Small Businesses Need Help This Time of Year
The holidays are fast approaching. Are you ready? If you’re not, it’s time to get started. Shoppers are most active during holidays and eagerly looking for the best propositions every year. And small businesses that are ready for it will win out over the stragglers.
Besides getting an early start, here are some other ways to make sure this is a successful holiday season for your small business:
Optimize Your Mobile Site
Mobile holiday shopping increased by about 60 percent in 2015 vs. 2014. Marketers are arming themselves with mobile strategies and there’s no reason why small businesses shouldn’t be on board. Here are some important factors in mobile optimization:
- Loading time. People have less patience on mobile than they have on desktop, and that’s already not very much. 50 percent of smart phone users expect a page to load in 2 seconds or less. Make sure your photos and images are light enough for fast mobile-loading so you don’t risk shoppers skipping over your slow site for a faster one.
- Make sure your checkout process is geared for mobile. Enable autofill, use drop-down menus and ask only for the most essential information. Mobile shoppers are prone to interruptions from the very devices they’re using to shop, so the more seamless you make your mobile checkout, the lower your cart abandonment rate.
Prepare Early
Online shopping means that customers don’t have to wait until businesses pull out their Christmas merchandise. Holiday shopping is starting earlier and earlier with some retailers courting shoppers as soon as August. But don’t blame the stores.
In 2015, 56.6 percent of shoppers already started making purchases by the beginning of November, a 2.2 percent increase from 2014 and a whopping 17.6 percent increase from 2008. Though peak times are still Black Friday through Christmas, businesses that are holiday-ready early can increase their overall sales.
Use Texting and Social Media for Customer Service
Many small businesses do customer service the old fashioned way. That’s fine, except while you’re dusting off your landline to call a customer, they’ve moved on to higher technological ground. By using SMS for time-sensitive customer inquiries and making it easy for customers to reach you on social media, you offer customers more convenience and better service.
When clients hit pre-holiday madness, good customer service becomes even more essential. Consider these stats:
- 72 percent of Americans own a smartphone.
- 77 percent of consumers who text aged 18–34 are more likely to have a positive perception of a company that offers text capability.
- 91 percent of retail brands use two or more social media channels.
- Failure to respond via social channels can lead to a 15 percent increase in churn rate.
- 33 percent of customers prefer to contact brands using social media rather than the telephone.
Promote Your Brand with Social Media
Engaging customers on social media is essential to marketers for businesses large and small. Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and Snapchat can help you advertise your holiday wares:
Photos are great; videos are better. Even with a small marketing budget, you can do DIY video to spruce up your social media pages. Two hot video trends right now are vertical videos and videos with subtitles, so people can watch them without volume — when they’re at work, late at night, or in a loud place.
Run contests. Contests are a fun way to get shoppers to interact with your brand. Some ideas include:
- Ask customers to share photos. Whether it’s a holiday-themed photo or a photo that’s related to your brand, this type of contest increases customer engagement.
- An essay/recipe contest. Get people to share essays on their best holiday recipes. The apparel company Hero Box increased their email address list by 1,443 clients by running an essay contest on social media.
- Give away discounts and merchandise. People love free stuff — and if all it takes is signing up to your page, sharing or tweeting, then it’s easy for customers to participate.
- Referral rewards. This is a great way to increase your customer database. Offer rewards, discounts or merchandise to customers who refer friends to your business.
Be Yourself
Small businesses don’t have the over-the-top marketing budgets that big businesses do. In a way, this gives them an edge during the holiday season when people are looking for something special for their loved ones and not something generic. Advertise your business’s originality, especially if you offer unique products that customers will be hard-pressed to find in other places.
Help your customers out by creating gift guides and making suggestions on who would like different products and wares. The homey, family-oriented climate of the holidays works in favor of small businesses, so providing personalized customer service and connecting with your community are great ways to market yourself during the holidays.
Small businesses can do well this holiday season by preparing early, optimizing their mobile sites, making good use of social media and text for advertising and customer service, and playing up the uniqueness of their products for holiday shoppers.
Ray Access is a content marketing firm that delivers targeted words to empower your business. Contact us about your specific project to receive a quote or discuss your needs. We write website copy, blog posts, e-newsletters and more. Everything we do is thoroughly researched, professionally edited and guaranteed original.
