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3 Holiday Marketing Tips for Brick and Mortars

If you haven’t started your holiday marketing that’s okay, there’s still time. It’s really important, however, to create a solid plan by October and begin the implementation no later than early November. There should be two major goals when creating a holiday marketing strategy and promoting it early. 

The first goal is to create time. Time to give consumers the opportunity to respond to your marketing and make shopping and holiday plans. The second goal is to give consumers a reason. A reason to make a purchase from your establishment. Time and a Reason. 

Now that we are aware of the goals, let’s use those goals to implement some tips to boost your holiday marketing.

1. Offer In-House Specials

Everyone looks for the best deals when planning their holiday shopping and they’re looking for “doorbusters” or awesome sales as a reason to visit your business. If you choose not to offer any in-house deals, there’s a very good chance that shoppers won’t waste their time at your business this holiday season. Instead, they will choose to shop at a business that is offering a great “doorbuster” or sale. 

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Examples of in-house special deals:

  • Create a “doorbuster” deal. Doorbusters are a special item or items that you offer at a great price that consumers may not be able to find at another business. Usually, they’re offered from the time you open until a set end time (usually just a few hours). Once your item is sold out, even if that happens before the ending time, that’s it. This creates urgency and will get consumers in the door.
  • Offer Black Friday and Small Business Saturday deals. Nearly all B2C businesses offer special deals on Black Friday. Prices are slashed on many popular toys, home appliances, houseware items and everything in-between. Shoppers are out in droves for this busiest shopping day of the year. And Small Business Saturday works the same way. Bonus tip: Make sure you are well-staffed on Black Friday and Small Business Saturday. There’s nothing shoppers on a mission hate more than long lines and an unorganized business.
  • Offer last-minute sales. The Holiday Rush, starting the last Friday before Christmas, is a last-minute mad dash for consumers to finish their holiday shopping lists. This is a great time to offer a last-minute deal or sale. Offering a cash-back or gift card with a purchase set dollar amount purchase is a fantastic way to get consumers in during the Holiday Rush and bring them back to spend the gift card after the holidays are over.

2. Getting Social with Your Holiday Marketing

If you have social media accounts for your business, (which you should and if you don’t well…that’s a whole different blog article that you can find HERE), then utilizing them full-force during the holiday season is a necessity. There is so much that you can do on social media to encourage your followers to become in-store shoppers. Which is always the goal for social media… converting followers into consumers. 

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Examples of social media holiday marketing:

  • Create a Facebook contest. Creating a Facebook contest is an easy way to grow your Facebook audience and create more engagement with your brand. All you need to do is create a post and ask people to like, share, and comment below for a chance to win a giveaway. The giveaway can be a gift card to your business or a product that you offer. Include a photo of the giveaway with the post to grab attention and include an end date and time where you will pick a winner for the giveaway. Make sure you announce the winner on social in a separate post congratulating them.
  • Frequently post your business’ sales and deals. The great thing about social media is that you can easily let your followers and consumers know what’s going on in-store with unlimited posting. Post daily with what sales are currently going on and deals that are coming up. Continue to give your consumers a reason to spend their time in your establishment.
  • Boost a post. Spend a little money or a lot, whatever is in your budget, and boost a post to gain more reach for a special deal or sale that is going on in-store. Make sure to choose your proper target audience and run the boosted post for at least 3-5 days. And to create a bigger impact, consider boosting different posts several times over the holiday season. 

3. Send a Holiday Email Blast

Hopefully, as a business, you have been implementing ways to collect email addresses from your customers and using those to send out an email blast periodically to promote year-round in-store news and sales. Well, the holidays are definitely the time to blast those email newsletters. These newsletters don’t have to be long, but they do need to be informative.

Examples of holiday email newsletters:

  • Keep it short and sweet. Using the basic format of an informational card with details about a sale coming up soon is a great way to keep it short and informative and easy to replicate weekly. Just change up the look of the card and the content to keep it new and fresh with each open.
  • Offer an email coupon. Creating a coupon that customers can only receive and use if they sign up for your emails, is a pretty great way to grow your email list. Offer the incentive of signing up for your emails in-store and on social media. Customers will most-likely sign-up when you mention they will be able to receive special coupons and news about sales before anyone else.

Conclusion

There are tons of ideas and effective ways to market your business this holiday season. Start with these three tips and give your customers the time and reason to visit and purchase from your business.

If you’d like to learn more about how to market your business this holiday season, contact Fuzzy Duck. We offer FREE consultations and cover everything from digital to print marketing and strategy planning.

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Author

  • CJ Haag

    In her role as Fuzzy Duck’s Social Media & Content Specialist, CJ’s design eye shines through the thoughtfully crafted social posts, reels, and email blasts she delivers to our clients. She’s cultivated her knack for branding and digital marketing strategy in various positions over the last 15 years, always combining design, video production, and marketing efforts. Her passion for deep connection and storytelling inform her approach to digital media.