Is Your Business or Organization Ready for the Holiday Season?

Black Friday is almost here (Nov. 28^th, 2014), and Cyber Monday is right around the corner (Dec. 1^st, 2014). This is a great time for small business owners to leverage the biggest set of shopping days of the year.

And guess what? Strategy is everything! Here are a few ideas to get you started:

How will you engage? What will you offer? Start thinking about your offer and how you will get the word out now! What would be the most valuable to your customers? Determine price, discount codes and set up a special page on your web site. Will you run Google ads or Facebook ads? Do you have a good email list you can promote the offer too?
Leverage your offers, especially Cyber Monday to grow your email list. Let people know that you will have a Cyber Monday promotion. Make it exclusive; only those people who are subscribed to your email list will receive the official offer or early access. Use some tools to create and monitor your promotions. Constant Contact has some really nice tools in their Toolkit to help you build and manage your offers and promotions.
Use Social Media Channels to extend your offers: If you have the time, you might consider bonus, limited or time sensitive offers. Make sure to let people know what channels you will announcing your offers (Facebook, Twitter, Email, your web site etc.). Schedule your posts in advance using Facebook’s scheduling tool or Hootsuite.
Make your offer easy to share. Make sure the emails you send out about your promotions or Cyber Monday include a “Send to a Friend” link or “Share on Facebook” so you can grab some social media referrals.

And finally, consider attending one of my upcoming seminars or webinars focusing on this very topic. It’s called, “Rock your Holidays with a Great Promotion.” Whether you have a retail shop, provide a specialized service or work business-to-business, or have a nonprofit in need of outreach, this workshop will provide simple, practical tips for closing out 2014 on a high note.

Attendees will learn:

How to leverage social media to engage new and existing customers
Which promotions and special offers work for your business right now
Best ways to drive response from your emails and social posts
Easy strategies to keep your offers looking good on a cell phone or tablet
How to create and manage a campaign for the holidays (it’s easier than you might think!)
Create a simple playbook to plan your marketing activities all season long
Most importantly, how to measure your results to get more out of your effort along the way

Check out my calendar of Webinars & Workshops to register to learn how to Rock Your Holidays!