Tag: small business marketing

Get Your Small Business Holiday-Ready

Get Your Small Business Holiday-Ready:
Your 2024 Marketing Game Plan

Whether you’re selling products or services, the holiday season presents unique opportunities to boost your business. From retail shops to consulting firms, salons to professional services, this comprehensive guide will help you maximize your Q4 potential. Let’s explore how different types of businesses can capitalize on holiday spending and planning and Get Your Small Business Holiday-Ready.

Why Start Planning Now?

Consumer behavior shows that 40% of holiday purchasing decisions – including booking services and buying gift certificates – begin before Halloween. Early planning helps both product and service businesses capture this early interest while ensuring adequate staffing and resource allocation for the busy season.

Your Holiday Marketing Checklist: A Month-by-Month Guide

October: Laying the Foundation

For Product-Based Businesses:

  • Audit website for speed and mobile responsiveness
  • Update inventory forecasts
  • Plan holiday product bundles
  • Review shipping partners and costs

For Service-Based Businesses:

  • Create holiday service packages
  • Design gift certificate promotions
  • Set up online booking for January appointments
  • Plan capacity for holiday rush periods

Shared Tasks:

  • Update Google Business Profile with holiday hours
  • Review last year’s data for peak periods
  • Prepare email marketing templates
  • Set marketing budgets by channel

Early November: Launch Preparation

For Product-Based Businesses:

  • Photograph holiday products
  • Set up shipping deadlines
  • Create gift guides
  • Prepare inventory storage

For Service-Based Businesses:

  • Create “New Year, New You” campaigns
  • Design holiday service bundles
  • Prepare January booking incentives
  • Set up gift card systems

Shared Tasks:

  • Design holiday social media templates
  • Create promotional calendars
  • Test online payment systems
  • Plan staff holiday schedules

Mid-November: Campaign Activation

For Product-Based Businesses:

  • Launch early-bird product deals
  • Highlight bestseller gift items
  • Activate shipping promotions
  • Begin inventory notifications

For Service-Based Businesses:

  • Promote “book ahead” specials
  • Launch gift certificate deals
  • Create December loyalty rewards
  • Highlight corporate service packages

Shared Tasks:

  • Start holiday email sequences
  • Activate social media campaigns
  • Launch Google and social ads
  • Begin customer appreciation initiatives

December: Execution and Adaptation

For Product-Based Businesses:

  • Push last-minute shipping options
  • Highlight in-store pickup
  • Manage inventory communications
  • Promote digital gift cards

For Service-Based Businesses:

  • Promote last-minute gift certificates
  • Launch New Year packages
  • Create January booking incentives
  • Highlight corporate party services

Shared Tasks:

  • Maintain social media engagement
  • Monitor ad performance
  • Execute email campaigns
  • Prepare post-holiday strategies

Key Marketing Strategies for Holiday Success

1. Email Marketing Excellence

Product-Based Strategies:

  • Product restock alerts
  • Gift guide series
  • Shipping deadline reminders
  • Abandoned cart recovery

Service-Based Strategies:

  • January booking promotions
  • Gift certificate reminders
  • Corporate package highlights
  • New Year service previews

2. Social Media Mastery

Product-Based Content:

  • Product unboxing videos
  • Gift wrapping tutorials
  • Holiday styling tips
  • Customer testimonials

Service-Based Content:

  • Behind-the-scenes prep
  • Client transformation stories
  • Gift certificate tutorials
  • Service showcases

3. Website Optimization

Product-Based Focus:

  • Gift guides by price
  • Shipping information
  • Inventory status
  • Wishlist functionality

Service-Based Focus:

  • Online booking systems
  • Gift certificate purchases
  • Service package builders
  • Consultation scheduling

Promotional Ideas That Work

  1. Early Bird Specials Product Businesses:
  • Bundle deals
  • Free shipping thresholds
  • Early access sales

Service Businesses:

  • January booking discounts
  • Service package upgrades
  • Corporate event specials
  1. Loyalty Program Perks Product Businesses:
  • Double points events
  • Member-only products
  • Early sale access

Service Businesses:

  • Priority booking
  • Service upgrades
  • Referral bonuses

Technology Tips

  1. Payment Solutions
  • Multiple payment methods
  • Buy Now, Pay Later options
  • Digital wallet compatibility
  • Mobile payment systems
  1. Booking & Inventory Product Businesses:
  • Real-time inventory tracking
  • Automated reorder points
  • Shipping integrations

Service Businesses:

  • Online scheduling systems
  • Capacity management
  • Automated reminders

Post-Holiday Planning

Product Businesses:

  • Inventory clearance plans
  • Return policy execution
  • New year product launches

Service Businesses:

  • January promotion launches
  • New service rollouts
  • Client reactivation campaigns

Shared Tasks:

  • Customer feedback collection
  • Performance analysis
  • Q1 strategy development

Final Tips for Success

  1. Stay Adaptable Keep resources available for unexpected opportunities and market changes.
  2. Focus on Value Whether offering products or services, emphasize the value you provide rather than just discounts.
  3. Document Everything Track what works for both product and service promotions to improve next year’s planning.

Remember, holiday success comes from thorough preparation and smart execution, regardless of your business type. Start implementing these strategies now to ensure a prosperous holiday season!

Contact cheryl@highkeyimpact.com for more tips to plan a successful 2024 holiday season for your small business.

How to Start: Marketing for Small Businesses

As a small business just starting out, it’s important to make sure you are easily discoverable by potential customers. One of the most important ways to do this is through search engine optimization (SEO), which involves optimizing your website to rank higher in search engine results pages (SERPs). This blog post will outline some essential steps you can take to get found on Google and other search engines like Bing and Duck, Duck, Go.

How to Start: Marketing for Small Businesses

  1. Research relevant keywords

The first step to optimizing your website for search engines is researching relevant keywords. People use these words or phrases to search for products or services your business offers. By studying these keywords, you can gain insight into the specific terms and phrases people use to find businesses like yours. Once you have a list of keywords, you can use them to optimize your website’s content.

  1. Optimize your website’s content

Once you have a list of relevant keywords, you can start to optimize your website’s content. This includes things like your website’s title tags, meta descriptions, and header tags. Make sure to use your target keywords in these elements. However, don’t overdo it – search engines can penalize websites for keyword stuffing. Instead, focus on creating high-quality content that includes your keywords in a natural way.

  1. Build backlinks

Backlinks are links from other websites to your website. They are an important factor in search engine rankings. Backlinks for small businesses starting up indicate to search engines that other websites consider your content to be valuable and worth linking to. There are a number of ways to build backlinks. These include guest blogging, creating high-quality content that other websites may want to link to, and participating in online communities related to your industry.

  1. Use local SEO techniques

If your business serves a local area, it’s important to use local SEO techniques to ensure that your website appears in local search results. This can include things like creating local business listings on sites like Google My Business, Yelp, Next Door, and others, optimizing your website’s content with local keywords and your location. Use schema markup to provide search engines with information about your business’s location.

  1. Monitor and analyze your website’s performance

Once you’ve implemented these marketing strategies with your start-up small business, it’s important to monitor and analyze your website’s performance in search engine rankings. Use tools like Google Analytics and Google Search Console to track your website’s traffic and search engine performance. This will allow you to identify areas for improvement and adjust your SEO strategies accordingly.  It usually takes weeks, if not months, for the search algorithms to find your website.

  1. Stay up to date with SEO best practices

Finally, it’s important to stay up to date with SEO best practices. Search engine algorithms are constantly evolving, and what works today may not work tomorrow. Make sure to stay informed about the latest SEO trends and updates, and adjust your strategies accordingly. This will help ensure that your website continues to rank well in search engine results pages.

Moreover, by optimizing your website for search engines, you have taken an important step in getting your business found by potential customers. Continue to research relevant keywords, optimize your website’s content, build backlinks, use local SEO techniques, monitor your website’s performance, and stay up to date with SEO best practices. While SEO can be a complex and time-consuming process, it’s worth the effort to ensure that your business is easily discoverable by potential customers.

 

Contact High Key Impact, LLC for more start-up small business digital marketing needs.

Is Your Small Business Ready for SMS Marketing?

Is Your Small Business Ready for SMS Marketing?

SMS Marketing High Key Impact

The average email marketing campaign has a 20% open rate.  How would a 90% + open rate sound?  According to a Dynmark report, SMS texting crushes email open rates at a whopping 98%!

While email is a critical communications tool to stay visible in front of your customer base, small businesses should pivot their thinking and open up to SMS marketing.

SMS stands for Short Message Service, another word for Text Messaging.  While MMS stands for Multimedia Messaging Service, or media sharing via text messaging (photos, videos, emojis, bitmojis, etc.).

Let’s take this one step further, according to Gartner, email response rates are 6% whereas text response rates are closer to 45%.

So let’s jump on the SMS bandwagon and look at our options for small businesses.

What should my SMS messaging look like?

Look at this SlideShare from Jake Jeffries with The Complete Retail SMS Marketing Guide.

Within the framework of SMS, he provides recommendations for the best days of a week and times of day to send text messages.

Message content may include your current sales/promotions, a personalized happy birthday text, holiday greetings, new product announcements and thank-you-for-your-purchase notes, all within 160 characters of a text.

Create content which grabs attention as the text comes through.  Calls to action with exclusive offers, are personalized or ask a question make a difference in your messaging.

What are the pitfalls of SMS Marketing?

To be effective at business texting, small business owners must divide the time and resources to create campaigns with a punch.  By spamming your customers (sending too many messages) or, on the flip side, not creating a consistent text campaign, you may lose subscribers who opt out.

Get inventive with your message as the immediacy of texting causes recipients to act.  The same content you use with other social media platforms may not work as well with SMS.

Which SMS services will help me get started?

Read this comparison from Top Ten Reviews to help you decide which SMS messaging service is best for your needs.  Another comparison published by Capterra looks at even more SMS services.  See which features are stand-outs.  Also, think about your database and how you will capture mobile phone numbers if you don’t currently ask for them.  Will you buy a list or ask for a mobile number at checkout?  Many of the SMS services have an opt-in number for texting so that your customers may subscribe on the spot.

Have you had SMS text messaging experience within your small business?  Comment below.

 

By Cheryl Friedenberg

High Key Impact

Cheryl@highkeyimpact.com

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Is September Going To Get Busy?

Are you gearing up for busy season? There are several ways your business should prepare for a Fall marketing blitz!

1.  Video Marketing

By using Facebook Live on your Facebook Business Page or Shooting a short message to your customers on your IPad, there are exponential results seen from Video Marketing versus typical channels.  I recently experimented with several clients and Facebook Live–the results were astounding!

2.  Paid Ads

Facebook Boosts or a Google Adwords Campaign generate a multitude of viewers to your local or nationally based business.  Each paid platform has specific advantages, however, if your presence on Facebook needs a push, I would recommend a $5-10/day ad budget, especially when promoting a local business.  You may customize your audience specific to geography, age, gender and more!

3.  SEO

If your website’s SEO has not been looked into or changed for over a year, it’s time to revisit Search Engine Optimization.  Speak to your website’s manager and discuss how your business has received leads, transitioned it’s focus or what you believe brings customers to your front door.  This will help those keywords, meta descriptions and tags for Search purposes.  SEO takes several weeks to catch up to changes, so start now!
For help & guidance with all of the above, call Cheryl at 215 514 8271, or email cheryl@highkeyimpact.com

Top 3 Marketing Headlines This Week

To keep you up-to-date on the latest digital marketing news for small businesses, take a look at the top 3 marketing headlines this week.

New Looks This Week:  The social media world is being changed around forever with 2 very different changes for marketers, businesses and individuals.  First, Instagram changed the design of it’s ever-famous icon to look brighter and bolder.  Second, Twitter is reportedly coming out with new criteria for its 140-character limit, which may exclude links and photos.  Are we saying goodbye to Bit.ly and Google URL shortener?

Video is rocking and rolling into more and more mainstream social media posts every day.  Here is a great article how you can DIY video streaming or snippets to show your best face!  Contact us if you would like to test out You Tube’s Directr For Business as it’s an easy way to create high quality video.

Is Email Marketing Dead?  Especially among Generation Z and Millennials, there has been discussion in the marketing world about how these groups do not embrace email.  Well, it’s wrong.  Not only is email marketing thriving among younger audiences, the mobile-version is growing ever-so-strong!  Make sure your email campaigns are mobile-friendly and adaptable to all screens.
Email marketing is alive and kicking!

Have any news you want to share with us?  Contact cheryl@highkeyimpact.com with your marketing insight and tips!