10 holiday marketing, email, and social media tips that will supercharge your seasonal sales.

Although the holiday season is busy, frenetic, and exhausting for most retailers, it is frequently the source of a large portion of many businesses’ annual sales numbers. For that reason alone, you must take proactive steps to prepare for this potentially lucrative and even game-changing part of the year.

1. Start your marketing early.

Imagining an advertising strategy and bringing it to life can take weeks, sometimes even months to accomplish. Instead of waiting until the last minute to shape a collection of random ideas into some semblance of a plan, make it a point to gather analytics information about what your target customers are interested in purchasing. Combine that with historical data gleaned from your own point of sale system regarding last year’s sales statistics, and you will be doing much more than wildly throwing darts at a distant target. Finally, don’t wait until the last minute to bring your advertising campaign into the world. After all, you can’t afford to miss out on the majority of customers who plan to have completed their shopping by December 1.

2. Send out marketing emails during “Cyber Week.”

“Cyber Week” refers to the five days beginning on Thanksgiving Day and spanning Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Super Sunday, and Cyber Monday. In this brief period alone, nearly one-fifth of all holiday spending occurs. Consequently, it makes sense to step up your marketing email campaign during this time to capitalize on the mood of the moment.

3. Market discount offers on social media.

Unless you’ve been hibernating for the past decade, you already know that connecting with social media pages is one of the most powerful and cost-effective strategies you can implement to get the word out about your enterprise. Creating this buzz about your brick-and-mortar or ecommerce business needs to happen organically over time, which means that you must plan ahead. Long before the holidays officially kick off, you should already have launched pages on your customers’ chosen social media sites. This will give you the ongoing opportunity to update your page with compelling videos and product information, as well as to engage in dynamic conversations with your customers. The people you talk to on Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok are the ones who will be most likely to buy from you now and in the future. As the holiday rush draws near, be sure to update your pages to feature promotions, discounts, contests, and fun articles that will keep you and your business at the top of your best customers’ minds.

4. Provide plenty of content about your goods, services, and special offers on social media.

Your primary mission at every level of your marketing campaigns should be to demonstrate to buyers what sets you apart from your numerous competitors. Your job is to answer the question, “What can this store give to me as a customer that others cannot?” Maybe the advantage comes in the form of lower prices; perhaps you have a unique and innovative product; maybe you can offer superlative service. Whatever your hook is, you should leverage the internet and social media to make it known far and wide to anyone who is interested. After all, more than half of today’s customers are looking to social media as one of their main sources for inspiration when it comes to what gifts to buy.

5. Send information about your promotions, discounts, and special offers via email.

Although people are doing an increasing amount of web browsing for bargains and ideas each year, email remains a vital tool in your marketing arsenal. This tried and true technique still stands as an amazing way to communicate with your most loyal buyers and one of the best forums to remind them of your products and services. In these difficult economic times, people are eager to save money wherever they can, so don’t pass up the opportunity to send emails touting your upcoming sales and promotions.

6. Maximize the impact of your email marketing by sending emails to prospects on Black Friday.

As the holidays approach, buyers’ views about their in-boxes seem to go through a transformation. The messages they might usually categorize as spam and delete without reading suddenly grab their attention. For that reason, send emails to not only your best customers but also to prospects you welcome into your fold with enticements such as first-timer discounts and newsletter subscriptions. The extra time you take to communicate with these people right before or on Black Friday and into Cyber Week can result in sales and even regular customers who keep coming back and who refer their friends and family as well.

7. Be careful with how much you spend on paid ads.

Social media offers you a chance to launch and maintain numerous, highly effective marketing campaigns that are either absolutely free or can often be extremely low-cost. Now that these avenues are available to you, investing in advertising tactics such as pay-per-click is becoming less imperative. Although you might still consider it as a minor actor in your sales playbook, these days it makes sense to keep it to a minimum for budgetary reasons.

8. Market directly to consumers, not just the people they are buying for.

This might sound familiar: You go online or into a store to purchase a gift for a friend or family member, and next thing you know you have picked up something for yourself instead. Vanquish any guilt you may feel over this situation by learning that half of all shoppers do the same. (And those are just the ones who admit it on a survey.) With this fact in mind, focus some of your inventory and marketing campaign on featuring impulse items that will appeal to shoppers of all stripes.

9. Publish holiday gift inspiration on Gen Z-dominated social media platforms, such as YouTube, Instagram, and TikTok.

These so-called “big three” social media sites are the go-to places for today’s young shoppers. They visit multiple times a day and refer to them for entertainment, social contacts, information, and product reviews, as well as to connect directly to websites of interest. As a 21st-century business owner, you have everything to gain by becoming a go-to page on one or all of these popular digital destinations.

10. Make your marketing as local as possible.

Although some of your customers may live hundreds or thousands of miles from you and connect only via the internet, there is another portion that is close by. For them, you have the special opportunity to be their local go-to store. When possible, nearly half of shoppers will opt to patronize small local retailers like you over their big box and chain competitors. Don’t forget about these people; they can quickly become some of your most faithful and long-lasting customers.

Embed This Infographic

Copy and paste the code below to get this infographic onto your website or blog.