Category: Marketing Tips 2020

Holiday Marketing during Covid 2020

What holiday promotional opportunities are awaiting B2C and B2B business owners and marketing managers?

Covid-19 has brought a change into the typical holiday season marketing.  Holiday Marketing during Covid 2020 is going to be tricky.  The same-old may not work for your small business. Find out what adjustments you should make with your small business plans here.

From October through January, every small business owner should be anticipating what’s to come.  Obviously holiday sales are on the horizon for retailers, however, many newcomer ecommerce shops and those planning virtual events offer more avenues to spread their holiday cheer.

Read the Facebook Holiday Marketing Guide here.  With insight and inspiration, find out how to get your business page more visitors for this upcoming Holiday season.

Get Started Now!

Don’t forget about email marketing when Holiday Marketing during Covid 2020. Update your email marketing list to send out digital holiday messages to customers & clients, reps and vendors/suppliers.  Schedule your drip campaign messages accordingly.

This is also the time to dive into your holiday ordering and shipping processes. Anticipate volume increasing and hire more staff accordingly.  Investigate your sales numbers from previous seasons to give you a sense of expectations.

Many supply chains are running low during the pandemic.  They key here is to plan, plan, plan, and be ready to change course if your suppliers don’t have inventory.

Do you also need to deliver holiday baskets or gifts to loyal customers?  Add this into your frenzied upcoming schedule.  Schedule shipments way in advance so they arrive on time.

November 26th-Thanksgiving

 

The obvious turkey and ‘give thanks’ posts are very common.  Shake it up a bit and add unique flair.  Since Thanksgiving will not be celebrated with extended family members in the colder climates (unless they snagged some outdoor heaters), think about how to reach those nuclear families with your brand and service offerings. Ramp up to Thanksgiving and Black Friday with these email marketing suggestions from Constant Contact.

 

November 27th-Black Friday

 

Get Ready, Set and Go!  This is the big day.  But it’s just been given a tailspin from Coronavirus.  What’s a small business owner to do besides encourage mask-wearing and social distancing?

Crazy enough, think outside of what big box retailers are doing.  How about creating your own Black Friday on a different date.  That way you aren’t in direct competition with the big box retailers.
See more suggestions about how to gain momentum for Black Friday shopping blitzes in this Bloomsberg article.

November 28th, 30th, and December 1st
-Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday and #GivingTuesday

American Express created small Business Saturday to help the local retailers who were getting overlooked on Black Friday. This year, the resources for Shop Small® include a workshop on October 20th for business owners, resources for black-owned businesses, a shop small® map of participating businesses and more.  Click here.

Cyber Monday is November 30th.  Most consumers have adjusted over the past several months to buying almost everything and anything (raise your hand if you bought a Peloton!) online.  Cyber Monday celebrates that.  Perhaps stockpiling toilet paper can take a back seat while you gear up your small business to an online Ecommerce presence, ready to take on Cyber Monday.  Need more ideas for Cyber Monday? Read this !

On Giving Tuesday, because of Covid-19, most donors plan to maintain or increase the amount they give to charities.  This is terrific news for non-profits.  But it also brings the bad news of less volunteering during the pandemic.  Small businesses can join in on Giving Tuesday by highlighting all of the community support they have given to local non-profits over the past year.  Consumers love businesses that give back and help others.

Thursday, December 10-Friday, December 18

Hanukkah

Try to get on “Top 10 lists of what to buy for Hanukkah” to sell your product or service.  You can do this by signing up for HARO, Help a Reporter Out, and answer queries related to your product/service.
Post a menorah with lit candles to commemorate Hanukkah with your customers who celebrate.  Encourage your customers to share their Hanukkah celebrations with your brand.

Create a ‘Hanukkah or Holiday Gift Guide’ for your customers. Suggest gift ideas, cross promote other businesses within the guide and read this article for more creative ideas.

December 25th Christmas

Christmas this year is unlike any other.  Making the shopping experience as safe as possible for consumers with options like curbsite, contactless pickup, and less face-to-face interaction, will be the key to driving sales for small businesses.
Business2Community, in a recent article about Holiday marketing in 2020, came up with some clever ideas and adjustments because of Covid-19:

For example:

  • An entrepreneur in the hospitality industry could offer an “experience in a box” for customers who can’t travel right now.
  • A clothing retailer could focus more on casually chic clothing people can wear in or out of the home, rather than on high heels and festive dresses.
  • A sporting goods retailer could highlight solo sports like skiing and swimming in newsletter campaigns, to encourage socially distancing folks to get out into nature.”  

 

January 1st-New Year


For many health-related businesses, this is the perfect opportunity for potential customers to hear your message of fitness, wellness and good nutrition.
Give prospects an idea of what their new year’s resolutions may look like.  For example, post the following on social media “This new year, 2020, I resolve to …..”  (fill in the blank with how they may use your product or service).

The best gift you may give to your customers is holiday cheer, so no matter what you decide to do for your holiday promotional messages, thank your supporters and uplift them with your holiday spirit.  This year is especially challenging to everyone, mentally and financially.  Stay positive and upbeat with your messaging. Add humor to your social media posts and emails.  Create new opportunities to your product/service offerings. And don’t forget to spread joy!

Do you have any more unique marketing suggestions for the 2020 holiday season?  Email us at info@highkeyimpact.com.

Cheryl Friedenberg, President
High Key Impact, LLC
Digital Marketing Consulting for Small Business Owners
www.highkeyimpact.com
cheryl@highkeyimpact.com

Small Business Marketing Tips 2020

Small Business Marketing Tips 2020

Do you feel like your small businesses has had the most challenging year ever?

We’ve pivoted and adapted our business models, we’ve initiated safety protocols, we’ve tip toed around the political divisiveness, we’ve worked hard to get every single customer, and we’ve given blood, sweat, and tears to keep them loyal to us.

Whew.  That’s a lot!

Now it’s time to take a breather and re-group.

Fall is here, the leaves are changing, and the holiday season is around the corner, a lot sooner than we think.  Your small business digital marketing plans are ready for a refresh.

As a marketing consultant, I am constantly learning about the newest innovations in Social Media, SEO, Email, and websites.  And by sharing these tips with you, my hope is that your business reach will expand.
I’ve outlined some simple ways for you to amplify your marketing to the next level.

Try these tips:

  1. Add a website chat bot with Facebook messenger.

Facebook messenger offers many automations for your business page so why not tie those automations and personalized conversations to your website.

To do this, Facebook has made the process fairly simple.

Go to your Facebook business page and click on Settings.

Then go to Messaging.

Scroll down to where it says: “Add Messenger to your website” and click Get Started to get the code for your website developer.

And voila.  Start chatting with website visitors via Facebook Messenger.

Go to HighKeyImpact.com and look for my FB messenger Chatbot in the bottom right hand corner.

  1. Animate Social Media Images

 Moving images and video are known to have better reach than flat post images.  Here’s a little insider secret to know if you don’t use Canva.com yet to create images.

For beginner and amateur graphic designers, their platform helps you look like a real graphic designer.

Canva went several steps further in this Summer and POW—they created the ability to animate social media images and elements— way beyond my basic beginner graphic design ability.

Now Canva offers animated image options to create images AND text to move, pop, hop, and jump around.  Well, not exactly jump.

Try Canva with text and photo animations.

Their platform’s animation features are mind-blowing to amateur graphic designers like me. You’ll feel the same way!

For example….

  1. Manage your company’s online listings

There are several listings’ management platforms where you can pay a monthly fee to get listed on Yellow Pages, Yelp and similar website listings.

If you devote about 1 hour/month to your listings management, it’s a simple DIY project.

First, find the relevant websites where your competitors are listed. Or go to these websites.

Look for your business and if it’s not listed, sign up for a free listing.  If it’s there, take ownership of the listing and optimize it with the current information about your business.

Listings are everywhere including:

Foursquare
Mapquest
Opentable
Google
Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn
Bing
Waze
Yahoo
Uber
Yellow pages
Amazon Alexa for Business
Touch Local
AOL
All in One Search
192.com
2 find local
Ab local
EZ local

And more!

Online listings are also considered backlinks to your website URL.  And that is where some key strategic search engine optimization (SEO) comes into play.  Google likes websites with many incoming backlinks and the search engine will reward it with a higher search ranking.

4. Start an authenticity campaign

Talk about the why of your business.  Why did you start doing what you do?  What does it mean to you?  How does it make you feel?  Where do you see it going in the near future?  What are your grand plans?

Get rid of the stock photos and start using your own images and video.
Ask customers to take photos or video of them with your product.
Get permission to use their photos in your marketing materials or digital marketing.

When the image of your business uses ‘real people’, you will be amazed at the engagements and interaction from new prospective customers and existing customers.

Being authentic and showcasing your business in it’s true light gives prospective customers a sneak peek into what it’s like to purchase from you.

The more true you are to your brand, the more likely people will follow, like, comment and buy from you.

With these 4 marketing tips (Small Business Marketing Tips 2020), we hope to see you elevate your small business digital marketing reach.  If you need a hand, reach out to us at cheryl@highkeyimpact.com.