Holiday Website Ideas
Here are some ways to leverage the holiday season on your business website:
- Refresh your website’s appearance with festive visuals to reflect the holiday season.
- Promote holiday-themed content and guides on your website with call to action forms.
- Update your email list signup calls to action with phrases like “Get exclusive holiday promotions and deals.”
- Make sure your website content is up to date as well, to reflect extended holiday shopping hours or advertise your latest promotions.
Holiday Blogging Ideas
The holiday season can inspire a lot of great content and gives business owners an opportunity to show their personality a bit. Writing seasonally-themed blogs can also provide a boost to your website traffic as well as foot traffic to your store.
- You can write blog posts about your favorite holiday memories, or write about a favorite product/service in your store that would make a great gift.
- You can also write posts that target your customers’ problems. During this season, your customers are online, searching for gift ideas for their friends, family, and acquaintances. Write listsicles for gifts ideas, tips and tricks, and seasonal trends. Not only will your blogging content provide information and value to your website visitors, it’ll also help you promote your products or services.
Related eBook: 130 Ideas to Rock Your Business Blog (free)
Holiday Email Marketing
Big retailers and eCommerce stores start their holiday email marketing as early as late September and many consumers are already suffering from email marketing fatigue. How can you write emails that stand out from the barrage of promotional emails? The key to crafting a well-received marketing email is to make it timely, personable, relevant, and clear.
Newsletter Roundups
For your short-term marketing goal of increasing holiday profits, offer your customers exclusive deals or coupons. Think about exactly what would attract your customer’s attention to create an offer that your customers will respond to. One way to write an email that provides value to your customers and also promotes your business is to send out a newsletter rounding up the most popular gift items and offer a limited-time special on them.
Ecards
If you’re not using email marketing to promote special offers, send personalized eCards thanking your customers for their patronage. This can help to nurture relationships with current and potential customers and facilitate loyal customers.
Social Media Holiday Ideas
Social media is a critical component of a successful holiday marketing campaign. Here’s how to make the most of it during the holidays.
Use Mobile
Most of your customers are constantly connected to their social media accounts via their smartphones. Reach your customers while they’re out shopping and push a mobile strategy during the season.
- Use location-based hashtags and tag your location on Facebook and Instagram.
- Optimize your marketing emails for mobile
- Boost the frequency of your weekend posting to reach your customers as they’re doing their holiday shopping. Take an hour on Thursday or Friday to pre-schedule your Facebook and Twitter posts.
Promote Products and Services as Gifts
- Use your social media channels to feature a product/service of the day or week. For example, post a picture of a best selling product on your business’s Facebook page with a short description of whom it would make a great present for or why it would be a great gift.
- Look back at last year’s holiday season and at the trends for this year and promote the products that have been your biggest sellers.
Engage Your Audience
Be sure to have fun with social media and get your customers excited about the holiday season. Post questions for engagement like “What’s a good hiding place for gifts?”. Post a picture of a gift-wrapped box, ask your fans to guess what’s inside, and award the fan who guesses correctly. Social media posts like these are sure to inspire engagement.
Related eBook: Social Media Pocket Guide (free download)
Create Bundles
Create kits and collections of your products that would make nice gifts. Post pictures of the gifts on social media to give potential buyers an idea of what it would be like to give (or receive!) that gift. Be sure to use gift guide hashtags as needed.
Use Video
You can use video marketing during the holidays to promote products and services, or simply to thank your customers and wish your audience a happy and healthy new year. You could also take a more humorous approach and do a holiday singing video. There’s nothing better than outtakes.
Offline Holiday Marketing
It’s important not to overlook the impact of offline marketing this holiday season, especially for small business owners. Here are some offline marketing tactics to try:
Connect with other local businesses and organizations that are not direct competitors to cross-promote complementary products in your stores.
- Donate a small percentage of your profits to a charity and promote the cause on social media (now you’re combining offline with online)
- In your store, you can host an open house event for customers and their friends to check out upcoming products and offer a special deal for attendees.
- Offer gift certificates for your customers who don’t know what gifts to buy.
The Holidays of Holiday Marketing
Holiday marketing isn’t just for Christmas, Hanukkah, and New Years. Whether you’re boosting your offline or online marketing efforts during this season, keep these other important days in mind:
-Black Friday
–Small Business Saturday
-Cyber Monday
-Free Shipping Day
Your website, email, social media, and offline channels can all contribute to a successful holiday marketing effort. Remember, there are many free marketing ideas that can easily be converted into holiday ideas with a few adjustments.
For more national observations and creative holidays throughout the year, download our free marketing calendar below:
This post was published November 2017 and updated December 2019
10 Comments
All businesses put on a marketing blitz around the holidays, so the key is to stand out from the rest. Online marketing content needs to be engaging and shouldn’t just read like an advertisement. Understand what your audience wants and what kinds of messaging they are most receptive to.
Great point Corey! It’s also important to market your business on holidays other than just Thanksgiving or Christmas. It’s more difficult for small businesses to make as much noise as big retailers and stand out.
However, small business owners have great opportunities like Small Business Saturday to take advantage of. In 2012, an estimated consumer spending of $5.5 billion was spent at small businesses on that day.
Very informative and interesting post.It is really a big help. Thank you so much for sharing it with us.
Thanks John! If you need more ideas, you can download Holiday Marketing Guide for free here>> https://thrivehive.com/creative-holiday-marketing-ideas
Happy marketing!
Thank You for sharing this very useful post. As a small business owner you should be aware of the online marketing trends today. For example social media marketing plays a significant role in making a business progress.
Social Media Marketing necessitates time, proficiency and funds. The advantages of successful social media are substantial. It comprises constant online exposure, increased website traffic, knowledge distribution, enhanced SEO ranking, direct customer response and service, improved lead generation, amplified brand awareness, and interrelation with customers and clients and a lot more
Great point Corey! It’s also important to market your business on holidays other than just Thanksgiving or Christmas. It’s more difficult for small businesses to make as much noise as big retailers and stand out.