Most businesses that offer retail products and services rely heavily on sales from the Christmas and other holiday shopping seasons to keep their local business in the profitable throughout the year. Businesses that plan ahead with local marketing promotions have the best opportunity to maximize their sales potential during busy holiday sales seasons.
Local businesses must work extra hard to compete against larger big box retail outlets and online shopping websites that tend to offer deep discounts and sales promotions throughout the holiday season. For example, retailers often offer the biggest promotions and discounts during the busy Christmas holiday shopping season to meet end of year sales goals. Discounts and sales promotions continue throughout the year with other seasonal holidays, keeping the pressure on local businesses to compete on price during peak holiday buying times.
To stay competitive, small businesses need to tap into new holiday marketing and promotion ideas using the latest local marketing tools and resources that give them an edge over competition for business during the Christmas holiday season and other holidays throughout the year.
Christmas Holiday Promotion Ideas for Local Businesses
In the U.S., the Christmas holiday shopping season officially begins the day after Thanksgiving on Black Friday. Consumers are eager to start early holiday shopping by getting Black Friday and Cyber Monday deals and discounts. Local businesses should plan ahead to get an early start on post-Thanksgiving promotions that lead up to the busy Christmas holiday shopping season.
Some important days local businesses should focus on for early Christmas holiday shopping include:
- Black Friday. The day after Thanksgiving is one of the busiest shopping days of the year and businesses should promote their local deals or discounts at least one to two weeks prior to the big day. Special incentives or one day offers
- Small Business Saturday. In 2010 American Express launched a new sales promotion to promote patronage for small local businesses. The Small Business Saturday promotion for local retailers is a great opportunity for local merchants to leverage special local shopping promotions over Thanksgiving weekend by encouraging consumers to support neighborhood businesses.
- Cyber Monday. In recent years, the Monday after Thanksgiving weekend has become known as Cyber Monday because it is one of the busiest online shopping days of the year. Local businesses with a web presence should make every effort to take advantage of online promotion capabilities for local or national customers.
Ideas and tactics for holiday promotions may include:
- Offering special incentives or one day offers during Black Friday, Small Business Saturday or Cyber Monday
- Participating in local deals email promotions through Amazon Local, Living Social or Groupon
- Increasing Google Adwords, Amazon Product Ads or other local online advertising options to increase targeted website traffic
Local businesses can also try to extend the Christmas holiday shopping season by offering special coupons or incentives for post-holiday sales. Special coupons or gift cards that can be redeemed after the Christmas season can be a good way to assist sales that typically drop after the holidays.
Marketing Local Businesses with Holiday Promotions Throughout the Year
For retail businesses, each season brings about opportunities to create holiday promotions. From Valentine’s Day to Memorial Day or Labor Day, holiday promotions can be a great way to increase sales for local businesses throughout the year.
Depending on the type of business and product, local businesses can market either promote specific products tied to holidays (such as sweets or flowers for Valentine’s Day) or they can simply create a promotional idea tied to the theme of the holiday (such as “relaxing on Memorial Day weekend with XYZ products”).
Businesses should leverage smaller holidays throughout the year to prepare for end of year Christmas holiday season promotions. Smaller holidays can be used to build customer contact databases (either through social media or email contacts), test discount and promotional ideas and learn which marketing strategies or tactics work best for a local business to maximize sales potential during holiday seasons.
Diane Seltzer - Diane is a branding, pr and social media marketer with experience ranging from advertising to corporate marketing and consulting.
