Black Friday and Cyber Monday just passed, and kick off the annual holiday shopping craziness that brings the year to a close. For many businesses, this can be a time that may make or break their financial year. For this holiday season, we wanted to share some sensational ideas to help you generate and boost your revenue to make the most of your holiday promotion season.

Holiday promotions can be some of your greatest opportunities to bring in customers who may have been watching you all year and be on the fence about making a purchase. This is the opportunity to draw them in with some of the best offers you can and grow your business.

Here are 9 sensational ideas to help you make the most of your holiday promotional opportunities:

1. Promotion-A-Day Giveaway: These promotions are some of the most common among both online and retail offerings. Whether you choose 12 days, 10 days, 5 days, 21 days, etc., The reason these promotions work so well is because it puts you and your product in front of your audience for an extended period of time. If you normally don’t advertise, spend a little extra to promote your offerings and get them in front of as many people as possible. This is not the time to cheap out on getting your message out there. Make this stand out 

2. Run a Giveaway on Social Media: This can be another great opportunity to get your message out there consistently and offer something valuable. Don’t just put the offer out there once. Make sure it’s something you're mentioning multiple times a day and ask your friends and followers to share. Make the giveaway something valuable enough that you get email addresses or phone numbers that you can add to your database of contacts. The real value in doing something like this is the collection of information for potential customers.

3. Run a Website Giveaway: Just like running a giveaway on social media, running a giveaway on your website can help you draw additional traffic for your holiday promotions. The same principles apply for a website giveaway that the goal is not only sales, but adding people to your list of contacts in your database that you can market to in the upcoming year.

4. Buy One Get One Offers: Whether it’s a buy one get one free or buy one get one ½ off, this is an opportunity to generate a lot of sales traffic in a short time and get revenue before the end of the year. Spend some marketing dollars on promoting these offers and extending the reach of your brand. DON’T break the bank, but DO promote and advertise these types of offers.

5. Free Gift Card with Purchase: These types of offers can create additional value because people like the feeling of getting something a little extra. Adjust the pricing of your product a bit so that it doesn’t cost you money to do this kind of year end promotion. These days gift cards can be emailed to any email address and can be done right from your computer. I’m personally a huge fan of coffee or simple visa gift card they can either use personally, or give it away as an additional gift.

6. Offer a Chance to Relax: The holidays are a stressful time. Studies show that for many, the holidays are often MORE STRESSFUL than the rest of the year. Whether it’s concerns of time, money, travel, or something else, over 70% of people report higher stress during the holidays. Why not offer the chance to relax with a facial, massage, or pedicure. Similar to the giveaway ideas, use this as a bonus offer like this: “Make a purchase by December 15th and get entered to win a spa day at your local spa. Drawing will be held on December 17th, and the winner will be contacted by email. To be entered into the drawing, please confirm your email address.” 

7. Referral Offers: Referrals from past customers are the single best opportunity to close additional business. Word of mouth referral buyers are four times (4X) more likely to buy a product or service than non-referrals. Offer your previous customers the opportunity to benefit from the holiday shopping of their family and friends. Many of them are making purchases for the holiday’s anyway, so why not give your customers an opportunity to benefit from referring a business they’re already buying from.

8. Run a Promotion AFTER the holidays: This one is a little outside the norm but has great potential. The holidays are often the time of year loaded with promotions for many business. Rather than trying to compete during the holidays and increased ad budgets, target your best promotions for after the holidays are over. It does shorten your window of running promotions but is often less competitive for ad spend competition. The goal of these promotions is quick buying decisions, so the promotional price/offering needs to be extremely competitive.

9. Create a Holiday Specific Landing Page: While this idea is not new, it is one that works year after year. Instead of simply sending people to your website or storefront, create a specific landing page with ONLY holiday offers. This creates a perception with your buyer that these are holiday promotions and they need to be taken advantage of before the deals end. To further create that “Fear Of Missing Out” (also known as FOMO) have a counter on the site and on ANY communication you send out to let your audience know when the webpage/promotion ends. Another benefit of this is that when the promotion is done, it’s done. Simply take down the webpage, remove it from outgoing communications, and you’re all set.

Running promotions during the holidays might be a little extra work, but it can pay huge dividends in how your next year will start. Along with the possibility of additional revenue, don’t lose sight of the momentum it can give you going into next year. The additional viewers of your product and content often turn into followers of your product and future customers. 

It’s not too late to get your promotions running!  You don’t have to start on Black Friday, just get it out there and commit to the process. 

Finally, if you need help in putting your 2023 Marketing Plan together, download our free guide by clicking here, or reach out to us at hello@goldbear.media to schedule a consultation to see how we can help you achieve your goals in 2023.

Happy Holidays to you and yours from GoldBear Media!