10 Holiday Marketing Resources for Local Retailers

With Small Business Saturday taking place this weekend and Christmas, Chanukah, and other winter holidays following closely on its heels, retailers are pulling out all the stops to get traffic to their websites, footfall into their stores, and, most importantly, dollars into their registers.

We compiled this list of ten marketing resources, to help local small business retailers amp up their holiday promotions and ensure a more profitable shopping season.

1. Think with Google Shopping Insights

Google Shopping Insights helps brick-and-mortar retailers understand how consumers shop for products using Google. Retailers can explore which products are popular on Google, learn how they trend over time, compare regional preferences, and see how people are using mobile and desktop devices to shop.

Specifically, retailers can use Shopping Insights to:

• Measure consumer interest on products at a national, regional, and city level;
• Compare demand across geographies, time, and device context;
• Get ideas for local promotions and investments between mobile and desktop.

Enter a product name into the search field and Shopping Insights displays an interactive map, which users can scale to a national, regional, or city level.

Related resources:

• Google Small Business Twitter channel
• Google Plus Small Business community

2. Twitter for Business Holiday Guide

Twitter holiday advertising guide.

Twitter has prepared a holiday guide that shows advertisers how to use Twitter ads to create holiday campaigns. It includes information on how to grow an audience, drive holiday sales, use remarketing, and creative collateral, such as Twitter Cards, tweet copy, and images.

Related resource:

• Twitter Small Business Twitter channel

3. Small Business Saturday

Small Business Saturday

No list of resources would be complete without a mentioning the Small Business Saturday website — the flagship site for this annual event. It contains a wealth of promotional ideas and downloadable digital signage for use in the store.

4. SBA Small Business Saturday Resources

The U.S. Small Business Administration has a list of ideas for Small Business Saturday, contained in a series of blog posts. Among them are:

• 5 Ideas for Hosting a Knockout Customer Event this Holiday Season;
• 7 Holiday Marketing Tips on a Limited Budget;
• 33 Creative Ideas for Small Business Holiday Marketing.

5. AT&T Business Circle Holiday Resources

Business Circle, an AT&T website, offers a variety of holiday marketing resources.

Business Circle, an AT&T website, offers resources for Small Business Saturday and other holiday promotions that include a series of blog posts and a downloadable checklist (PDF) with tips for planning and organization.

6. National Retail Federation Holiday Planning Playbook

The National Retail Federation has its inaugural 2015 Retail Holiday Planning Playbook that is a comprehensive guide to key questions and issues facing retailers during the holiday season.

The playbook lists important areas for retailers to consider, including:

• How consumer use of mobile devices is likely to influence holiday sales across touchpoints this year;
• New considerations to factor into holiday marketing and promotion budgets for 2015;
• Where retailers should focus to meet customer expectations for fulfillment and customer service;
• How loss prevention and supply chain executives are investing this year to protect inventory, customers, and employees.

7. Everything Holiday Marketing Resource Center

The Deluxe holiday resource center has “everything you need to consider for the holiday season.”

Deluxe, a small business marketing company, teamed up with email marketing provider Vertical Response to produce a holiday marketing resource center that it says contains “everything you need to consider for the holiday season.”

Included are free e-books, webinars, a planning calendar and checklist, creative assets, and blog articles on topics relating to branding, creating an online presence, and making the most of email and social media marketing.

8. Holiday Marketing 101 Guide

Constant Contact’s guide gives practical, actionable holiday marketing advice.

Constant Contact has a downloadable guide, “Holiday Marketing 101: Simple Tips to Prepare Your Marketing for the Holiday Season,” designed to get retailers ready for the holiday season. It gives practical, actionable marketing advice. In it, retailers will learn:

• How to prepare their marketing for the holidays;
• How to build holiday momentum for your business;
• Five ideas for holiday marketing campaigns.

Tips cover how to plan a holiday offer, ways to stay organized, suggestions for email campaigns, and advice on utilizing events, contest, coupons, and other promotions.

(Constant Contact developed a resource a few years ago — Small Business Saturday Toolkit — that is still available and has some useful information.)

9. How to Create a Holiday Marketing Campaign: A Step-by-Step Guide

Hubspot Holiday Hub

Hubspot has mapped out a comprehensive guide — the #HolidayHub —that outlines the steps needed to launch a holiday marketing campaign. These include:

• Create your campaign and offer;
• Design a promotion plan;
• Create lead nurturing paths;
• Measure and report.

Also included are Excel spreadsheets for planning, special offer templates, and free holiday-themed stock photos.

10. Bronto Holiday Resource Center

Email marketing platform provider Bronto has an exhaustive list of resources that encompass everything from planning guides and calendars to blog posts to expert answer to questions from retailers, all laid out in an easy to use card-based format. Though much of the information centers around online retailers, local brick-and-mortar retailers can make use of it, too.

Source – Webmarketingtoday.com