HO! HO! Want to make your business grow?
Christmas is a lively festival where people call their friends and family home and have fun with them.
Christmas is a perfect season to make big out of your small business. As it arrives, numerous people look online for products and services and want them delivered at their doorstep. Thus, it causes a hoard among small businesses to amplify their sales. Most ventures fail to find their feet in the market due to the cut-throat competition at the time of seasons. To increase sales, one has to show up in front of the customers.
Like other festivals, People want to clean their houses before Christmas. It would be a great opportunity for small businesses like cleaning and restoration companies to provide exceptional services and make a place in the heart of the customers. But how does a small business expand their business?
Don’t let your business catch cold in the breeze of snow. Here are some Christmas marketing ideas that can help you expand your small business.
Top Seven Christmas Marketing Ideas Beneficial For Your Small Business Growth
1. Email Marketing
Email marketing is an effective, inexpensive, and measurable technique for generating clients for your business. For that, you need to track the person who opened your mail, bounce rates, click-through rates, and unsubscribes rates.
This technique is very beneficial for small businesses as they can target their audience effortlessly and boost sales. Choosing the right email marketing automation campaign is crucial at Christmas, as there will be tough competition in the market.
a) Announce Christmas Sale
Emails can reach a vast audience. It is a great way to inform your customers about the sale of your products or services during Christmas. Not to forget about your existing and loyal customers to greet them Christmas wishes by providing huge discounts on your products or services.
b) Create Urgency
Create a sense of need in the mind of customers. Try to relate the products to the customers as it is the need of the hour. Having a sense of urgency in the audience’s mind can immediately increase sales.
c) Offer Free/ Extra Services
Who doesn’t like free services? Adding any extra offer or services would be amazing to attract customers. Most companies provide free shipping to their customers. At the time of seasons, they try to come up with some add-ons such as:
- Holiday packaging
- Fee-free membership
- Discount on premium products
- Gift cards
Start your campaigns right after the Halloween or Thanksgiving marketing ends. So you can get an advantage as most people start buying for Christmas after it.
d) Post-Christmas Campaign
Your campaign is not over after Christmas, be ready to push your customers for new year deals. Make your campaign New Year ready, because right after Christmas, people are also looking to buy products for the New year.
2. Use Seasonal PPC keywords
Due to the low budget, small businesses are thinking about whether to invest in PPC advertising or not. But Google Ads gives the possibility to advertise with any budget. As a small business, it is necessary to use relevant PPC keywords to get more traffic. Choosing the right keyword for your campaign is confusing and requires a lot of research.
PPC keywords are responsible for where your ads display. Your ads have to be relevant to the keywords you are bidding on to get a good quality score. You don’t want to spend your budget on the wrong PPC keywords.
For example, you can use the keyword “carpet cleaning near me” as a PPC keyword to display the ad for carpet cleaning in your area.
Selecting The Right keyword
a) Think Like a Customer:
What would you type as a customer to get those products and services? Put yourself in the shoes of customers and think about your product and services. It is a great exercise to find relevant keywords for your products and services.
b) Product-Specific Keyword:
The keywords you are using have to be relevant to your products and services. If you put irrelevant keywords, you will get the traffic diverted on your website, but it will not increase the conversion rate as the customers were not looking for the services you are providing. You want your audience to find you for the right reasons.
c) Keyword Research Tool:
There are several tools out there that help you find the right keyword. These tools will provide you a deep insight into the keywords by ranking them in order. You can also check the keywords used by the customers to search for similar products and services to yours during the Christmas event.
Some of the well-known keyword research tools are:
While selecting a PPC keyword, keep in mind that they are relevant to your product and consider their bid price. It will be beneficial for you to acquire the keywords before Christmas arrives as the bid prices are likely to shoot up at the time of seasons.
3. Social Media Contests Strategy
Around 3.6 billion people are actively using social media platforms as of 2020. That makes social media contests a great idea to jack up your small business. Mobile phones have made it easier for people to access their social media accounts. People are posting content, sharing photos and videos all day, so why not engage them on your page?
Different Social Media Contest Ideas
Selfie/Photo Contests
People out there love to take selfies and photos and like to upload them on social media. So, run a contest and ask your audience to take selfies with your product in the vibe of Christmas. Encourage them to upload their photos on your social media page to win exciting prizes.
Refer To Friend Contests
Ask your followers to refer your business products to your friends. Set up different discounts and prizes for people who are referring to more friends. It immediately increases engagement on your social media page as more and more people tag their friends to get rewards.
Trivia Contests
Run a quiz on your social media page and ask related questions. You can also run a 10-15 days trivia contest to attract more audiences to your page during the Christmas event. Make sure to reward the winner with stunning prizes.
Prank Contests
Prank contests are fun! Most people like to take part in it. Ask your audience to shoot a video while pranking their family or friends and give out glorious prizes to the winners. It has humor included, so more people will get engaged on your page and share the videos with their friends and family.
Benefits From Social Media Contests
a) Increase In Brand Awareness:
As more and more people take part in the contest, it will eventually increase the number of followers. Think of it as free advertising for your business as people who are taking part are likely to share it with their friends and family.
b) Increase Engagement:
Contests help you increase the engagement on your business page. People will like, comment, and pin your content. They would spend their time on your page, make their stay worth by posting new and relevant content to keep your engagement with them longer.
c) Increase Sales:
More audience, more sales. Providing useful links to your website on your social media page and proper advertisement of your product can amplify the sales. For catering business marketing, you need to provide the relevant links on your site to increase its sales in Christmas events.
d) Useful Insights:
As people take part in the contests, you will get to know more about their opinion, not only that you will get the information regarding the person who has taken part in it.
4. Christmas Instagram and Facebook ads
Social media ads are great in attracting customers. At Christmas, brands put ads on social media platforms to increase their traffic and hike up their sales. Designing stunning ads can make magic. Make your ads Christmas themed to attract and relate it to customers, let them know more about your product attributes.
Video ads are immensely great to attract and relate to customers. Shooting and making an eye-catchy video is very tough and requires a lot of effort and direction, but it can do wonders for your small business.
For example, a pest control marketing company can set up advertising campaigns, showing the benefits and efficiency of their work by blending it in the vibe of Christmas. Present it as a lifestyle rather than showing it just as a product. Adding a creative angle to your ad can also please the customers.
5. Conduct SEO Focused on Christmas Marketing
To do business at Christmas, you have to be found by your audience. How are you going to pull that off?
At the time of Christmas, it would be a great idea to use seasonal keywords. Your content would be relevant to your product but make sure to relate it to the season too. Making seasonal informational content can increase the website rank as these kinds of content are mostly covered.
Google takes time to index and rank the website according to the relevance of the content. To increase the rank of your website, you have to start early, but how early?
As per studies, it takes around 3-8 months for a website to get a better ranking on the search engine result page (SERP). However, it may take more time if the competition is very high. To increase your website rank, you need to start optimizing your website about 3-5 months before the season.
For example, lots of people want their house, offices, carpets, upholsteries cleaned before Christmas arrives. Even pressure washing marketing can be beneficial for small businesses because people clean their front yard and backyard areas of their house.
Therefore, it would be a great time for a cleaning company to apply SEO techniques before Christmas for getting a good ranking in the SERP and boost sales.
6. Location-Based Marketing
It is a marketing strategy to gain a location-based market. It directly targets the customers of a particular location. Moreover, it provides businesses to personalize their content according to the area and the customers.
Location-based marketing is beneficial for small businesses as they can run geo-targeting campaigns to target specific locations. However, it decreases your target audience size but significantly increases your potential customers. Having a small target audience gives you several advantages, such as :
- Increase visibility: The customers can easily find you in the small target market.
- Increase Loyalty: It enhances the relationship between the buyer and the seller.
- Buying behavior: It is easier to study the buying pattern of a small target audience.
Types of Location-Based Marketing
a) Local Search Optimization
If you want to cover a small geographical area, you have to use local search keywords. Tweak your existing content and optimize it locally, provide relevant information in description like contact information, address, etc.
b) Pay Per Click Advertising
PPC advertising in location-based marketing is a great way to gather traffic and target the local audience. You can set your location or area where you want your ad to display by using relevant keywords. It avoids waste clicks by showing your ads to the right audience present in or near your target location.
For example: If you target janitorial marketing for Christmas in a San Diego location, then set a keyword like “janitorial services San Diego”.
c) Google My Business
There was a time when Google Maps were used to search for an address, landmark, and traffic information. After the boom of mobile phone industries and adverts, Google My Business became fruitful for small businesses.
The customers can provide reviews and ratings on Google maps about a product and their experiences with their services.
7. Partnership With Other Small Businesses
It is tough to cover a broad audience for a small business. To increase sales, it would be a great idea if you join hands with other small businesses. Partnership with the right venture can be credible for your business as it helps you reach your goals.
Things to keep in mind before doing a partnership with others
a) Complementary Products
Choose a business that is providing complementary products that can add more value. It can help in offering bundled packages to your customers and promote both. For example, house cleaning and carpet cleaning marketing can go hand in hand.
b) Find Your Right Partner
It is tough to find the right partnership firm for your business. As to achieve goals and get a good grip, you need to find a partner that shares the same values, vision, and entrepreneurial spirit.
Identify the strengths and weaknesses of your business. Find out what kind of other ventures can help you surmount your weakness and increase your vigor much more.
c) Long term / Short term
- Do you want to be in a partnership for a lengthy period?
- What are the benefits and drawbacks of being in the tie-up for long?
Try to analyze these questions and find out what is best for your business and with whom.
Summing Up
Well, there you have it! These are some of the best Christmas marketing ideas one can use to make a big out of their small business. Start implementing the above marketing ideas as soon as possible to get a head start and don’t forget to prepare your marketing campaigns for the New Year.
