MARKETING IDEAS FOR WINTER

The holidays are just around the corner and many businesses are in a rush for customers. In order to succeed they try new and unique marketing ideas for winter that will increase sales. While people are busy, sociable, and in a spending mood in the summertime, in winter they tend to stay home more, where it’s nice and warm, and save their hard-earned cash. To make a success of your winter campaigns, or make changes to your offering to gain an advantage over the competitors, some real creativity doesn’t go astray.

Here are a few creative marketing ideas for winter that might inspire you to think outside the box:

Display holiday cheer with Christmas lights. Christmas lights are a fantastic way to spread holiday cheer and attract customers to your business. Your business, of course, won’t be the only business dressing up with Christmas décor. Many other businesses will be doing the same – including many of your direct competitors. So while Christmas decorations can help to give you an edge in your marketing efforts, they can also help prevent you simply from losing ground to competitors.

Host a holiday family photo even. Hire a local photographer to set up in your office and invite past, present and prospective clients to bring the family in for a portrait. They’ll love an extra memento that features your holiday greetings, and you’ll love the opportunity to catch up, ask for referrals and stay top of mind.

Host a sweepstakes or holiday-themed contest such as the Ugliest Holiday Sweater or Festive Pets. Make sure any contest or sweepstakes adheres to state or local laws. Share all the details—including lots of photos and the eventual winners—on Facebook and other social media.

Update your website to be more seasonal. Websites that change their look depending on the time of year are much more appealing to a potential customer. Even if it’s just subtle changes such as adding a few snowflakes to the homepage or creating a seasonal category for all your festive products and deals. Trust us it all makes for a much more pleasant experience for your customers and shows them that time and effort has been put into the website.

Community and networking. Working with charitable organizations continues to offer great rewards – especially for community branding. “Do well by doing good,” is the strategy. The most popular networking groups to join include the Chamber of Commerce, BNI, and Rotary.

Creatively package your holiday gift boxes. Shoppers during this weekend are in a rush to find ready-made unique items to gift to their loved ones. Why not do the gift-wrapping work for them? Product packaging has a strong influence on how we feel about products, and should be valued even more strongly during the holiday season.

Make a clever holiday video. An eye-catching video can make your brand stand out from the crowd. A small budget and a creative mind can go a long way when promoting your store, so if your video is distinctly humorous or clever enough and aligns with your brand you can have a recipe for a heavily-shared video.

Time for you and your small business to leverage some holiday cheer. We all know that Thanksgiving kicks off the largest spending season of the year.