by 
By Marissa Kasarov
You know it, and I know it: the holidays are made up of about 20% tradition and 80% marketing. Reminding your customers what you have and why they need it requires extensive planning, flexibility, and commitment. To put it plainly, there’s no time for rest when there are prospective customers waiting to be charmed.
I’ll be the first to point out that there is nary a soul in the world who manages to get through this season completely unscathed, but there is one particular group that really takes the cake on this one. Small business owners in the United States win the award for most overwhelmed group of professionals during the holiday season, hands down. They are tasked with broadcasting their latest and best goods and services in an effort to stand out against all of the holiday marketing noise that is being made by their competitors. It’s the perfect example of a modern day survival of the fittest.
So, how do the fittest brands survive? Well, the quickest way to answer that question is to refer to this quote I’ve posted for you here. Nobody could have said it better than Steve Jobs- today’s consumer is so wrapped up in the hustle of daily life that they’ve stopped looking for solutions. The consumer expects you to surprise them with answers to questions they never knew they had. (I bet you never even thought about something as silly as a “selfie stick” before Wayne Fromm showed it to you).
If you want to surprise your future customers, you have to remain focused on your company’s web presence. Who are your customers? Where do they spend their time online? How can you get in front of them on those channels? How can you surprise them with solutions they have never even considered?
Our culture has become such that the only way for you to show anything to your consumers is through effective content marketing.
Recently, the Conductor Blog surveyed around 30 retailers (both e-commerce and brick-and-mortar), and they shared their findings here. Although the results were not particularly surprising, they did provide further proof that those of us who stay on top of our content marketing execution. Here are some of the hot points:
- A whopping 69% of the retailers who were surveyed believe that targeting their personas was a boon to their website’s traffic and revenue. Almost a third of them stated that they targeted unique personas specifically with the holdiay season in mind.
- 55% of retailers believe that holiday marketing is more competitive now than ever before.
- Organic traffic is the #1 channel for revenue during the holidays. (No excuses. You better dive back into your blog as soon as you’re finished reading this!)
If you’re interested to learn more about what is working for small businesses this season, I encourage you to give those survey findings a quick read. It’s all very insightful, and maybe it will be just the thing you need for that little extra push.
If you’ve found yourself knee-deep in holiday marketing insanity, get in touch with the team at Flair Interactive. We’ll provide the support you need to succeed during the season of giving competing and into the new year.
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Image created by Flair Interactive.
