We’re just a few weeks away from Black Friday, and as a local business, you are understandably trying to figure out how to get paid this holiday. If you want to make sure your business wins big, it’s time to get your marketing strategy in high gear. A few week ago, I published a Small Business Holiday Checklist so that you could get ready: Now here’s a few of tools to boost your marketing efforts.
Publicize Your Shop Small Strategy
People are interested in supporting small business owners in their local community. Create a Shop Small strategy to drive sales for Small Business Saturday. Use Black Friday and the holiday weekend to hold special sales and events for your existing customers.
Since 2010, small businesses all over the US have been offering discounts, bundle deals and giveaways to shoppers the Saturday after Thanksgiving. With this being the 7th year, there’s already a significant amount of marketing around this event, so participating in it is just one more way to engage customers and drive sales.
As a local business, you’re competing with other businesses in your area but also online with retailers such as Amazon, Ebay, and Esty.
Partner with other Local Businesses
Partnering with other businesses is a great way to cross marketing services to give customers more for their money. Try to find other opportunities to market your business. Consider setting up a booth at a local hospital for a holiday sale or provide branded giveaways and goodies for the local Santa to hand out, and food drives. Try to get your brand in front of as many new prospects as possible.
Launch a Groupon Campaign
If your goal to attract new customers this holidays, try a Groupon campaign. While you give up a cut of the sale to Groupon (sometimes as much as 50%), it’s a good way to get new people in the door of your local business. So you might offer one product at 75% off of normal price, but then be ready with an upsell such as a membership deal or a wine of the month club. It’s the only way to make a Groupon deal worth the effort is an upsell and 63% of people who redeem the deal tend to buy other products. So while you lose on that initial product or service, you make up for it with an upsell.
Make sure you’re well-stocked in inventory for your deal, and that you’ve got plenty of customer service staff to assist the flood of people that will come redeem the offer before Christmas. Get contact details of all customers, so that you can prolong the relationship with your email marketing program. Your goal is repeat business.
Invest online advertising and Mobile SEO
Even local businesses, need to enhance their online presence in order to attract customers during the holidays. Brendan Morrissey, CEO of digital marketing firm Netsertive, had this advice: “Retailers need to be prepared for the rise in ‘near me’ searches this holiday season – customers searching for products and businesses by location. For small businesses, this means optimizing your mobile SEO to be found online.”
Review your Google My Business listing to make sure it’s up-to-date and accurate, so that your business will appear in geography-based searches. Additionally, use location keywords on your website so that people searching for, as an example, “toy store Normal Heights” can find you.
Do More Marketing
It’s time to boost all the channels you normally use to market your business online — email, social media, content marketing — will need to be active during November. Keep the message consistent: come to our location to save big for the holidays.
Your emails should promote the hot products you’ve marked down, as well as contain high-value coupons. Social media should provide teasers for what will go on sale next. Build content on your blog such as best gifts for busy business owners to help people decide what to buy. But don’t wait until two weeks before the holiday to plan your marketing; instead, map out weekly promotions and coupons in advance so all you have to do is fill in the blanks.
Local businesses can win big this holiday. Local retailers must position slightly differently than ecommerce business. Mobile search and SEO is a much bigger factor this holiday. Just make sure shoppers can find you on a mobile device when they are ready to buy. Remember, direct mail still works too. Use online and offline marketing tactics to reach customers and then wait for the cash to start rolling in.
This article was originally published as How Local Retailers Can Win Big This Holiday on www.succeedasyourownboss.com