Hey there, business owners today I'm going to help you navigate one of the busiest and most competitive times of the year, the holidays. If you're wondering how your small or medium business can cut through the noise, get noticed and maximize sales, you're in the right place. Let's jump right into holiday marketing strategies that work. Alright guys, let's talk about why holiday marketing is so crucial. The holidays are when consumer spending hits its peak, and for small to medium businesses, this is prime opportunity to drive revenue. But here's the challenge. There's so much noise out there. You got big national brands and all this advertising money is coming into the market. So it is crucial in order to do well that you start planning early and execute a well timed holiday marketing strategy so that you can stand out and get heard amongst all that. Now, I'm going to give you some tips about how to do that right now. 

During the holiday season, consumers are bombarded with offers, promotions, and advertisements from literally all directions, right? Television, online, email, print, billboards, it's every right? So to make sure your business is heard and that your offers and messages are heard during the holidays, you need to focus on differentiation and speaking directly to your customer's holiday needs. Now, those are some things that you can identify through anecdotal information that you're hearing from what customers have typically bought from you a year over year, or what's trending depending on your business, whether you're helping them find a perfect solution gift, or offering a last minute deal or solve their problem. Just make sure that the messaging is relevant and don't forget to take advantage of using the power of personalization in your CRM, right? So that's using those merge fields, filtering and sorting based on interests and so forth, and trying to work towards more of a programmatic effort. 

In your syndication. Use your customer data to craft targeted offers, and don't be afraid to get creative with multi-channel marketing, which is going to help you increase visibility, earn more impressions, and you're going to earn those multiple touches that it typically takes to get a buyer to now convert. So you're got to work on strategies where you're going to get 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 touches with your customer in order to get them to click that buy button. Creating holiday theme content is a great way to stay at the top of mind for your audience. So start thinking like festive social media posts, themed blog articles and emails that tap into that holiday spirit. So you really want to think about product positioning, how your product can be tied into thematic backgrounds and so forth like that so that you can get that vibe going and make your product or service relevant during the holiday season. 

That's really the task at hand right there, whether it be as a gift or for the buyer to help them get through the holidays. So if you're like a dietician, you be just focused on getting your ideal client through the holiday season and avoiding gaining a lot of weight, right? That's different than selling a gift card to somebody so that they can solve one of their gift giving challenges amongst the people that they want to do some giving with that season. So think about it, but either way, try to wrap that with that holiday background and create relevance that your product or service is important, needed and wanted during the holidays. And you can do that by using themes. So again, go back, also check seasonal hashtags and get the visuals done really well so that you can stand out in those crowded feed, stand out in the inbox and so on. 

All right, let's talk about offers a little bit. Nothing drives engagement like exclusive holiday offers. So they have natural timeliness or urgency baked into them because they're just for the holidays. So you want to create limited time discounts, gift bundles or BOGO deals that feel like a special treat for the season. So don't forget to use that urgency and take advantage of it and let customers know that the deals won't last long, that should help you drive more conversions. Alright, let's talk about that fourth quarter. So this whole thing is happening in Q4 and so many businesses it can be crucial and the fourth quarter can account for a huge portion of your annual revenue. So to maximize it, start your holiday campaigns early. So be ready and I mean ready creative's done the planning's done, programming emails are written, all that content stuff and how you're going to position everything is ready no later than mid-October, really, which kind of freaks people out, but you're going to lose some work time there because your team is going to want to get into the holidays and stuff. 

So you really got to get this stuff done. Kind of rolling out of Q3 so that you are ready to syndicate and get your message out and turn all these campaigns on pretty much like November 1st. You kind want to look at what the national brands and so forth are doing and stay timing with that. And those folks are planning Q4 early in the summer just as a frame of reference. So small business is probably not that far out ahead on their planning, but do your best to be ready by mid-October. So you can do some revisions, optimize things, really take a check, second look at everything and put out your highest quality work. So that's ready to go by November one, which is when people start opening their pocketbooks for the holidays. You want to also be prepared, assuming these campaigns are successful and you do a good job, be prepared to follow that with great customer service. 

 You might need to be looking at how do I feel about more phone calls? Do I need a chatbot on my social media pages? Do I need some automation on my website? Things like that, to deal with higher volume if you're not set up for it. So don't get totally focused on the marketing and drop the customer service because that's going to burn you in Q1 when you have a bunch of pissed off customers that are not going to stay with you for that next year because you want to build year over year and you build year over year by creating happy raving fans about your product and services, not creating a bunch of volume you can't handle, and then aggravating and pissing off your entire new customer database. So just remember there's a balance there. You have to strike, right? So this Q4 is your chance to finish the year strong, put up some great numbers and get it done. 

How can you structure your deals so that the momentum isn't just a single spike In Q4, start looking at how you can do some things like this example so that some of that bleeds right into Q1 and can get you through that first second pay period we discussed in prior video, which is mid-February before things start to normalize. So there's a little bit of a lull there and this type of idea can get you through that and or help. Okay, here's another little idea for you that is potentially powerful, which is limited edition holiday product and or service, right? You could do a holiday package. So if you're a consultant person, you might offer a special holiday deal. If you have a product, there might be a limited edition, like a special color way or something like that. So these are things you need to think about again, in advance and plan for. 

 Let's talk about gift cards. Gift cards are a popular holiday choice. A lot of people do 'em and it's kind of a lazy gift. I don't know. I mean, you can't think of anything for somebody, so you just give 'em a gift card. People like to get 'em, people like to give 'em, so I'm not going to argue with that. You can sweeten the deal by offering bonuses. For example, you buy a $50 gift card and get a $10 bonus card for yourself. So that's a bounce back where you're now activating two customers instead of one. So this encourages both gift giving and personal spending, which should drive some additional incremental revenue or in-store foot traffic, right? So think about when you're constructing your deals in your terms, how can you capitalize on the openness of the consumer during the season and create some additional traffic that may bleed right into Q1.

But whether it's special packaging or holiday themed version of your property product, these items can create an additional sense of urgency and exclusivity that customers typically love during the holidays. So don't disregard doing limited runs, special edition, holiday themed actual products, not just holiday themed marketing and creating some more urgency and demand for these special edition runs. So take a look at that. That also is another good way to get attention and get people activated and drive some conversions. And there you have it. There's your guide to standing out and boosting sales from the holiday season. So from planning ahead to creating personalized offers and limited time deals, there's really so much you can do. There's not a limit on how creative you can get with deal making offers the themes. You really can have a lot of fun with this stuff while creating a ton of opportunity for you in the fourth quarter. So if you're ready to take your holiday marketing to the next level, be sure to subscribe. Don't miss out on additional tips and so forth, and check out our website if you need help or this is something that's beyond what your internal team can do. Love to hear from you guys. Otherwise, thanks for watching and of course, have a happy holidays and I wish you prosperity and abundance as we go into a new year.