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If you’ve followed along with our social media this month, you’ll have seen a lot of great tips for marketing your business for Black Friday. Even though we’re now past Thanksgiving weekend, we’re far from through the holiday season. We’ve compiled our list of tips for driving sales and engagement this holiday season and beyond. And we definitely recommend bookmarking this page for next year too!
According to Insider Intelligence, more than $56 billion in sales are expected through social media commerce by 2023. If you run a business to consumer company – often referred to as B2C – and you haven’t connected your online store to social media, you’re leaving money on the table. And if your brick and mortar business doesn’t have an ecommerce presence at all, you’re losing out on even more potential sales. Gone are the days when only local consumers could become loyal customers: e-commerce allows for repeat customers all over the country (or world, if you’re ambitious!).
You can also leverage your social media to build excitement about an upcoming sale or product launch. Create preview posts, teaser reels, and countdown timers to drive a sense of urgency and build “buzz”.
Just because social media plays such an important role in brand awareness and sales these days does not mean you should neglect other forms of marketing. Email marketing in particular proves time and again that it’s a solid player who is not going anywhere anytime soon. In fact, data from email marketing platform Litmus shows that email marketing drives $36 in sales for every $1 spent: that’s a much higher ROI than other marketing methods!
One of the best ways to build your email list is to use a pop up on your website. These are generally free to create through your existing marketing system (like HubSpot, HootSuite, Mail Chimp, etc) or via a free plugin that your web developer can add to your website. Encourage people to input their email address with an introductory offer such as a percent discount off their first order or a free item with their first purchase.
Once you’ve built your email list, you can create email sequences to build hype prior to a sale or major event and watch the new customers roll in!
You want your website to run smoothly everyday, but it is especially important when preparing for increased traffic such as on Black Friday or any other sale day. You’ll want to optimize your site to load quickly: one to four seconds for the page to fully load is considered the gold standard and the most likely to lead to conversion (i.e. a paying customer).
Another aspect to consider is optimizing for search engines (SEO). Using Google Ad Words or a paid SEO service such as Yoast or SEMRush, you can do research on commonly used search terms for your target audience and weave them into your web copy (you can also hire your local marketing partner for this service!). This will help you be found in Google search results and drive more traffic to your site.
When preparing your site for increased traffic – or just to improve overall customer experience – you’ll want to audit your content, particularly your individual product pages. These are the pages on your site that give all the details about a specific item you’re selling. You’ll want to optimize for ease of use and search engine performance. For the former, we’re talking about things like great pictures of the product, a detailed description of the product, clear pricing information,etc. For the latter, we’re talking about using keywords in your product description that people would be searching for in Google. HubSpot offers a great walkthrough on how to do a website audit on their site.
Nothing makes your long-time and frequent customers happier than being rewarded for their loyalty. Create exclusive deals for them to both maintain their loyalty and keep them coming back long after the holidays! Deals like this are also a great way to clear out seasonal inventory and make way for new products.
Your slogan is important because it gives your customers a quick introduction to your brand. They are also something you want to last for a long time, so it is crucial to consider your company’s mission and the values of your consumers when creating one. These five guidelines can help; however, if you are nervous about writing one on your own, we are happy to help!
A good salesperson knows that urgency is one of the strongest tools in their toolbelt. People love the feeling of getting something exclusive or unique. By creating urgency through your messaging, you get clients excited and make them feel they are getting a unique item. Short sales, known as flash sales, are highly effective at driving sales as well.
So you’ve used all the best strategies and managed to loop in those new customers you were looking for. They hit up your online and in-person sales on Black Friday, Small-Business Saturday and Cyber Monday. Now what?
Keep them coming back! The holiday season is the easiest time to create a first time customer, but one of the hardest times to create a repeat customer. To turn first time customers into long time customers, you’ll want to create target communication. Reach out to them for reviews and customer satisfaction surveys. Create bounce back offers (discounts they earn for later by spending now). Even just send a thank you email. All of these reflect well on your brand and set the foundation for a business relationship and brand loyalty.
At Engaged Marketing we believe strongly in using marketing to build relationships. Of course good marketing will help you create a reliable sales pipeline, but it’s about more than making the one time sale: it’s about building client relationships in the long term to keep them coming back. Because there’s nothing better than a repeat customer! These tips, while geared toward the holiday season, can be used at any time of the year to build confidence with clients and get both new and old customers excited about a sale. If you would like a trusted partner by your side to guide your social media, online, and in-print marketing efforts throughout the year, reach out to us at info@engagedmarketing.com.
Wishing you a prosperous holiday season!