What You Should Do Now To Prepare Your Business for the Holiday Season

The holiday season is quickly upon us and you don’t want to be stuck realizing you never prepared a promotion for it. This season is almost always the most profitable time of the year for online businesses. As a matter of fact, some online businesses make up to 40% of their yearly revenue in the last quarter alone. It is a good idea to start the holiday season preparation for your business now since it’s impossible to be too prepared for the busiest season of all.

Here are a few things you should be doing now to help stay ahead of your competition and plan for the upcoming season.

1. Promotional Calendar
The first step is to figure out what deals you will be offering to customers during the holiday season and map them out by creating a promotional calendar. It is okay to be more promotional during the holidays since it is expected by consumers to be a heavy time of the year for sales, discounts, deals and promotions. The idea behind your promotional calendar is to plan ahead so you can present one compelling, cohesive message to your existing and potential customers that stands out against your competitors. Staying organized will be a critical factor over the busy season and having a promotional calendar will help ensure the success of your marketing campaigns.

Tip: When you create a promotional calendar you want to add things such as:

• Dates and times of your promotional email deployment
• Dates and topics of blog posts
• Dates and times you plan to update graphics and banners on your site
• Dates and times you begin and end advertising for each promotion

2. Display Ads
If you are familiar with Google Adwords you may want to consider using it as a pay-per-click advertising channel for you holiday promotions. It is easy for your site visitors to get distracted during the holidays and display advertising is an important tool to remind those visitors of items they left in their cart and to revisit your site. You can incentivize your audience with promotional codes on your display ads that offer a certain percent off their cart to help convert those visitors into customers. You will also need to make sure to use a strong call to action in your ads (for tips on how to create a compelling call to action click here). It is important to use words like “Free Shipping”, “Percent Off”, “Black Friday”. “Cyber Monday”, and “Holiday Sale”, to entice buyers.

Retargeting can also be one of the most effective options for advertising your promotions over the holidays. Retargeting is a marketing technique that allows you to target visitors that have shown interest in your brand or website, but left without converting (You can learn more by checking out our Remarketing blog here).

3. Emails and Social Media Promotions
Email marketing can be one of your best sources of traffic and your best ROI. Promotional messaging is expected by consumers this time of year which is why it is important to send more emails than any other time of the year. You will want to plan out several emails for each promotion and you may want to consider segmenting your email list to increase effectiveness. Your email message should also be composed of a strong call to action and compelling copy. Furthermore, the landing pages that your emails point to should continue where you e-mail copy left off. Landing pages can be extremely effective if executed well and further bump up your conversion rate.

The holidays are a good time to make use or greater use of your social platforms since consumers are more likely to be on the lookout for promotions. Sharing your content on social media will often gain more reach during the holidays than they have all year and can help echo your existing promotions to a larger audience.

4. Blog Content, Design & Graphics
As things get busy as the holiday season gets closer, writing content for your company blog will be the last thing on your mind. This is why it is a good idea to prepare and write blog post ahead of time for the holidays. Your design and graphics are another important factor that will help tie your campaigns together and keep them consistent. Getting this done early can be another major task of your shoulders when the holiday season comes around.

If you plan far enough ahead, your business will be ready to make the most of the holiday season. Keep in mind that during the holidays there are more data breaches than any other time of the year. Here at BMT Micro we can help better prepare your business for the upcoming season. BMT Micro’s state-of-the-art fraud detection system automatically screen orders and puts questionable orders through a manual approval process. All BMT Micro servers are fully secured and host all shopping carts using the highest encryption standards available. Our system can be used to set-up many different discount schemes, and our highly trained customer service staff is also here to assist your customers with the ordering process. We now offer Marketing services as well, so please feel free to contact us for more information. Don’t wait until the holiday shopping season to take the necessary security precautions for your online business. Planning ahead will help ensure you receive the best gift of all – a successful holiday season.