Ep. 290: 6 Small Business Holiday Marketing Ideas That Build Relationships

Your Must-Do Small Business Holiday Marketing List

Who should listen: Small business owners and entrepreneurs who depend on referrals and need to remain top of mind during the holidays.

Key idea: The quality of your client relationships and the need to reciprocate both diminish as the time between the transaction and the follow-up grows longer.

Action item: Strengthen your relationships with a few of your core advocates. Invite them to get together over coffee or a beer so you can talk and catch up.

We’ve got six must-do activities to put on your list before you suddenly find yourself in the midst of the holiday season without a plan or any creative holiday marketing ideas.

  1. Update and segment your client database.
  2. Plan your holiday touchpoints.
  3. Make sure your marketing connects with clients on a personal level.
  4. Connect on social media.
  5. Share client testimonials and your year in review.
  6. Follow up in a timely manner.

 

Make sure you listen to this episode because the value is not in the list—it’s in the conversation.

We offer a ton of practical holiday promotion ideas for small businesses but, just as important, we talk about why these six activities are some of the most important things you can do to prepare for the holiday marketing season.

Here we want to share some additional resources to help ensure your holiday marketing is a huge success.

For updating and segmenting client database

There are at least seven groups of people you want to ensure are in your database before you launch into the holidays. For help on reconnecting with old and forgotten leads, check out How to Reconnect with Old Leads and Clients.

If you’re looking for ideas about how to segment your database to best suit your needs, you can read:

For planning your holiday touchpoints

Think about the people in your database and envision a bull’s-eye with your raving fans and core connections in the center, looser connections in the next outer ring, and everyone else in the outermost ring. You want to put the bulk of your effort (and likely your budget) into strengthening the relationships with your raving fans. These are the clients you’ll invite to holiday events, send a video text to, or call on the phone.

Your looser connections might warrant a pop-by during the holidays. We’ve got free printables in our Resource Library for all the holidays.

For the end-of-the-year holidays, download gift tags to which you can attach your business card. You can also apply them to a client appreciation gift.

We’ve got holiday candy wrappers and an adorable holiday card you can stick a Hershey’s Kiss to.

Especially clever is the tag used to deliver a cup of hot cocoa mix.

To help you plan your pop-by strategy not only during the holiday but also all year round, we suggest you click here for an article that gives you the best tips and a link to a free pop-by tracking sheet.

For making personal connections with your clients

If you regularly listen to Stay Paid or are familiar with our mission, vision, and values at ReminderMedia, then you know we advocate building and strengthening relationships with the people in your sphere as a way to encourage referrals and repeat business. If you’re not familiar with relationship marketing, download this free ebook, Getting Started with Relationship Marketing.

For connecting on social media

Social media is supposed to be social, and people like to do business with those they can relate to. That means getting a little personal.

Sharing your life in reasonable ways is how you can encourage your followers to know, like, and trust you—all the prerequisites for doing business with you. How to Build Authentic Relationships on Social Media is a short video in which Luke shares his advice about making connections through social media. You can listen and watch or read the transcript.

For sharing client testimonials

Before you can share testimonials, you need to collect them. In How to Leverage Social Media for Testimonials, you’ll find three tips for gathering positive reviews from followers.

And don’t forget the power of video! The holidays are a fantastic time to capture video testimonials because people are typically feeling generous, and you can use festive colors and backgrounds to capture the spirit. In Capture This: The Benefits of Video Testimonials, you’ll discover several reasons why you may want to start recording your recommendations.

For following up in a timely manner

Many salespeople experience difficulty and reluctance when making follow-up calls—often because they focus on pitching a product or service rather than having a simple conversation with the person on the other end of the line. The Art of the Follow-Up Call drives this point home and offers a four-step formula that you can easily adapt to your follow-up to make it a more pleasing and natural experience.

In addition, we have several free follow-up call scripts that are appropriate not only for a holiday touchpoint but also calls at other times. We also invite you to download our targeted follow-up scripts and a goal sheet to track who you’ve contacted and when to reach out again.

We hope you find these resources helpful as you start to plan your holiday marketing. And if you haven’t visited our Resource Library before, you really should. We’ve got more free resources, including webinars, lead magnets, success guides, and more ebooks and printables. Happy holidays!

Please enjoy this episode, and we’d appreciate it if you would give us a five-star rating and leave a review on Apple Podcasts. (Not sure how to leave a review? Click here.)

 

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