What Every Savvy Business Owner Should Know about Holiday Marketing

You should be selling during the holidays. When I say selling, I mean you should really be selling a lot of your products and services because people are ready to buy!

Many retail businesses make the bulk of their revenue during the fourth quarter and this is largely propelled by holiday spending.

Even if you’re not in a retail niche, the opportunity for you to get your product or service in front of potential leads that turn into new customers is heightened at the end of the year.

Think about this: The holidays are the only time of year when people literally wake up early to grab their credit card and look for deals.

Each year the amount of money that exchanges hands during the holiday season is growing at a rapid pace, and you should have a piece of that pie.

If you’re wondering how, here are four steps you can use to create some holiday cash.

Step One: Audience Engagement/Awareness

Before people buy from you, they need to know, like and trust you. Begin by launching engagement and awareness campaigns both through organic and paid media channels.

This can look like a dedicated email sequence providing education and value around your product or service. This can be a series of videos helping to solve a problem that your potential customers have. This can be paid advertising like Facebook or Google ads leading to blog content on your business website.

It’s vital to get your brand in front of people before you’re asking them to buy. This will help you down the line.

Step Two: Self-Segmentation

Segment your customers so when it’s time to sell, you can speak directly to their needs. This will also allow you to share how your product or service overcomes the challenges that they uniquely face.

For example, if you have a haircare brand, it’s likely that women with different types of hair will run across your brand. Would it help you to know if the person coming to you had hair that was long, short, curly, kinky or anything in between? I’m guess you said yes, and if you did there are multiple ways you can segment your audience to find out.

Some examples are by running ads that speak directly to issues faced by women with curly hair. Then you can track who clicked on the ad and retarget them later with ads for your curly hair product.

Other ways include having free offers (eBooks, videos, audio content) that speak to a specific audience or sending emails to your list and tracking who clicks on what topics. The key is to make sure anything you release for segmentation purposes is not generic and speaks directly to a segment of your audience that you’re trying to pull out.

Step Three: Conversion & Monetization

This is when the actual selling process comes in. Most people try to start here instead of Step 1, and it shows in the sales. By completing the first two steps before you make the offer, you’ll have more success.

When you do launch your offer, the biggest challenge many people face is that not enough people actually see the offer. Make sure you’re consistently promoting and pushing to get your product or service in front of as many people as possible, so they have the opportunity to buy from you.

Step Four: Fulfillment/Profit Lift

People often forget about this step, but it’s the most important piece. After you sell, are you making sure you are offering excellent customer service from the start by fulfilling on what they’ve purchased from you.

Think of ways you can WOW your new customers with a goal of getting them to come back as soon as possible to buy from you again. Also, these new customers will lead to additional customers through referrals if you care for them properly.

Bonus Tip: Due to the pandemic, make sure you’re accounting for additional shipping times and delays if you’re sending out physical products.

These four steps will get you started on the path of not just giving but also receiving (cash) over the holiday season with your business.

Lamar Tyler is the CEO of Traffic Sales & Profit, where he helps businesses market themselves to success. With a network of more than 16,000 small businesses and entrepreneurs, who are owners of everything from brick-and-mortar stores to e-commerce brands to service and product-based businesses from all over the U.S. and various countries, TSP works with entrepreneurs who are changing both the narrative and perspective on how the world views Black families and businesses. Tyler’s mastermind network of Black-owned businesses collectively generated more than $49 million in sales despite COVID-19 setbacks.