull off a killer promotion with a little help from ONTRApages. Remember, even though you’re out to boost sales on Saturday, one of the most valuable returns you can get from your campaigns this holiday season goes far beyond the end of December. By gathering new leads and thoughtfully following up with them, you’re paving the way for incredible customer relationships that will pay off throughout all of 2016!
Start building your new web page now with ONTRApages.
The post Cash in on Small Business Saturday With a New Web Page appeared first on The ONTRAPORT Blog.