Holiday Marketing for Small Businesses
Now is the time to get starting with your holiday marketing campaigns, and that includes search engine optimization (SEO). In order to maximize the impact of seasonal marketing (take a quick listen to the podcast episode below), you will need to start pushing out your website content and social media about 30-45 days before you want to start generating sales. While this may seem early, keep in mind that search engines take about 30 days to index new online content and the Marketing Rule of 7 states that people need to an advertisement about 7 times before acting on it. You could argue that this also applies to viewing your social media posts and online content. While it may seem like overkill to you, most people are not seeing your posts every time you publish them due to social media algorithms, so more IS better in this case!
In order to make the most of holiday marketing for your small business, you’ll want to: get specific with your keywords, create evergreen seasonal content, craft specific offers (with or without landing pages), and leverage social media to amplify your content. Don’t worry if this sounds a bit overwhelming, a local SEO specialist can help streamline this process and make sure you are targeting the right keywords and doing so efficiently and effectively.
Table of Contents
Get Specific with Your Keywords
When it comes to holiday marketing, long tail keywords are your friend. The more specific and niche you can get with the keywords you’re using, the better. The best way to do this is to think like your target customer. What would they type into Google to find your product or service? For example, if you sell custom printed mugs for teachers, your target customer might type “personalized gifts for teachers” or something similar. Because generic terms like “Christmas gifts” are HIGHLY competitive and have a very large search volume, long tail keywords are generally much easier to rank for allow you to take advantage of lower volume search terms.
Bottom line: niche down as much as you can and really target search users who are likely to be the end users of your product or service. The more you can target keywords or phrases they would use when searching, the higher your click through and conversion rates will be!
Create Evergreen Seasonal Content
If you are going to make the effort to create seasonal content for you holiday marketing campaigns, you might as well make it continue to work for you year over year. Evergreen content is content that does not lose relevancy over time. For example, if you wrote a blog post on a specific event that isn’t relevant after it occurs (for the most part), it’s likely to get some eyes on it initially, but will soon be forgotten by search users. However a post like “10 Tips to Help You Wake Up Earlier” isn’t time-specific and will likely continue to be popular over time as many people have this issue!
When it comes to holiday marketing, think of article topics like the “9 Best Gifts for Elementary School Teachers” or something that will continue to gain traction on search engines, while still allowing you to easily edit it for your product placement needs. Over time, these types of posts tend to do well and can help your overall rankings, while at the same time allowing you to get more eyes on your products or services.
Create Limited Time Seasonal Offers as part of your Holiday Marketing Campaign
Limited time seasonal offers are a great way to get more customers during the holiday season. Many people are already shopping online and a limited-time discount or free shipping is just what they need to click the “buy now” button. If you have a brick and mortar location, these types of offers are a GREAT way to get people through the door and should be a key element in your hyperlocal marketing strategy. The benefit of using a landing page for seasonal offers and content, as opposed to a pop up box, is that it will allow you to take advantage of search engine optimization– incorporating your seasonal keywords throughout the landing page.
If you host your website on WordPress, there are a number of plugins you can use to create special landing pages. You can also use a platform like Leadpages or your current theme may even have a landing page template. If it’s your first time using a landing page, you may want to enlist the help of a web designer or developer. Try it out this holiday season and see how it works for your business!
Leverage Social Media to Amplify Content
Social media is a great way to amplify your marketing content– especially during the holiday season. Even if you don’t use social media regularly as part of your marketing, the holiday season is a great time to start and, depending on the results, you may find that you end up continuing throughout the year! Because social media scheduling can be a bit overwhelming at times, we find that using a social media scheduling tool like Social Pilot (affiliate link and the tool that we use with clients at Seaside Digital Design & Marketing) makes it A LOT easier.
You’ll want to regularly share your special offers, photos of products or services, and other educational content around your product/service to keep it top of mind. Encourage your social media followers to share the content and tag their friends to expand your audience on different platforms. The key here is to make the content easily shareable. It should be short and sweet and photos and graphics should be high-quality. Make sure you ASK for the share as people WILL do it– you just need to ask them!
Now it’s time to get started with that holiday marketing plan. If you need assistance with any of the above (including setting up and managing your social media rollout), let’s set up a time to chat. We are happy to help you establish a holiday marketing plan so you can start selling more all year long.
You might also be interesting in our 3 Steps to Get More Online Visibility in Less than 1 Hour which will give you some great tips to get started right now!