Creating Holiday Promotions for Your Small Business
Offering products or services to your audience and clients takes forethought and intention.
Written by: Lisa Peranzo for Smartrepreneur
We are finally approaching the end of 2020. This year has tested all of our strength and will power, yet in a matter of days, it will be over. For some small business owners, the holidays signify a time to slow down and step back from their business to focus on the season. However, the holiday season can mean an influx of business as well as an unprecedented opportunity to further connect with your clients, through offering your clients products or services that will help them make the holiday season more enjoyable.
Offering products or services to your audience and clients takes forethought and intention. You have to be purposeful with what you are giving to your audience so you can ensure you are giving them services they find valuable. This includes whatever you decide to provide to your audience as a holiday promotion.
Before you start creating your holiday promotion, you need to ensure that you have the time available to create it. Having the time available can be a difficult thing to plan for at the beginning of the year when you are planning out your year because the promotion you might consider offering at the beginning of the year could be completely different than at the end of the year. We all want to give our clients our absolute best, and they come to us because they can rely on that absolute best, but we also have to be realistic with our time. When you are planning out your year if you are going to take into account a holiday promotion, plan in the appropriate amount of time given the type of offering.
At this point, we have a general idea of how much time it would take to make a printable, a course, an ebook, or a video. If you know you want your holiday promotion to be a certain type of offering, plan accordingly for that type of offering you would be creating, even if you do not know what that offering would entail. Be sure to also include any early-bird discounts or sales you might offer on the promotion. Also, be sure to plan in how long the promotion will be available to your clients and audience.
As you are planning in the time it would take to create the holiday promotion, be sure to also plan in your launch. The actual launch day should be something that works in your schedule (not just for the day but also for the surrounding time). If you plan on launching your promotion on social media, find a day and time to launch that you know will have a higher potential for visibility, and plan to go live during that time. Factor in any live sessions you will do on your social media to build hype for the promotion, plan out your posts as well as your stories (where applicable), and leave time available in your calendar for any client sessions your promotion might include
Remember to automate as much as you can to save yourself time and energy during your launch period. Your launch period should have you building hype about what you are going to be releasing and then talking about it relentlessly. You cannot assume that people will see just one post or just one story about your promotion, especially with the algorithms for visibility being so low on social media. Talk about your promotion, then talk about it again and again. My feedback for knowing when I am talking about a promotion enough is when I get sick of hearing myself talk about it. Even then, I talk about it some more.
Once you have the logistics worked out, it is time to figure out the content of your promotion. The easiest way to do this is to ask your audience and clients. Use the poll feature on social media, and ask previous and current clients. You can ask for feedback for any aspect of your promotion, from the content to the title. After all, when we are all busy people there is no sense in wasting your time creating something your ideal client does not need. Not only will it waste your limited time and energy but it also will not sell. We are in service to our audience and even with a holiday promotion, we need to make sure we are giving our audience what they need. Upon completion of the creation, run a Beta test to make sure that from start to finish the technological aspects of your promotion run smoothly. Ask a trusted friend or family member to go through the steps of obtaining your promotion to make sure it all works correctly.
Then sit back and enjoy the launch of your holiday promotion. Know that you continue to be giving your ideal client exactly what they need to be the best versions of themselves. You put all the work and effort into creating something your ideal client will find of the utmost value. With foresight and engagement, you created a promotion that will help your ideal client enjoy the holiday season even more. By giving a promotion of value, you also helped increase your like, know, trust factor with your ideal clients, retaining clients through the promotion and into the new year.
