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3 Practical Holiday Marketing Strategies to Win More Sales

Holiday season presents a wonderful opportunity for any business serious about attracting more clients and customers.

One successful campaign during these joyful times is all it takes to turn a struggling business into a thriving one.

Yet this is not some hidden secret known to few only. On the contrary, brands (especially successful ones) go all out during the holiday season to grab as many clicks and sales as they possibly can.

From digital advertising to content marketing to steep discounts, you name it and someone’s already doing it.

Many businesses see this competition as a daunting challenge. Something only the “big boys” can afford to splurge on. The reality, however, couldn’t be any further.

You see, wherever there’s competition, there’s opportunity.

If you look closely, you’ll find businesses similar to yours running such campaigns consistently each year. While that doesn’t always indicate profitability, most of the time it does.

So don’t look at the holiday season as the time to sit back and relax — instead, pump your chest, take a shot of caffeine, and push your business to the next level with a winning holiday marketing strategy!

The 3 Winning Holiday Marketing Strategies

As we mentioned before, there are a lot of brands trying to take a slice of the holiday marketing pie.

The good news, however, is that most of those brands opt for obvious strategies, making their campaign average at best.

To stand out, try any of the following three strategies:

1. Run Retargeting Ads

Have you noticed how some websites stalk you all over the internet with their ads? And it all starts soon after you leave their website?

That’s retargeting in a nutshell.

To use this strategy, you need to plan in advance as you have to place the ad network tracking pixel (Google, Facebook, Reddit, etc.) on your website BEFORE the holidays.

As soon as you have placed the pixel on a page, every person who opens it is added to a list. You can then advertise to that list once the holiday season is in full swing.

Here are a few ideas to jumpstart your creativity:

- - Start engaging users a few weeks before the holiday season
  - Promote any holiday themed products or services
  - Push your latest holiday themed content to build the critical initial traction

2. Offer Gift Certificates

Holiday shopping is like a blazing fire and discounts are it’s fuel.

There’s a reason why all the major brands take part in this practice: Prospective buyers look forward to the holidays for special offers.

A smart way to execute this strategy is that instead of offering your services at a discount, keep the pricing unchanged but throw in some attractive extras for those who spend over $250, for example.

Don’t put the extras just for the sake of it, but instead pick something enticing.

You can then promote these gift certificates by sharing on your website, social media, and handing out to all past and new customers.

3. Hold a Photo Contest

User generated content is one of the most effective ways to engage people in your business. It works because nothing can beat the power of authentic customer interactions on social media.

To leverage this strategy, consider holding a photo contest on all your social media, with Facebook and Instagram being the prime targets.

Don’t know where to begin? Follow these 4 simple steps:

1. Pick a Prize:
Since this is probably your first time, we highly recommend to avoid going overboard with the prize and stick to something relevant to your business.

Some great ideas include gift cards, free small services, and free upgrades. Not only will these keep the cost under control, you can also make the competition more enticing by selecting multiple winners.

2. Pick a Timeframe:
As a general rule of thumb, stick with one to two weeks for maximum entries.

3. Choose a Judging Criteria:
It is extremely important to be as transparent about the judging criteria as possible.

The most common (and effective) way is to create a poll and determine the winner through direct voting. Alternatively, you can also count the number of likes a photo gets.

4. Launch:
It’s time to launch the competition and ask your customers to share photos of themselves related to your industry and the holiday itself.

Once your contest is launched, don’t forget to promote it everywhere. The success of your campaign depends entirely on the initial traction you can generate.

How to Calculate the ROI of Influencer Marketing Campaigns

Wondering how to determine the ROI of your efforts?

I’m here to give you a quick and easy run down of how to calculate how effective your digital marketing and oNline ads are by figuring out your RETURN OF INVESTMENT!

#1: Set Your Goal/ Desired amount of acquisitions per your sales team availablity

Before launching any ads, you need to decide what you want to accomplish. This can come from reverse engineering what each acquisition is valued at and weighing that against your cost per click. In order to accomplish your goal, here are a few things you can do virally that won’t cost you anything.

Brand awareness: What is your engagement/ response to your viral posts and branding. Are people commenting/ liking and referring? You can get them to by including call to actions and incentives.

Lead generation: Build opt-in on your website in the form of a newsletter, free quote calculator, or even a free fitting eval.

Direct sales: Create a reason why people should follow your site and social media with discount codes that will also help you to see where you got that lead based on what code they enter.

#2: Design Your Influencer Marketing Campaign With Measurement in Mind

Once you’ve identified the numbers you want to hit, be intentional with what you’re putting out there for bait. Create campaigns and reach out to influencers with why your service/ product is worth their time.

Direct sales: If you sell products online and want to measure ROI of your influencer campaign by direct sales, give influencers a unique code to give to their audience that they can use at checkout for a percentage off their purchase. A good amount is 15%-20% off.

Make sure the influencer has experience using your brand’s product or service, and let them know you’ll be giving them a discount code before the campaign launches. They can then quote you an appropriate rate and write their post accordingly.

Conversions: If you’re trying to generate leads via your marketing campaign, make sure you have a juicy piece of content that people can share with their audience. Also, be transparent with influencers that you’ll be measuring the success of your campaign based on a certain conversion you’re asking them to link to.

Number of pieces of content produced: If you want influencers to produce content for a certain channel, supply high-quality visual and content assets that they can use (i.e., pictures of your brand’s product). Also, ask influencers to post across all of their channels to maximize the types of content that your brand receives.

Before launching your campaign, it’s a good idea to assign a value to each piece of content you’ll be receiving. You can then factor that into the ROI you attribute to your overall campaign.

Sign-ups: You want to make sure influencers understand that you’re trying to push a certain piece of content or increase subscribers to a newsletter. Knowing this, they can skillfully write a post that steers their audience to help you achieve your goals. This will change the direction of a post, so it’s crucial to be upfront with influencers about it from the very beginning.

Social media following: As with sign-ups, a goal of increasing your social media following will ultimately inform the direction of an influencer’s post. You can have the influencer include a call to action (CTA) in their content for readers to follow your brand on various social channels. Also running a contest or giveaway on social media is a fun way to lead an influencer’s audience to your social channels.

#3: Compile Campaign Data to Establish ROI

Based on the goal of your influencer marketing campaign, you’ll need to measure one or more of the following campaign data points so you can use them to establish ROI:

Direct sales:Measuring direct sales is easy if you sell products online. To determine what you earned for every dollar spent, calculate the amount of sales you earned from your influencer’s unique discount code and divide it by the dollars you spent on the campaign. Or subtract the amount you spent from what you earned to determine what you earned from your campaign.

Impressions:Impressions is the number of people who saw your influencer’s blog or social post. Brands typically look at actual impressions or potential impressions.

Actual impressions are determined by the actual number of people who saw the post that the influencer produced. To determine this figure, calculate the influencer’s social following and/or monthly unique visits to their blog each month.

If you want to take this a step further, you can calculate potential impressions for each influencer-produced post. To do this, multiply the number of social shares that the post earned by the average number of followers per user on social media. The average number of followers for each network are:

Facebook: 338
Twitter: 707
LinkedIn: 930
Pinterest: 229

For instance, if your brand earns a blog post and it was shared on Facebook 10 times, multiply the shares (10) by the average number of followers per user on Facebook (338). Also add the influencer’s following to that figure. If the influencer in this example had a total reach on Facebook of 5,000, your post had 8,338 potential impressions.

The equation to use for each influencer in your campaign is:

# of shares of your post + average number of followers on channel + influencer’s reach = potential impressions per post

To translate impression calculations to ROI, businesses tend to use a numerical value of what they deem an impression is worth. This can be different for each social channel. A B2B brand would put more weight on LinkedIn than Pinterest, while certain B2C brands may value Facebook more than Twitter.

The average impression is worth $0.012 and can be increased or decreased per channel. To put a numeric value on impressions, simply use the equation above and multiply your actual impressions and/or potential impressions by $0.012 and, voilà! You have your ROI.

Conversions:Conversions may overlap with a few other areas of influencer marketing campaign goals or measurements. To measure conversions, focus on actions a reader takes after viewing a social media or blog post. These actions might be downloads, purchases, or certain website pages visited.

There is no industry standard for conversions, so you might consider something like the percentage of website visitors who convert into buyers. To estimate how many of these unique visitors purchased from your brand, look at the number of website visitors brought in by following a link through an influencer’s blog post. Also factor in the average amount a consumer spends per purchase.

Number of pieces of content produced:When it comes to measuring how much a piece of media is worth, consider how valuable and versatile all influencer content can be. These words and images can be used on websites as testimonials, across social media, and in a variety of marketing materials. These pieces of media can also convert readers into leads or direct buyers to an online store.

There is no industry standard for measuring a piece of influencer-produced media, so it’s helpful to look at sales and ROI from a past campaign. Next, divide the number of pieces of media produced for the total campaign by sales, and assign a value to each piece of media.

Keep in mind that you’re basing this metric on past methods of measuring ROI, so it may not be a great measurement tactic if you’re running your first influencer marketing campaign. However, it does give you a reference point.

Sign-ups:Sign-ups are often intertwined with conversions and can be measured in much the same way. Sign-ups generated from a single piece of influencer content can give you great metrics, especially if you don’t sell products online. You can include a lead capture form to download a piece of content or sign up for a newsletter, which is a great way to build your email list.

Social media following:Some brands employ influencers to help them build their social media presence. You can designate a numerical value for each new follower to attribute a dollar amount to the new eyeballs on your brand.

Thank you socialmediaexaminer.com for this useful info!

Website Case Study

If you have a business, you know you need a website. It needs to be more than a brochure. It needs to be a tool that will help drive leads and sales for you. You want your website to work just as hard for your business as you do. Is your current website hitting it out of the park in these four key areas?

Searchability

A great website isn’t so great if no one can find it online. Search is the top of your sales funnel and you can’t convert those potential leads if your site is languishing in obscurity on page two of search results. You know what they say about the second page of search results – it’s a great place to hide a body since no one ever goes there.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is an absolute must-have to any website strategy, but it takes hard work and consistency when aiming for the top spot. There are a combination of off-page and on-page strategies you can implement but one key is to be consistent in your approach.

Searchability Tip

Make sure that each page is optimized for one particular keyword or phrase. If you try to optimize for multiple phrases, your efforts will be diluted and you won’t see the results you’re hoping for. Ensure that your chosen phrase is used naturally in your page content as well as in the page URL and title. Above all though, write for humans, not for search engines.

Design & Usability

You’ve done a good job at getting your site found and traffic is starting to flow in. The next thing you want to do is make sure that visitors find what they’re looking for and stick around. It’s more common than you’d think for someone to visit a website and leave again without visiting a second page. We want you to be that exception.

You don’t have long to grab your visitor and confirm for them that they make the right decision to click on your site. If anything goes wrong, they may bounce. At first blush, your site needs to load fast and convey trustworthiness and professionalism. It needs to look modern and not abandoned. It needs to be usable, no matter what device someone is using.

Design Tip

Make sure that the design of your site is consistent from page to page. This doesn’t mean that every page needs to look identical but you don’t want to suddenly start using different fonts or move your navigation, for instance. If a visitors thinks they’ve landed on a different site you may lose them for good.

Content

You’ve got the search traffic and your site looks good and is usable, but you know what they say. Content is king. If your site doesn’t provide value to your visitor then they won’t be back. Content is why people visit, why they come back, and what turns prospects into leads. You want to make sure that there’s fresh content on a regular basis and that it’s something that provides value to your visitor. Help them solve a problem. Educate them. Entertain them.

Content Tip

Use your brand’s voice and talk to your visitors like a human. You know your company better than anyone. If your brand was a person, what would they sound like? Use this voice whenever you’re creating content for your website. Avoid jargon or flowery businesspeak whenever possible.

Conversion

The last step in creating that killer website that generates more business for your company is converting those site visitors into leads and potential customers. You don’t want them to leave until they’ve reached out and provided you a way to contact them in the future.

You want to make sure that your site is using forms and landing pages effectively to make it super simple for visitors to take that next step. If the process is too complicated or the value isn’t clear, a visitor may just leave. While you might be tempted to ask for all kinds of information from your visitor, keep it simple and only ask for the bare minimum. If they’re a good lead, you’ll have opportunity to collect more information in the future after you’ve nurtured that relationship.

Conversion Tip

Ensure that every page has an effective call to action. Don’t let a visitor make it to the end of a page on your site without telling them exactly what you want them to do next? Buy now? Book an appointment? Download a resource? Contact you for more details? Be sure to clearly state what it is you want.

Cover these four bases: Search, Design, Content, and Conversion, and before you know it you’ll start driving more traffic, leads, and sales from your website.

Tip for Sales Funnels & Landing Pages

Too often, marketers go “straight for the kill” and try to convert prospects far too quickly with a decision making offer such as: “Buy now” or “Call for a free consultation”. That worked in 2005 but not now. 90% of buyers are researching online, so this strategy means you’re targeting the few prospects that are interested and are soon ready to buy. Your website needs to attract and capture every prospect, no matter where they are in the buying cycle.

An inbound website has balance and includes the fundamentals of Inbound Marketing. It’s focused with content at every stage within the buying cycle:

Top of the Funnel offers (TOFU)
Middle of the Funnel offers (MOFU)
Bottom of the Funnel offers (BOFU)

8 Simple Digital Marketing Tips Your Competitors Probably Don’t Know

1. Eggs In Too Many Baskets

If your a business owners, you’re most likely someone who juggles many things at one time and feel like your mind is constantly going. You have a higher tolerance for what others may perceive as obsession towards work and organized chaos. That is a trait to help you in business but not in marketing! DON’T SPREAD YOUR MARKETING BUDGET TOO THIN BUT TRYING TO PLAY IN MULTI ARENAS!

Digital marketing tips

You set up 10 social media accounts and a rigorous online marketing schedule to pull and retain leads.

If you don’t have someone on your team that knows how to use a certain social media platform and you haven’t heard about it, DON’T USE IT!

Focus: if you try to launch several campaigns at once, you’ll not only be totally overwhelmed, but you’ll also have difficulty determining which marketing campaigns were successful.

Consistency: this will be the key to getting your business off the ground.

Being consistent on social media will build you a loyal following.
Being consistent in your blogging will build you a loyal customer base and turn new, cold prospects into new buyers.
Being consistent in SEO means that you’ll save money in the long run instead of relying too much on paid advertising.
Too many small business owners try to do everything at once and fall flat on their faces.

But you don’t have to be one of them. By following these digital marketing tips, you’ll already be ahead of the game.

2. Find Your Place in Social Media

Most small business owners know that they need to be on social media. After all, social media isn’t going anywhere. In 2017, 81% of Americans had a social media profile!

Digital marketing tips

But as we touched on in the last section, too many rookies take that message too much to heart and try to go from being invisible to being everywhere at once.

For most brands, this is a recipe for disaster.

As a new small business owner, your aim should be to find your place on social media. This means that in the beginning you should focus only on, at the most, a few social media platforms that you’re already feeling comfortable with.

Now, after marketing on these platforms for a while, note how many interactions you’re getting.

For example, if Instagram isn’t giving you any engagement, then move on and focus on the platform that does!

The aim here is to find the social media platforms that give you the highest level of interactions (likes, shares and comments).

And the lesson here is: don’t bother wasting your time on a platform if your audience simply isn’t there!

Find out where most of your audience is and post on those platforms consistently to build up a loyal social media following.

3. Influencer Marketing

Influencer marketing is relatively new in the realm of digital marketing tips. In fact, most of your competition has probably never heard of it!

And for the ones who have, they’re probably going about it the wrong way.

Simply put, it means that instead of marketing to your target audience directly, you pay or inspire influential people in your niche to get the word out about you.

When it comes to social media users, influencers are basically the strongest referrals that your business can get.

digital marketing tips

For example, a survey by Collective Bias showed that 30% of consumers are more likely to buy a product recommended by a non-celebrity blogger.

Influencer marketing is especially effective on millennials, since 70% of consumer millennials are influenced by the recommendations of their peers in making buying decisions.

So, you should always keep a look out for potential future influencers in your niche. You’ll want to engage with them so that you can build your brand visibility.

Digital marketing tips

So what do other small business owners get wrong with influencer marketing, you ask?

Many small business owners still think that doing lots of guest blogging (a form of influencer marketing) and getting lots of backlinks will boost SEO and drive traffic.

This was true in the past, but not anymore. Small business owners these days have to tread carefully with guest blogging and getting backlinks because Google has cracked down on this practice several times in the past. Google penalizes websites that abuse this practice, and that’s not what you want for your brand new website!

Now that’s not to say that guest blogging is inherently a bad practice. Far from it! But it shouldn’t be done in a spammy way. Instead, it should be done with the main goals in mind being:

Brand promotion.
Building credibility by leaning on the shoulders of industry giants.
Tapping into another community.

4. Don’t Underestimate Having an Email List

An email list is probably one of the most valuable and responsive assets you can have.

Valuable – CRM software company Hatchbuck found that customers who purchase products through email spend 138% more!
Responsive – according to QuickSprout, email subscribers are 3x more likely to share content on social media!
And unlike your social media followers and fans, you own your email marketing list.

But believe it or not, many of your competitors aren’t even thinking about having an email list. Instead they make the mistake of thinking that they can get away with just building a social media following.

Of course having a strong social media following is very important! But when it comes to turning cold prospects into paying customers, email marketing is one of the best ways to do it.

5. The 80-20 Rule for Content

The 80-20 rule means that 80% of your success will come from 20% of your efforts. This rule applies to just about everything, including your content. Your content can be created in a variety of different mediums.

For example: videos, webinars, blog posts, infographics, etc.

Digital marketing tips

So how does the 80-20 rule apply?

Quite simply, 80% of your content should communicate VALUE, and 20% of it should be focused on promotions. Valuable content means content that’s unique, fresh, timely, relevant, and solves real problems for your target audience.

Your success will come from 20% of your efforts, but that other 80% is necessary to drive it!

Too many small business owners have it the other way around. 80% of their blog content is overly sales-y, and only 20% of it contains useful or valuable information!

If you aren’t convinced about the value of creating useful content, then take a moment to reflect on the fact that businesses with blogs receive 67% more leads than businesses without blogs.

Other benefits of having a blog include:

Getting more targeted traffic.
Adds a human element to your brand, thus building trust and loyalty with your customers.
Cost effective and simple to setup.

6. When to Rely On SEO

Every small business owner who ventures into the world of digital marketing tips has heard about SEO.

But still, many of them shy away from it because they think it’s complicated and too time consuming.

While both of these things may be true, SEO is still the best way to drive free traffic to your website.

Even something as simple as your business name can influence your ranking in the search engine. According to an SEO company Local SEO Guide, businesses with a strong keyword in their business name rank 1.5 spots higher than businesses without a keyword in their business name.

Instead of focusing on a long term SEO strategy, too many small businesses blow their digital marketing budget on PPC ads when starting out. We’ll talk more about that in the next section.

So what are the different areas that SEO covers?

Digital marketing tips

There are a lot. But broadly speaking, these are the main ones:
• Website optimization.
• Page optimization.
• Device optimization.
• Credible link building.

There are many other sub categories of these main areas. For example, keyword usage is a sub category of page optimization.

There’s a lot to learn. But learning and implementing SEO will give your website better visibility in the search engines.

And to get an idea of how important SEO is for website visibility, you can look at past Google updates. One very important Google update made websites that aren’t responsive on various digital devices not even appear in the search results at all!

Now thankfully, you don’t have to learn SEO all on your own because you know an SEO agency (your friends at LYFE Marketing).

But you should still learn the basics of SEO and what the expectations of an SEO specialist will be.

Hiring an SEO specialist is well worth it. The SEO specialist will help you perform an SEO audit, which includes analyzing how users are interacting with your website and your social media platforms.

And finally, don’t expect immediate traffic from doing SEO. It can happen, but it’s pretty rare. Instead, look to paid advertising for quick traffic.

7. When to Use Paid Advertising

As we touched on in the previous section, many small business owners spend too much of their working capital on PPC. They have the right idea – spend money on paid advertising in the beginning to get some traffic coming in.

But in the absence of a sales funnel and a long term SEO strategy, they begin to rely on PPC to drive most of their sales. This is not a sustainable digital marketing method on its own.

Their mistake is that they end up confusing “more traffic” with “more sales.”

But all they end up doing is getting more cold prospects and no sales. And in PPC advertising where you pay for each click, this can get expensive if you aren’t making conversions from your clicks.

More traffic is a great thing, but without a marketing funnel, you won’t get optimal results.

Instead, you should follow these 3 simple steps:

An amateur mistake is to expect to turn cold prospects into immediate buyers. Bring them in first, and then convert them into buyers later.

8. Enhance the User’s Experience

Enhancing user experience (UX) will be the glue that holds each of your strategies together.

The following are common and popular ways to do this. There are also plenty more metrics and digital marketing tips for measuring user experience.

The content on your site.
The communication channels you use.
An intuitive user interface (UI).
Your website’s loading speed.
Intuitive menu navigation.
Chatbots to assist in communication.
A simple tone for your content.
In order to make the optimal choices for these different areas, you’ll need to learn more about your target audience.

There are three key digital marketing tips to remember for creating a good user experience in 2018:

Remember to inform and inspire your audience with your content. This will give them a lasting impression of your company and make engagement easier.
You’ll also need a customer management strategy to help you connect better with customers. It will take you through query and complaint management. It will also collect customer feedback and make them feel like they’re a part of your brand’s community.

Another thing to keep in mind in 2018 is the effectiveness of video marketing. It continues to trend upward in popularity with the rise of live streaming. Popular platforms have already embraced live streaming. Consider Facebook Live, Instagram Stories, and Snapchat Stories to engage with your audience.

Conclusion
As you can see, the best way you can get ahead of your competition is to use the tried and true ways of digital marketing properly. Your competitors will keep on making the same mistakes, while you’ll be sidestepping landmines and growing your business with these 8 digital marketing tips.

Case Study- Ecommerce

Campaign Visuals

Learn how we got $1,000 in online retail sales for a client that sells custom Ankara backpacks!

Below, you’ll see a snap shot of her sales from the beginning of the year till February 18th when we started our Social Media Facebook Ads. You’ll see her page views where down, she made one sale from a direct reference provided by the seller.

Her social media engagement was poor and she wasn’t generating viral sales.

Here’s where we came in.

SALES FROM JANUARY 1-FEBRUARY 17

SALES FROM FEBRUARY 18-FEBRUARY 28

JUST ONE WEEK!

Below, you’ll see the sales from February 18th-28 where we generated $1,000 of sales from Facebook and Instagram. Yes, even Instagram! People are now able to shop, browse and check out form her Instagram page.

HOW'D WE DO IT?

First things first we streamlined her website. The check out process was very cumbersome. There where too many pages to browse through which increased the bounce out rate on her site. It’s like going to a restaurant that is short handed on waiters and you’re given a huge menu with so many items that you just end up getting a drink and maybe an appetizer.
Next, we made her Shopify page do some work. We added the following functions to her capture customers:
- Abandoned cart recapture emailing
- Headers with promo code countdowns
- Social Media interrogations to make it easier for a shopper to browse items
Next, we doubled down on her social media to create buzz and piggy backed on current trending issues.
After that, we created dynamic Facebook ads to split test what would work better for her desired audience. We were careful to target specific buying behaviors, style and interest behaviors, and location.
During this time, our marketing manager was closely monitoring her social media engagement, what images where getting the best engagement and making sure her cpc was in accordance to her budget.
Lastly, we made sure she had rock solid follow-up systems so we can retarget the buyers, get more demographic information to help us narrow down her ideal avatar and leave the buyer with an amazing buying experience!

WE STREAMLINED HER SITE

Below, you’ll see snap shots of her site and customer list of purchases.

What should be your take away from this?

Always stay relevant and keep trying new marketing ideas.
Keep up with current trends.
Put yourself in the buyers shoes and keep things SIMPLE!

We consult and help many businesses (from e-commerce to service based sales) optimize their marketing efforts and see results!

If you’d like help reviewing your marketing efforts, give us a call today and we’d love to help you.

Spring Marketing Campaigns and Tips

Spring Clean Your Marketing

Ivana Taylor, publisher of DIY Marketers says, “Springtime marketing makes me think about Spring cleaning. This is a great time to get rid of all the products and services that haven’t been as profitable as you’d like. Maybe you have too much inventory of something — create an insanely irresistible offer to free yourself of all that baggage and focus on more profitable offers.”

Add Life, Brightness and Color to Your Campaigns

Gary Shouldis of 3Bug Media says, “Spring is the perfect time for marketing, as people are full of energy and enthusiasm after a long winter. Your messaging should match the season with vibrant colors and a theme of renewal and revitalization.”

Create Social Media Contests Around Holidays

Holidays in the Spring:

Easter
Mothers Day
Earth Day

A very effective social media marketing activity is to run Facebook contests around holidays.

# Tip: Match the holiday and the prize to connect with your winner to your product or service and expose new potential customers to what you do.

Focus on the Theme of Renewal

Shawn Hessigner, executive editor of Small Business Trends says, “Focus on a new look for your website, a new feature, perhaps a new product offering to go along with the spirit of renewal.”

Work Tax Season into Your Marketing

Sujan Patel says, “Spring time = Tax time. My top tip is to incorporate tax theme into your marketing strategy for the Spring. That could be as simple as reference that it’s tax season or as complex as having specific deals/offers.”

Bring People Together

Deborah Shane says, “Spring is a time of renewal, hope, energy and positivity and should be the tone and vibe of your Springtime small business marketing. Bringing people together in person should be one of your goals through meet ups, workshops, industry events, local events, sales, promotions.”

Do Some Local Cleanup

Shane says, “Create a marketing effort related to the annual celebration of Earth Day that takes place on April 22. Go local and sponsor a road cleanup project or a tree planting event, and invite the community to join in. “

Thank People

Chaitra Dutt, CMO of Meylah says, “Send 100 thank-you’s via email, card or social media. Build a list and thank them for a specific reason. This helps you to reengage with people who want to pay attention to you and your company. Kindness always wins!”

Work an Upcoming Spring Movie into Your Promotions

Karen Smith of Highwire Marketing explains, “Usually the studios start releasing their movie works about a year out. That gives marketers plenty of time to work on a campaign. I use YouTube as a resource for the movie trailers. Most of them are released there.”

Promote Less Popular Holidays

Smith says, “I also use the national holiday calendar to find upcoming popular days of the year to blend what I want to promote with a fun theme that will have traction. i.e. for my Mexico resort, I like to promote National Margarita Day and National Tequila Day. Another great one is National Hammock Day. Our resort has rooms that come with hammocks. For social media, we use these days to remind our followers that the resort is the perfect place to unwind, relax and enjoy a margarita on the beach. Very subliminal and effective. That way when someone wants to book a vacation, they are already thinking about our resort.”

Partner with Relevant Businesses

Rohan Ayyar of E2M explains, “Spring is a good time for restaurants, florists and travel businesses. See if you can partner with brands in any of these areas and build some extra brand awareness and reach for yourself.”

Go Against the Pricing Trends

Ayyar says, “Historically, prices of goods go up across the board in Springtime (driven by economic building blocks such as fuel and housing). Buck the trend by offering deals and discounts on your product during this time.”

Honor Mothers

Karin Kraska of Forlight Marketing says, “The week of Mothers Day: Hand flowers out to the mothers who frequent your establishment, or send flowers or a card to your clients who are mothers. This goes a long way towards creating a deep loyalty with your customers. (Hey, Father’s day is in the Spring too … you can do something similar for them!)”

Choose Spring Topics that Make the Most Sense

Ramon Ray, editor of Smart Hustle Magazine says, “When doing Spring marketing, you should never stretch into an area that doesn’t make sense for your business. Instead, choose the topics that can merge with and compliment your business. For example, it probably wouldn’t make sense for a local laundromat to focus its marketing on Spring gardening. However, Spring cleaning promotions and specials offered to those who are cleaning out their closets would work perfectly.”

article tips from: https://smallbiztrends.com/2016/03/21-spring-marketing-campaigns-tips.html

2018 Marketing Prep

What separates a good business from an amazing business that customer love?

Planning.

Planning ahead allows you to create an amazing experience for your shoppers/ clients that goes a LOOOOOONGG way to creating return business. Now is the TIME to begin planning for 2018. If you haven’t started yet, PERFECT, this is for you. If you have, even better because you can fine tone your ideas to better serve your customers.

Make sure your planning starts with this 2018 marketing calendar and free template.

As a marketer and creative, I’m always getting inspired and looking at opportunities from different angles. There are so many special days, weeks, months and event to capitalize on.

In other words, there are so many amazing content marketing opportunities ahead!

That’s why I wanted to give you my marketing calendar. I work hand in hand with my clients to identify there goals and get ideas of what to create for them. Everything from Lover’s Beauty Care Package campaigns for my waxing clients on Valentine’s Day to Feeding the Soul campaigns for my restuarant clients.

To simplify your life. (And mine, I won’t lie.)

This is the 2018 marketing calendar you’ve been waiting for.

Happy planning!

Free Marketing Calendar Templates

Click here to get your FREE 2018 Marketing Calendar Template

For example of campaigns and special days you can take advantage of, sign up for our monthly newsletter here!

October Marketing Tips

Here are some ideas of Marketing Ideas you can use for your business:

1. Pass out treat-filled trick-or-treat bags with select samples of products you sell!

You can buy small bags and fill them with a few product sample or products related to services you offer and maybe a bit of candy as a sweet addition. Add a business card in each bag or a coupon for a return visit and hand them out to paying customers.

You can also give out a code word (“Trick or treat,” “Boo!” etc.) on various social media sites like Facebook and Twitter that customers will need to say when they come in to get their goody bag.

2. Create themed bundles.

Regardless of what you sell, you can cash in on the spirit of October by bundling some of your products together and giving them fun names. For example, if you sell food items, put some complementary items together and call it your “Thriller Survivor Kit.”

If you sell jewelry, put a few of your bestsellers together and call it the “Halloween Hottie” bundle. Discount your bundles $5-10, and you’ve got a brand-new way to promote old products.

3. Hold flash Halloween sales throughout the month.

This will only work if you already have an established email database and/or a strong social media presence with a decent amount of followers. Tweet/Facebook/email out the information on your flash sale, which would normally be for a very limited amount of time that same day.

For example: Hurry! Today only between the hours of 4 and 6 p.m., MST, get 31% off our entire line of products. Use code 31OFF.

4. Create Halloween-themed social media posts.

While staying relevant to what you sell, try to mix in some fun, Halloween-themed posts. For example, a local bar could post recipes for spooky cocktails followers can make at home, a clothing store could ask who’s the most stylish Halloween movie villain and post pictures for comparison, and a pet store could ask what the best costumes are for pets.

Make it fun and interactive to encourage more followers to engage with you. While social media marketing is a year-round tactic you can (and should) use, putting a Halloween spin on it is how you can get in on the excitement of the season.

Followers get bored — don’t let them by capitalizing on seasons, holidays, trends, and special occasions.

5. Decorate your store.

Your storefront window is the perfect place for a holiday display and a great opportunity to showcase any October specials you’re having. The interior of your store is also fair game.

Whether it’s cobwebs and spiders or black cats and pumpkins, getting into the spirit of October can give your store a fun and festival feel.

6. Hold a “dress up for a discount” incentive.

Whether you do this solely on Halloween or throughout the entire month, offer customers a chance to get 31% off their total purchase over ‘X’ amount or on one item of at least ‘X’ value.

Take a picture of the customer, with their permission, and post it on your social accounts. This is a fun way to drum up business and a great incentive for your customers to come in and purchase immediately.

7. Hold a “show us your best costume” contest.

Use Facebook to hold a virtual Halloween costume contest where customers post pictures of themselves dressed up. (Or their pets!) The photo with the most ‘likes’ at the end of the time frame you specify wins a gift card to your store.

The best Halloween marketing ideas are ones that take a two-fold approach — so be sure to offer a consolation prize to your followers, which could be anything from 31% off with a promo code or a $5 gift card to your store.

This will help entice not only the winners of your Halloween costume contest to return, but everyone else too!

Source: Scottsmarketplace.com

How to Give Your Marketing Strategy a Seasonal Twist

Seasonal marketing ideas can feel cliche rather than exciting. However you feel about holiday-themed marketing, the evidence strongly suggests that it works—particularly during this time of year. Don’t miss an opportunity to cash in on holiday shopping with these easy seasonal marketing ideas.

Make it a special/ money saver

The best thing you can give shoppers around the holidays is a great savings. Aside from regular shopping, the end of the year has become a routine time for people to make big purchases on products and services they might have been waiting for all year. Meet them half way with the mindset of creating return business year round. Grant your customers’ expectations and reward them with a solid bargain, and they’ll likely come back for more throughout the year.

Be Creative

Try not to reuse your marketing idea from last Christmas word for word. This may be obvious, but it’s worth mentioning especially because everyone (including marketers) gets so busy during this time of year that they fall into the trap of replicating the same ideas. Try this:

Create a unique marketing slogan
New visuals for your ad/display
Implement a contest

While small business may not have the same financial resources the big-box brands do, they certainly can compete when it comes to creative holiday marketing.

Put Customers First

The holidays are beloved for bringing friends and family together, but they can also be a time of great anxiety and stress for people. Prep your customer service member of what to expect and how your team will offer both a positive experience and a helping hand for each type of customer.

In addition to offering great products and services, make sure they also offer usable help or solutions to various holiday dilemmas. By including both of these types of experiences into your holiday marketing, you’ll appeal to more customers and their unique sensibilities.

Now go and create an amazing experience, great campaigns and a memorable Holiday season!

How to Sell a Ton of Gift Cards This Holiday Season

This holiday season, both online and offline, gift cards are going to be hot ticket items!!! According to research by CEB TowerGroup, gift card sales were anticipated to reach $140 billion in 2016, and spending has increased annually by around six percent since 2005. It’s clear why more business owners have been looking into how to sell gift cards in their store, cafes, and restaurants.

Gift cards are a great way to introduce new customers to your business. When they come in, 72% of people will spend more than the value of their gift card, as high as 22% more, based on our findings.

90% of gift cards are redeemed within the first 60 days after they’re gifted, selling them at your store during the holidays could give your business a nice boost in sales during the first two months of the new year.

Here are some tips on how to sell gift cards to suit your individual business needs:

How to promote gift cards

Put simply, if your customers don’t know you offer gift cards, they can’t buy them. Try sending a “Fall Preview Email” to your customers to let them know about your gift card program and other cool items they can look forward to. Create fun campaigns that include photos of your gift cards with your products, and mention any customer promotions. Alternatively, try creating an online contest, inviting people to take selfies with their gift cards, tagging your business for a possible prize.

How to sell gift cards in person

There are a number of strategies for how to sell gift cards in your store, restaurant, cafe, or business. Here are a few techniques to help boost gift card sales this holiday season:

Visual display and signage — Give your gift cards pride of place next to the register to maximize gift card sales.
Training — Train your employees to “upsell” at the register.
Gift card promotion — Consider sweetening the deal by offering a gift for the person buying the gift card. For example, “Buy a $50 gift card and get a candle for yourself.” Or offer a discount for the gift card, such as selling a $100 gift card for $80.

How to sell gift cards on my website

If you have a website, make sure you call out your gift cards in a prominent place on your site. We’d suggest a pop up window, up sell window upon check out, or a banner image on the home page. If you have e-commerce on your website, you can add gift cards as an item in your inventory.

Need help getting gift cards made?

Contact us today! We always work with your budget to make sure you get beautiful, functional and easy to use marketing materials!