Summer feels like it’s still winding down, and no one is ready to burst into the holiday advertising planning, but if you are a small business owner, you gotta get the ball rolling NOW! Marketing for the holiday shopping season is a cutthroat game, and you don’t want to be scrambling at the last minute competing with other brands doing the same. It’s crucial to know what demographic you are targeting, what deals you can offer, and how you will market them!

To start, we’ll give you an example of a small business that came up with a strategy designed to reach its target market and achieve its end-of-year goals. Let’s name our new company “Betsy’s Bagels”... we may be hungry over here at Betsy Bash ;)

Example:
- Objectives & Goals
  - Sell 100% more bagels than we did last holiday season
  - Last season’s December 1-31 bagel sales: $8,000
- Strategy
  - We’ll give a free bagel to anyone who orders a dozen bagels during December.
- Assets
  - We have some holiday photos from last year that we can reuse, but we’re also going to create 3 Instagram reels to be published in November promoting the sale, 5 reels to be published in December, and an ad campaign that will be published on Facebook and Instagram. We are going to create all this content in-house. We will use the most popular Instagram reel from November as an ad for December and create a square version of the reel for other placements.
- Activations
  - We will sign up for a mix of 5 pop-up or chamber events and do all the farmer’s markets in our local neighborhood in November and December.
  - We will offer .50 bagels on Black Friday.

That all seems clear, actionable, and attainable, right? How did the Betsy team decide on this plan? Great question! We’d love to tell you!

What Do You Want?: Objectives & Goals

Before building your strategy, you must determine your objectives and goals for this season. Let’s start with your goals; what is your ultimate goal? Do you want to increase the end-of-year sales by 30%? 50%? 100%? Once you know your final goal, you analyze the data and set the objectives needed to reach the end goal. Reviewing previous campaigns' results, sales, and goals will help you set realistic objectives and goals so that you and your team can move to the fun part of strategizing!

A great way to understand what we will speak to your audience the most is by referring to your social media metrics from last year. If you need a little help making heads or tails of the numbers, we are here: “Translating your Social Media Metrics”

How Do You Get It?: Strategy

Okay, you know the business goals and the objectives you need to accomplish, but where to start? Well, let's get down to it!

Which of the following holiday season promotions can your business participate in?

Black Friday & week of Black Friday
- This is such a booming opportunity for sales that no matter what product or service you offer, your customers will be drawn to a “Black Friday” offer.
Small Business Saturday
- An excellent day to remind your following that you are a small business, and working with you is helping the little guy.
Cyber Monday
- Gone are the days of overly packed stores on every corner, people love to spend money with a click rather than a swipe!
Giving Tuesday
- As we said in our article, “Tackling the Millennial Market,” the younger generations want to shop with businesses that care. Giving Tuesday is a great time to show them you do!
Holiday sales
- Running independent unique promotions throughout November and December is always a worthy plan. Maybe even coin your own catchy phrase and/or hashtag for yours.
Farmers Markets and Local Events
- You can reach out to your neighborhood chamber of commerce and see if there are any holiday promotions, giveaways, contests, activations, or events that you can sign up for. If so, when are the deadlines, and what assets do they need from you? What assets will they provide?

Once you know what you want to participate in, it’s time to advertise and let your communities know! Social media marketing is essential, so not only do you want your pages to reflect all of your upcoming sales, events, and news, but you need to run thoughtful, well-timed, and curated ads. And we can not stress enough the importance of Facebook ads. Yes, even in 2022! Let us explain: “You SHOULD be running Facebook Ads in 2022!”

What Do You Need? : Assets

To attract the holiday shoppers of today, you need to not only look good, but you need to look GREAT on social media. Your assets are photos, videos, and graphics of your brand and products. Hiring professionals to help your small business with all of these items is a big bonus in running a successful holiday marketing campaign. What photos and videos do you have? Are they dated? Are they professional? Look at your successful competitors or other brand inspirations to see what their organic and paid content looks like. You can also “spy” on what ads they are running on Facebook as well.

If you need updated photos and videos, is there someone on your team who can do it well? Can you hire a professional? If not, what equipment do you need? Think lighting, lightboxes, props, models, etc. Once the photos or videos are taken, who is going to edit them? You may be great at making delicious bagels but can you photoshop or make cuts to an Instagram reel?

Make it Happen: Campaign.

The plans have all been made, and all that's left is to put the gears into motion! Determine what content you want on your organic feed and what you’d like to run as ads. It’s okay if the content is similar or only slightly different, depending on what the goal is. Once you have scheduled your content and set up your Ads, you must review and then review again to ensure no typos or mistakes slipped through the cracks.

We encourage you to do A/B testing with your ads early to find out what resonates with your audience the most so that you have the most effective campaigns when the big end-of-year holiday shopping rush hits. You must also continuously optimize and monitor your ads and content throughout the season. It’s not a set it and forget track. Marketing is a fluid game!

As always, if you have any questions, please reach out to us at Betsy Bash! Our passion is helping small businesses reach their goals through social media. We’d love to help you any way that we can!