Recently I taught a class about holiday internet marketing and I realized that for small businesses it helps to have more structure, a roadmap or guide to marketing for the holidays. Holiday marketing is really best summed up as doing everything you possibly can to add value. Holiday sales, buying incentives, insane product deals, all forms of exposure and festive spirit all goes into making a successful and complete Holiday marketing plan. Honestly, I could write a post about each strategy and teach about implementation, but I want to help a more basic need, organizing the chaos too keep your cool just like Frosty.
Holiday Schedule
As a small business owner, you most likely have very little time to just sit back and plan out your holiday marketing months in advance, so I have built a schedule to help the small business owner build their marketing plan. Remember this is just a schedule, you must still implement a good strategy to compete in the most competitive sales time of the year. Use creative and traditional marketing techniques to accomplish a good sale season. Now I know a sale schedule isn’t much but I would like to walk you through all of the dates for sales you may already know and the ones you may not.
- Veteran’s Day Weekend(11/10-11/12/2012) – This is typically the ramp up for many holiday sales and the time to prime the American consumers for the sales to come. This will be the first sale day of the holiday season, so don’t forget about it. This is a good time to get some sale incentives for walk in sales and online stimulation.
- Black Friday(11/23/2012) – This is the most well known sales day of the entire year and one of the best to snag a great deal. Every year we hear about long lines in the cold at the earliest of hours just to get some of the great deals that are normally limited in quantity. Use this sale day to give some great deals and help consumers prep for the holidays. Some families even have traditions tied into going to Black Friday so don’t disappoint with great buying incentives and product deals.
- Cyber Monday(11/26/2012) – For those online shoppers this is one of the most grossed days for online consumer buying. Emerging over the past years this day is almost as big as Black Friday itself. To help build up your website and the sales, be sure to plan ahead and make buyers aware of the deals you maybe be having. The website traffic for online stores will be at a high so take advantage of this and help the consumers buy with free shipping incentives and product deals in addition to a Cyber Monday sale.
- Green Monday(12/10/2012) – ebay one of the most well known and used online commerce websites found a trend the past few years that a sales spike happens the second Monday in December. To keep the good sales going make sure your email marketing is keeping your store in front of the consumer along with a sale and maybe some notable product deals to draw consumers to the store on this day. It isn’t called green Monday because they are just looking around.
- Free Shipping Day(12/17/2012) -Not much explanation here, this day normally correlates to the last day you can ship a package with out being expedited and still get it before Christmas. If the buyer are still on the ropes about a purchase, make sure to reassure them with some free shipping and the guarantee they will have the product under the Christmas tree.
- After Christmas Sales(12/26-12/30/2012) – Consumers will be looking for the post holiday mark downs, the kids will have Christmas money and as a business owner you will be looking to get rid of inventory before the end of the year. Take the time to not only plan out your holiday sales, but also take advantage of the post holiday buying spirit too.
- New Year’s Sales(12/31-1/2/2012) – Again there are still some celebrations and holidays to be spent. Buyers will be looking for a good New Year’s resolution. Statistically the highest amount of health club sign ups is in this time, see if you can use the ringing in of the new year to wrangle your final sales of the year too.
Deck the Halls
Though I am not always the most festive person of the season, I want to make sure you are organized as a small business owner, or just as someone who might procrastinate till the last minute. Make sure you can take advantage of as many of these sales as you can, while still making sure to stand out from the rest of the sales and stores out there. Make sure to mix up your email marketing to give a fresh look, and use as much creative thought for your consumers and the products you can. Taking the time to plan out the sale with great quality and inconstant will greatly benefit in the long haul. Hope this post helps and the best of luck wish your holiday season!
Here are a few other resources for helping to organize the “Holiday Chaos” and create some successful marketing for your business:
Pre-Holiday Internet Marketing Checklist By Ian Lurie
Great piece of content that is up to date, and has 20 points touched on! Ian is a great marketer who really knows his stuff. Follow him for some great information and his entertaining sense of humor.
Holiday Marketing Tips By Heather Curtis
This is a simple piece of content that can help with a few tips that are pretty actionable on Holiday marketing. I don’t know much about Heather, but I do know as a design studio she need to change her Google Plus cover photo.
Holiday Internet Marketing Guide By Me
This is a Post I recently wrote for the company and used at a class as an outline on what topics to keep considered for your holiday internet marketing plan, fairly basic but good to use as a check list or outline.
Also there is a awesome infographic from Monetate I don’t know all that much about them but I hunted them down to rightfully give them credit for there hard work on this infographic.
