The December holidays are on the horizon, and as usual, Christmas shoppers are gearing up for another buying frenzy this Yuletide season. It’s time to think of creative ways to take advantage of the high demand around the holidays to boost your brand’s visibility.
How should you go about it, you might ask? For starters, you can launch a holiday sales campaign. Holiday sales promotions are part and parcel of brand marketing. While they can be costly, they are a worthy investment. Play your cards right, and your promotions can earn you great dividends.
In fact, 2017’s holiday season is estimated to be even more profitable for retailers than years past, especially for those selling via mobile platforms.
Promotional Strategies for the Holidays
Allow me to share with you five promotional strategies for the holidays that you can use to catch your audiences’ attention and convince them to click on your “Buy Now” buttons.
1. Create Video Ads for Social Media
Video ads have an emotive power that other advertising media can’t hope to match. As such, every business needs an effective video ad to impact brand awareness positively.
Still not sure? Here are a couple of fun video marketing facts for you can munch on:
- Viewers retain 95 percent of a message when it’s conveyed through video, compared to 10 percent when it’s presented in text form.
- The average internet user spends 88 percent more time on sites with videos than on those without.
Granted, creating a video spot is not easy, not to mention costly. Fortunately, the online world has a slew of tools and platforms that can help you launch an effective one with minimal effort.
One such tool is Promo by Slidely, a visual content platform offering a huge collection of pre-designed and customizable video ads — including holiday-themed ones — that can give your brand a boost.
Promo’s offerings are far from your run-of-the-mill content.
Thanks to its top-notch creative team, Promo has collected an impressive catalog of high-quality holiday-themed videos and music. As far as holiday videos go, they’ve got everything covered from Thanksgiving to Black Friday to Cyber Monday and Christmas – the works.
To top it off, Promo’s wide range of content is tailor-made for social media sharing, making it easy for you to reach a great number of potential clients via Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.
2. Update Your Website Regularly
How often should you update your website? There are no hard rules to answer this question; however, the simple answer would be, “as often as it’s warranted.” Updating your business website on a regular basis has a wide range of benefits, even more so on the marketing side of your business efforts.
Also, this can’t be emphasized enough: Make a significant update on your site in preparation for each holiday of the year. The reason is simple: people expect promotions during the holidays and are likely to jump at the opportunity to buy discounted products or special offers.
You want your business to generate some buzz? Then give people something to look forward to (not just for the holidays). Consumers love “fresh content.” There’s also a technical aspect to it: it’s good for SEO. Sites with regular updates get crawled and indexed on Google more often, resulting in more visits.
By updating your site regularly, you give the overall impression that the business is lively and thriving. What’s more, customers will feel that their needs are getting addressed on a regular basis.
3. Launch a Special Holiday Sale
Simply put, the holiday season presents the perfect opportunity to bolster your marketing efforts.
These are the times of the year when your customers are raving for great deals. How passionate are they about getting the deals? Have you ever seen a Black Friday mall stampede video? Exactly.
If you’re going to invest in a sales promotion, the holidays are the best time to do it. And you have to plan your promotion in a way that will catch people’s attention.
One good way to do that is to ensure that the theme of your special sales campaign is relevant to the particular holiday you’re targeting. Focus on the story, and make it interesting.
That way the campaign will capture the excitement of the holiday being celebrated, effectively adding more impact and resonance to your holiday promotional efforts.
4. Say ‘Thank You’ to Loyal Customers
Saying “thank you” is a fine way to show your appreciation to someone you’ve done business with. It sends a clear signal to your customers that you’re looking forward to continuing and building on the relationship that you’ve established with them.
Moreover, saying thank you gives you the perfect opportunity to offer special holiday deals that would be of great interest to loyal customers.
One great strategy is to offer a digital customer loyalty program to customers who make purchases on a regular basis. A loyalty program not only gives you the opportunity to show your appreciation to loyal customers, but it also drives repeat business giving your bottom line a significant lift.
5. Highlight Specific Products
Most consumers are racking their brains over which products to buy even months before the holidays hit. This is not surprising since holiday shoppers know there’s a fair chance that the products they’ve set their eyes on are likely to disappear off the shelves if they’re not quick on the trigger.
So be sure to highlight a selected list of products you want to recommend to your audience. Your customers will love your brand for it.
For one, they’re going to appreciate you for removing the burden of guesswork from their holiday shopping efforts. Also, highlighting products via a gift guide template gives your business the edge in terms of SEO. After all, the search phrase “gift guide” is bound to get considerable traffic this time of year.
Conclusion
The holiday season is one of the noisiest times of the year — and as a business owner, you have to take the necessary steps to ensure that your brand can be heard amidst all the clamor.
Would you like your brand to make some noise so loud that it reverberates in the minds of customers all year round, and beyond? Use the strategies above.
Photo via Shutterstock
This article, “Apply These 5 Simple Strategies to Improve Holiday Sales Promotions” was first published on Small Business Trends