Marketing Ideas for Your Holiday Sales

Image with holiday items and title

When it comes to the holidays, we are all looking for that special offer or bonus to go along with our shopping. As a business this is the best time to pull out all the stops. To reap the benefits of the holiday season, businesses have to pull out all their best offer saving discounts and go total marketing on them.

As a business you’re going to want to take advantage of the holidays. Here are several ways in which you can rock the holiday season and boost your company’s sales.

Once November 1st hits let the holiday marketing begin. We suggest not going full blown Christmas quite yet though. Start out with thanksgiving themed marketing, leading up to Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales before heading into Christmas.

  1. Offer and Discount Ideas

    • Offer Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales and promotions. Black Friday is huge and for online only businesses and services so is Cyber Monday. Capitalize on this opportunity.
    • Give out holiday-specific discounts or coupon codes such as entering code TURKEY30 to receive 30% off the order.
    • Offer time-limited sales to convey a sense of urgency. Example: Save 40% on Cyber Monday.
    • Offer free or low-cost shipping. Many people are turned away with the added cost of shipping. Close more deals by shipping for free or giving a discounted shipping price.
    • Create holiday gift packages – packages you can’t get any other time. Put together a package that includes items customers usually buy together or different items you offer that customers could then try out.
    • Offer a free holiday themed gift with a purchase. This will give buyers an extra incentive to buy and entice hesitant buyers.
    • Offer 2-for-1 products. The buyer gets to keep one for her/himself and give the other one as a gift.
    • Send out discounts on future purchases for all items bought during the holidays. Set yourself up for post-holiday success.
    • Team up with another business to create Christmas gift bundles. Combine your product and their product into a gift package.
    • FSL + Infofree offer

    • Send small gifts to your loyal customers. An inexpensive gift like a box of chocolates or a bottle of wine can show you care and puts your business at the top of their minds.
    • Offer flash deals and expedited shipping for last-minute shoppers.
    • Run a 12 Days of Christmas holiday promotion. Offer a different sale or discount or promote a different product each day leading up to Christmas.
    • Hold an advent calendar campaign. Offer a discount on one product per day throughout the entire Christmas season.

  1. Promote your holiday offers repeatedly. Don’t be afraid to share your sales and deals more than once. You want to make sure your promotions reach your potential customers.
  1. Content Marketing

    • Provide holiday-themed information to your target market. Direct social media posts and blog posts to holiday-themed information.
    • Create a holiday landing page where you can display gift ideas or discounts.
    • Update your social media covers to show some holiday cheer.
    • Thanksgiving FSL Header

    • Capture the holiday related search engine traffic by publishing content optimized for the season on your website.
    • Make your email template holiday themed.
    • Send holiday promotion emails with all your discounts. Send one right before Christmas too with last-minute gift ideas.
    • Send emails with your holiday offers including one promotion per email. Space these out accordingly.
    • Find gift guides in your industry and ask for your products to be included.
    • Include a holiday countdown ticker on your site. This will let visitors know exactly what day they need to order by to receive their products in time for Christmas.
    • Send your customers Christmas or New Year cards via mail or email.

Start planning and implementing your holiday marketing now! With your extra holiday efforts you’ll be selling like crazy.

Need more inspiration on how you can stand out to customers during the holiday season? Check out Make your business stand out to consumers during the holiday season for ideas!

Thanks to Kim Garst for the holiday themed ideas!

Advantages and Disadvantages of Sales Campaigns

Need more information on whether or not to create a sales campaign? We’ve put together a quick list of insights into the advantages and disadvantages of sales campaigns.

Graphic: Advantages and Disadvantages to Sales Campaigns

Think a sales campaign would be great for your business? Learn how to get started in Create a Winning Sales Campaign

Create a Winning Sales Campaign

Graphic: sales campaign icons

Confidence and strategy – the two things you need to create a successful sales campaign. Sales campaigns are used as a strategy to boost the sale of products and services in a limited amount of time. The purpose is to inch current leads closer to making their purchase or to grab new consumers’ attention to notice you and convince them to buy.

Check out this list of strategies and tips that will help you create a winning sales campaign.

  1. 1. Know who Your Audience is

    Knowing your target audience is an essential part of creating and delivering a campaign, whether it’s a promotional campaign, marketing campaign, or sales campaign. Harvard Business found that 85% of 30,000 new product launches in the US failed to generate desired revenue due to poor market segmentation. Imagine where those products could be today had they used their money and resources to target the correct market.

    There are many ways to find your audience. It does take some extra time and effort, but it will eventually pay off as marketers who have used segmentation in emails have seen a 760% increase in revenue. Learn how to find your target audience in Find Your Target Market.

  2. 2. Create Killer Content

    Marketers have minimal time to grab the viewer’s attention. Those initial couple seconds make or break the consumer’s decision to interact. Creating killer content will ensure that the consumer is going to pay attention to your campaign.

    To create effective content, you must think like your customers. Understand what they like, dislike, what they want out of a product – the values, benefits, features they look for in that product. Relevant content reflects an understanding of your consumer. Once you know your consumer, it’ll be much easier to create content that will grab their attention.

    The best content is that of which the consumer can picture what it’s like to be a consumer you’ve already helped. Storytelling is becoming among the most popular type of content.

    Know some facts:

    • Subject lines with more than 3 words experience a drop in opening by over 60%. [ContactMonkey]
    • Email marketing has a two times higher ROI than cold calling, networking or trade shows. [MarketingSherpa]
    • 58% of your audience will stop watching video within the first 90seconds. [JoegGirard.ca]
    • Viewers retain 58% of what they see but only 10% of what they read.
    • After a presentation, 63% of attendees remember the stories told. Only 5% remember statistics. [Dan & Chip Heath]
  3. 3. Follow up

    All your time and effort so far will go to waste if you don’t follow up with new and existing prospects. In the content consuming world we live in, consumers can often forget what they saw, which doesn’t necessarily mean they aren’t interested.

    Follow-ups can act as a reminder. With so much on everyone’s plate and lots of content to process daily, a nice reminder can often jump-start the person into action.

    Follow-ups also allow you to gain an understanding of a consumer’s hesitation and work to persuade them otherwise. They build credibility and allows you to tell prospects more about your business rather than them finding information on their own.

    Nurturing your prospect through the decision-making process gives you the advantage and helps you persuade them to make the final decision to buy.

  4. 4. Get Personal

    An effective campaign will speak directly to the person’s wants and needs. This means you need to break your target market down even further. Create different content for different segments and get even more personalized for different targeting.

    Micromarketing or one-to-one marketing is the most specific you can get, tailoring a product or service to suit an individual customer. While this would be best, it’s often not practical. That’s why we suggest using a concentrated targeting strategy. This strategy involves selecting a single, primary target market, and focusing all your energies on providing a product to fit that market’s needs.

    Personalization is key. It makes the consumer feel like you care about their wants and needs. Something as simple as including their name in an email is personalized enough to increase the chances of them opening and engaging with your campaign.

  5. 5. Build familiarity

    Design touchpoints around your target market to build familiarity and leverage yourself above others. Seeing your company here and there will create familiarity with your product/service in the consumer’s eye. While a consumer might not need your product or service at the time the touchpoints are delivered, it will stick with them and done right, reappear when you need it to most.

    Consumers are more likely to buy products and services from companies they have seen before.

  6. 6. Use the data as you go

    With automated reports and analytics, we can see our campaign progress in real-time. There is no more guessing or waiting months for results. Utilizing reports through social media, A/B testing, google analytics, etc. will help you improve your sales campaign.

    Given enough data, you can adjust your campaign in real-time (make sure you’re getting, at the very least, three weeks of data before adjusting). Alter your approach, tweak your segmentation, and add new mediums to create an even better sales campaign.

Prepared to start a sales campaign but aren’t sure if it’s right for you? Check out the Advantages and Disadvantages of Sales Campaigns.