With the holiday shopping season rapidly approaching, millions of small businesses across the country might now be looking at ways in which they can complete their final preparations for the potential rush of shoppers. And these days, that often includes the ability to connect with would-be customers over social media.
The issue for these companies is that, in many cases, this year’s holiday sales push is likely to be their first major foray into social media marketing, according to a report from CBS News. There are many ways in which small businesses may choose to make themselves stand out from the crowd when it comes to the holiday season, but often these first steps are tentative because companies can be a little unsure of what they’re doing.
“All of this is new for small businesses,” Christina Shaw, chief marketing officer at Blue Fountain Media, a marketing consulting company, told the news organization. “They’ve not been used to using social media actively.”
What generally works best
When it comes to engaging customers and giving them reasons to not only make one purchase in early December, but also keep returning to buy more products throughout the year, creating a rewards program for frequent customers may be effective, the report said. For instance, the ability of people to earn “points” or future cash back when they make purchases is often a good idea for companies to pursue, and tying them into other social media efforts can often go a long way toward making sure people remain in more or less constant contact with the companies.
The other issue many small businesses have when trying to come up with a social media campaign is figuring out what they’re supposed to use to reach consumers, the report said. Not everyone uses every major social media service, and so it’s often wise for companies to prioritize the ones they use based on their normal customer demographics. Each site tends to skew toward certain groups of people, save for Facebook, which is used by people from just about every background.
Owners who want to devote a little money to these social media campaigns or free up some room in the budget to provide the aforementioned perks to repeat customers might want to consider the benefit of shopping around for more affordable small business insurance. For instance, cutting costs for general liability insurance might end up saving them thousands of dollars annually that they can then devote elsewhere.
