When the Christmas treats begin to make their way onto the shelves at your local grocery store you know the festive season is just around the corner. As a small business owner this time of year can feel both exciting and daunting. To help you feel on top of your marketing, here are some tips to streamline your planning process so that you can increase your sales and avoid overwhelm.
Begin planning your marketing strategy early
The key to success is to plan your Christmas marketing campaigns early and begin rolling them out from September. With global shipping delays and a surge in online shopping due to lockdowns in Australia, many consumers are beginning to plan their Christmas shopping earlier than usual to ensure that their gifts arrive on time.
Optimise your online customer experience
By November, Christmas shopping will be in full swing as Australians fully embrace America’s Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales. According to Australia Post’s Inside Australian Online Shopping Update for December 2020, November 2020 was the biggest month in Australian online shopping history. In the four days from Black Friday, there was 42 per cent year-on-year growth in online purchases with over 2.2 million households shopping online.
This means that now is the time to streamline, optimise and elevate your online shopping experience for customers to ensure that there is nothing stopping them from clicking purchase at the checkout.
Review your results from previous years
While planning your marketing for the festive season take some time to look back at previous years and analyse the data that you have available. Look specifically at previous campaigns to understand what worked and what needs improvement. Then delve into the customer data to identify when your customers started their Christmas shopping, what attracted them to you and what their customer journey looked like.
This will help you tailor your holiday messaging, refine your marketing strategy and iron out anything that needs tweaking from previous years.
Tailor your marketing to your unique audience
During one of the most competitive times of year, the one way to make sure that your marketing gets results is to get crystal clear on who your customer is. A mistake that many small businesses make is to get distracted by what their competitors are doing when it comes to marketing. This is the time when you want to be completely focused on understanding your customer and what makes them tick so that you can craft targeted marketing campaigns that speak to them directly.
Connect with your existing customers in new ways
Your existing customers already know the value that you bring, which is why it’s essential to create new ways that you can nurture your relationship with them and re-engage them during the festive season. The benefit of having an existing customer base is that you already have valuable data from them which you can use to tailor marketing campaigns based around what they have purchased from you previously and what their unique buying behaviours are.
Stand out from the crowd in all the right ways
When it comes to marketing your small business there isn’t a one-size-fits-all approach. Instead, you need to get clear on who you serve, what you want to be known for and how your offering stands out from the crowd. You can build creative marketing campaigns that go beyond discounting your offering by also focusing on ways that you can add value. A few ideas to get you started could be to offer free express delivery to give your customers peace of mind or to partner with an aligned cause for Black Friday Sales to offer a give back incentive with every purchase.
