Thanksgiving is only 10 days away. Whew!
This is the time of the year to be thankful and show appreciation to your clients and customers who have made your small business successful.
People are going to spend and travel and buy gifts and yeah, eat. With a number of economic indicators slowly improving and customer confidence on a rebound there will be a lot of opportunity for small businesses to clock in some impressive numbers.
In a previous post about marketing during Halloween I have already talked about some Halloween specific, as well generic marketing ideas for the upcoming holiday season. Here are a few more that are kind of Thanksgiving specific.
1. Create videos to promote your Thanksgiving offers
If you run a business that see a maximum number of footfalls during Thanksgiving- beds and breakfasts, supermarkets, bakeries, car rental companies and the like, you can use a series of short videos to highlight the special holiday offers you are running. Use this video across all your social media channels.
2. Create special Facebook contests
For businesses that have an active Facebook page you can run a special Thanksgiving contest to engage your customers. Your contest can be based around different things and offer different types of prizes- discount coupons, cookbooks, giveaways etc.
3. Give back to the community.
Sponsor a food drive, or partner with a charity. Give away a portion of your profit to local groups, soup kitchens, orphanages and the like. If you can , ask customers to donate to a charity and match their donations.
4. Send out photo postcards, gifts or signed notes
This is the best time of the year to remind your customers, partners and clients how thankful you are for contributing to your business success. Establish a special bond with them by sending out customized gifts, photo postcards or handwritten notes.
If you do decide to send a thoughtful gift pay particular attention to the value. Most companies have policies forbidding employees from accepting gifts over a particular dollar amount.
5. Focus more on holiday related topics
Ease up on the usual content which you produce and focus more on Thanksgiving related content on your blog, your Twitter feed or your Facebook page. Produce and circulate content that can take away the stress of travel and shopping that holidays inevitably entail. For example, create content around pre and post Thanksgiving cleaning and decoration.
6. Build a microsite
All those contests and promotions that you are running should direct readers to your own site. But don’t just point them towards the homepage- create a themed microsite that can be the hub of the promotions, content and campaigns that you are pushing out.
Another benefit of this is that you can reuse the microsite next season and gain major a major bump in search engine rankings.
7. Do something food related
What would Thanksgiving be without the Thanksgiving dinner?
Regardless of what business you are in, produce content that’s food related. Post images of recipes on your Facebook wall, partner with a food blogger or encourage your employees to share their own special recipes. You can also tie with up local supermarket chains and offer customers coupons and discounts.
Conclusion
What are your Thanksgiving plans for this year, and are you ready for the rush?
