Harnessing the Power of Social Media
It seems that once Halloween is out of the way, it’s full steam ahead straight into the Holiday Season. As a business owner, it’s essential that you’re ready for this and have a strategy to take advantage of this time of year, maximizing sales in Q4 and making 2017 a year to remember. Social media is an effective way to shout about your great offers in an interactive way, opening dialogue and allowing your fans and followers to easily pass the information on and share with friends.
Start a #Trend
Hashtags aren’t only a fun way for your customers to engage you on social media, they can also help you promote your brand. This season try running a hashtag campaign to encourage your followers to share pictures with you when they purchase one of your products and incentivize it by giving prizes away each week.
This way you’re giving your customers another reason to hit connect with you on social media, they’re inadvertently promoting your products to all their followers and they’re also in with a chance of winning a prize. It’s a win-win for everyone!
Launch a Poll
If you’ve used Instagram lately then you’ve seen everyone from celebs to local businesses using the new poll feature that was added to ‘Stories’ recently. This allows followers of an account to place a vote on a poll. For small businesses, this creates another route of communication and helps you pick the brains of your audience.
You could launch a poll asking your audience to help you choose which items to discount over the Holiday Season using high quality images of your products. Not only does this serve as an advertisement, but your customers are more likely to purchase the discounted items if they’ve had an input and feel responsible for them being on sale. Social media marketing is all about engagement and this is a great way to make it relevant during this time of year.
Carefully Choose Loss Leaders
We’ve all walked down the street during the holidays and been amazed at the eye-catching price of items in store fronts. Many potential customers are serious Christmas shoppers scout out those great deals, so this is an ideal time to discount some carefully picked product lines and encourage them to check you out.
The perfect candidates for discounting are those lines that you’ve been struggling to shift all year. By dropping them down to a killer price, you’re attracting customers inside your store that will purchase additional products at full price while freeing space in your warehouse.
Once you’ve cherrypicked product lines, you need to start sharing it on social media and let your audience know all about it! Whether you have an online store or a bricks and mortar business, your followers are bound to head on over and find out what you have to offer.
Over this seasonal period, it’s easy to stress about your competition and worry that you don’t have the same budget that the big brands do. Luckily for you, it’s never been easier or cheaper to reach out to your customer base with social media, giving you the ability to deliver compelling reasons to check out your business, straight to their screens.