Holiday Marketing Tips to Make Your Business Shine

Holiday Marketing Tips to Make Your Business Shine

It’s that time of year when businesses everywhere are figuring out how to market themselves for the holiday season. It can be challenging, but with some planning and creativity, you can make your business stand out and boost sales! Here are a few holiday marketing tips to get you started. 

Posting Content for Marketing 

Start by wishing everyone a happy everything! Mark as many holidays as possible on your calendar and wish your diverse group of followers, customers, and clients a happy holiday season. Be inclusive, but also be creative!

It’s September, and we’re creating a lot of Halloween content, but we’re also working on fall and winter holiday content. Christmas isn’t the only winter holiday, so it takes extra effort, time, and planning to be as inclusive as possible.

Leaning into the colors and cliches of the holidays is the easiest way to market your business for the holidays. Adding pumpkins, leaves, and fall colors to a graphic in October will catch people’s eye and show you’re capable of being current and creative. You can keep up with trends; holiday excitement is just another trend. These holiday marketing tips will help you stay on track.

Holiday Themed Products, Bundles, or Services

Get into the holiday spirit with themed products and bundles. If you sell physical products, you can either make themed products or use holiday packaging. You can also offer holiday bundles on products or services, like an “In-Law’s are Coming” cleaning package or holiday gift sets and gift cards.

Simply offering gift wrapping at checkout is an easy way to impress loyal customers. Providing gift guides and gift ideas is a great benefit for today’s busy shoppers. This time of year can be very hectic and offering any kind of extra convenience will help impress your customers. You can also use these products and services to help advertise and in your marketing tactics. Considering various holiday marketing tips can boost your engagement.

Deals and Sales

Black Friday isn’t the only sale you should take advantage of. Offer sales and special deals for other holidays, like President’s Day or back-to-school-specials. The possibilities for holiday sales are endless. It’s your business, so run the deals you want!

Special offers and holiday promotions are easy ways to kick off a social media marketing campaign. Use your products, deals, and bundles in your social media strategies to drive more traffic from your social accounts to your site. Implementing these holiday marketing tips in your sales strategy can drive substantial results.

Website Design Updates

Get in the holiday spirit by changing up your website designs. Every major brand constantly updates its website’s appearance. Not every brand follows holiday and seasonal trends, but if you are going to be offering sales and special products, it doesn’t hurt to go all in. In today’s digital world, online shopping is a go-to, and you still want to create a memorable shopping experience online.

Holiday Events

Host in-person or virtual events for your customers. Throw a holiday party or pass out Halloween candy bags to kids. Attend different festivals and events, or set up booths at local farmers’ markets. The more exposure you can get, the better.

Spend time researching local events that you can attend. If you can do it right, it is well worth the return. If you can’t find an event to attend or don’t like your options, create your own. Work with other local businesses to organize even bigger events than you could do on your own. Get a food truck vendor to come and make some money, or invite local artists to sell holiday gifts that vary from yours. 

Holiday events allow you to connect with the community and build relationships with customers and other owners. Create memories for your community and help your shop neighbors get more business too!

Decorate for the Holidays

If you have a brick-and-mortar store location, then you should decorate! Put up a few string lights or a couple of signs. It doesn’t have to be anything too extravagant (unless you’re feeling like it). Decorating can be time-consuming and costly, but there are plenty of ways to decorate on a budget.

Hit up the dollar stores first, stop by your local thrift store, and search through the clearance aisle. If you need help, Pinterest is a great place to go for inspiration. Instagram is also a great asset for seeing not only decor ideas but also graphic ideas and staying up to date on trends. These are just a few holiday marketing tips you can incorporate into your strategy this season.

If You Need Some More Help, Reach Out to Us.

We know that it can be difficult to find creative and trendy ways to advertise and market your business. Luckily, the holidays give you a way to not only market and advertise but a reason to incentivize shopping. Start with these simple tips to help advertise and market your business for the holidays.

It might seem like you don’t have all of the things you need to make this list happen, but we do. We have self-service tools to help you get started on your own, but we also provide consulting services. Visit our website to see our full list of services and products. Trying to market your business for the holidays can be challenging. There can be a lot of prep and planning, but it’s worth it. Remember these holiday marketing tips to make the most out of this festive season.

Easy Ways to Improve Team Productivity

Easy Ways to Improve Team Productivity

In our changing work environment, workspaces are moving into spare rooms and corners of our homes. In our technology-driven world, the new norm is digital meetings and home offices. Because there’s less in-person interaction in offices, it can be difficult to keep up with your team and improve team productivity. You might need some help improving team productivity while working remotely.

Luckily, Microsoft offers a full suite of tools to help stay connected. We’ve laid out the following tips to help improve team productivity and collaboration in your business using the Microsoft web apps. Good team communication is the first step to improving team productivity and performance.

Utilizing Microsoft Team

The first tip, and arguably the most important, is to start using Microsoft Teams to chat. The Microsoft Suite offers instant messaging, video conferences, and voice calls, all in one easy-to-use app. Microsoft Teams is a one-stop shop for maintaining effective communication and collaboration among your team.

text: Microsoft Teams is a one-stop shop for maintaining effective communication and collaboration among your team to Improve Team Productivity. Image: a woman wearing headphones laughs at an offscreen computer screen, presumably in a virtual meeting

Microsoft offers ways for you to meet with your team, even if you’re doing remote work. We offer a full package of email services, the Microsoft web app suites, and unlimited online meetings and HD videos to stay connected.

Create a shared calendar 

Making sure your team is up to date on current events and tasks can be daunting. When your team is working remotely, you need to work even harder to keep everyone organized and on task. Thankfully, there are plenty of tools at our disposal to help us stay on track.

Creating a shared calendar with Outlook is extremely easy. You can see when everyone is available and schedule meetings to share with your entire team, or select individuals. Microsoft explains how to create a shared calendar and answers more questions you may have on their website. We offer a complete bundle on our website.

Assign specific days for team members to work on specific tasks

If you have multiple clients or multiple tasks for your employees, then set a calendar for them to use. This will help everyone stay organized and on track. Second, set time limits for each task and enforce them. This will help ensure that each task is given the appropriate amount of attention and that no one gets bogged down.

Hold team meetings regularly to update everyone on their progress

Meeting in an office space allows for workplace collaboration and banter. The go-to image of office banter is a group of coworkers gathered around the water cooler. With everyone working from home, this image no longer represents our idea of coworkers getting to know each other. There are still ways to ensure your team gets to know each other and can keep up communications.

Holding regularly scheduled video conferences with Microsoft Team allows you to check in with your team and give important updates. This is also a great opportunity to share special projects, discuss accomplishments, and reward team members. You want to ensure these meetings are a positive experience for the entire team. Just having simple weekly meetings can help improve employee productivity and communication.

Celebrate successes together

It’s important that your team feels appreciated for all of their hard work, even during the busiest times in your business. This can be as simple as a congratulatory email or statement on a group call, or it can be more elaborate. If you are in the office you can try to drop off donuts, bagels, or lunch to your team as a thank you. If you are more remote you can congratulate team members for successes and milestones on Linkedin or other social media platforms. You can also congratulate employees on success in newsletters or on your website.

Some companies give out different rewards for performance monthly, quarterly, or yearly. You can make an event out of this one and get lunch for your team while you give out rewards. You don’t need to go full Dunder Mifflin, though.

Along with celebrating success together, rewarding individual success is a great incentive for continued hard work. This can be something as simple as recognition for a job well done or a gift card for hitting a milestone. Whatever you choose, make sure it motivates your team to keep up the good work.

Listen to how your employees like to be rewarded. You can make the most of a reward just by ensuring it’ll be appreciated. For instance, I keep a Google Doc of some of the things my teammates say they enjoy for birthdays, thank-yous, and other celebratory occasions.

Encourage creativity and new ideas

Listening to your team is one of the best qualities a leader can have. Allow your team to suggest different ways to improve their office experience. The happier your employees are, the more productive they’ll be. Your team could also find new ways to increase productivity as a whole or ways to improve your product or service that you have missed. Your team will not only feel heard but also be encouraged to work harder on their ideas.

Send out a daily positive team email

Sending a daily motivational or encouraging email to your team shows that you’re invested in more than just their numbers and stats. It shows that you care about your team and their well-being. Starting with a simple “good morning” email is a great way to spread positivity.

In a digital world, it can be hard to keep the team morale up, but these tips can help you. As you work to improve productivity you might discover you’re struggling to keep employees engaged, we have tips for that too. It is crucial that you take the necessary steps to improve your team’s productivity and cohesiveness while working remotely. Microsoft offers all of the tools you need to accomplish these easy steps, you can purchase the complete bundle here.

Cultural Impact LLC