November and December are pivotal months for many small businesses. Marketing can help you harness the potential year-end earnings. Not sure where to start this year? Review our top five tips.
Create and post content regularly now
Social media is a high return-on-investment, whether dollars or time, for small businesses. Start building your business’ presence online by creating and posting high-quality images, blog posts, videos, or updates in early November. Engaging clients with stories around your business’ story, new offerings, future year-end promotions, or how your business can support them in the final months of 2023 can build momentum that you can seize heading into the holidays.
Start collecting email addresses
While email marketing is extremely prevalent, it adds value for your brand and keeps your products and services at the forefront of your client’s minds. Start collecting your customers’ email addresses, whether at time of sale or through online giveaways that require an email address to participate. Building up a list of clients can allow you to test exclusive promotions for your loyal customers later this year.
Plan a year-end event
Many small businesses host year-end sales or in-store promotions, but it may make sense for your business to broaden the idea of an event. Can you package your products or services into a ‘gift’? Is there a theme day you can host in your office that would excite your customers? Engaging with your clients and interacting with new customers in a fun, genuine environment is a great way to boost sales in Q4.
Identify unique placement areas for advertising
Does your local community sponsor a turkey trot? Or is there a fundraiser that you could support with dollars, volunteering, or hosting a booth? Getting involved with your community is a guerilla marketing technique that can heap rewards at year-end and beyond.
Test paid media
Determine if there’s an untapped segment of your target market that you might be able to reach with a strategic paid media campaign. If you’re not a marketing expert, consider engaging a boutique agency. Breef, an agency marketplace, can help identify a group that’s perfect for your project and budget.
We encourage you to think big at year-end. Boosting year-end revenue can lead to a great start of growth in 2024.
If you’re short on cash heading into the holiday season, consider applying for an SBA 7(a) loan. Loan proceeds can be used for marketing, membership programs, inventory, payroll, 1099 payments and more.