The Fall is full of opportunities to promote your business in a creative way. With holidays like Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Christmas around the corner and even seasonal changes like Fall and Winter, why not look for some creative ways to promote your products or services in the next few months? Before you say you can’t afford to either in time or money, remember online marketing offers some quick and affordable ways to get the word out.Stating the Obvious…..
Probably the most obvious place online for your seasonal promotions is on your own website.
- Leverage your home page by making a special banner or a featured space
Create at least one landing page that entices your audience to take advantage of your promotion- Optimize the content for key search terms
- Add some extra blog posts around the theme of your promotion
But don’t stop with just your own website:
- Look for opportunities to partner with other websites, shopping sites, and relevant directories
- Create a special url and mini website for the promotion
- If it makes sense pre-arrange for your special to appear on relevant coupon sites
Get Google On It.
Because seasonal promotions are usually short-lived, it’s hard to get your website or landing pages ranking on the first page of Google quickly. That means a great place to get the word out is using Google advertising. With a guaranteed a spot on the front page for controlled search terms, you really can’t go wrong. You can even set the cost and the amount of clicks per day to keep this within your budget.
The key to a good Google campaign though is taking the time to prep.
- Make sure you have done your keyword research
- Separate out ads into campaigns that are relevant to certain keywords
- Test ad copy to see which ads get a better click through rate, and
- Make sure that your ads go through to effective landing pages to increase conversion
Don’t forget to look at putting your ads on the display network as well as normal Google ads. This will place it on other relevant sites and can have an enormous impact to your sales.
Harnessing Social Media
While Google will usually have the biggest audience for people who are actively searching for your services or products, don’t forget about social media sites as well. If you tend to be more consumer-based, Facebook is a great place to turn and of course if you’re more business to business, have a look at LinkedIn. Both of these sites have advertising opportunities that allow you to hone in on your specific target market again for small advertising dollars.
You can also get creative on your actual social media pages as well. Remember that you can update your banners to promote your new promotion, and you can send out a series of tweets or posts to encourage your connections to share your information and to purchase your offerings at a savings.
Make sure to think out the box here. Pinterest and Instagram are great if you offerings are visual. You Tube or SlideShare works well if you have a mini sales pitch or presentation to explain why they should take advantage of your special. Mix it up. All of these avenues are highly inexpensive to use.
Email Marketing
Email marketing has definitely changed over the last couple years. People are craving the quick visual relevant offer. That means email can provide you with a great opportunity to send your promotion to the appropriate segmented lists. Keep it visual and use those big buttons. Email provides a great inexpensive way to get your word out to your biggest fans!
Need Some Inspiration?
Here are some fun samples of holiday promotions
Clever word-smithing
Create your own special event
Great graphics are used to tie-in a product
Can you compare your service to a hot chocolate?
Source: Hubspot 2
