Although social media is a tremendously rich marketing medium, it’s also a versatile marketing weapon as it allows you to reach vast numbers of individuals at any given period of time, such as during the Holidays. An important time for small business owners and web entrepreneurs.
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During the Holidays is when many are in the buying mode and have the disposable income to do so, so this is indeed a merry time for marketers and business owners. However if you’re not at the right time and place when they’re ready to buy, they will patronize your competitors. But how can you use social media during the Holidays to keep them at your shop or service organization? See our tips below on how to do just this.
1. Announcements –
One of the best ways to use social media during the Holidays irrespective of your niche is for announcements. Regardless of the type of business you have, social media is great for keeping your fans and followers in the loop about your various offerings and products. For example, if you have a new product line coming out in the Fall or Winter, Facebook and Twitter are one of the fastest ways of letting your client base know of your new product line. If instead you’re opening a new location in a nearby city, using your social media accounts is a great way to get the word out quickly and cost effectively.
2. Giveaways –
During the Holidays many retailers and merchants tend to have giveaways to get customers in the door and entice them to buy more items. You can and should use social media to set up and manage these giveaways. Everything can be done via Facebook and Twitter including announcing your big giveaway, entering to win and officially naming the grand prize winner. This is also a smart way to spread the word virally as one of the conditions to enter could be that one must share the giveaway. This is one great way to get others to do the marketing for you on a social and viral scale. Make it known that in order to enter to win, contestants must share the giveaway on their respective pages and accounts.
3. Sales –
Although the “gurus” say that one should not use social media for direct sales, there’s really no rule against it and many who do it, do so quite successfully. The one thing to keep in mind, if you decide to go after direct sales via social media is to keep it toned down and to keep it at a minimum. You could offer discounts and coupons on certain days of the week and or have flash sales. For example, on Tuesdays between 11am and 4pm you could offer 30% off of all brand name jeans or you could offer a $10 off $50 purchase voucher good on next purchase. The latter coupon is one trick big name retailers such as Kohl’s use on a regular basis during the Holidays to keep customers coming back for more the following week or month. Since the voucher can only be used on a future purchase, this means the customer needs to come back another day to take advantage of the nice $10 dollar OFF coupon. And they must purchase $50 worth of merchandise in order to use the voucher. A smart way to get repeat business and this can easily be used or implemented via social media mainly Facebook where the customer has to LIKE your page to claim the voucher.
Social media is not just for teens and the college set to declare what they had for lunch or for dating, it’s used by businesses all over the globe to strategically drum up business or additional clients and sales. The key is to figure out how YOU want to use it and what you want out of it. Try one or all of our tips above to get the Holiday cash rolling your way.
Article brought to you by Zoober Training, a digital marketing firm in the UK. For more details on how Zoober can help you with social media training, click here to find out more information.
Image via: bestrank.com
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