6 Last-Minute Start-up Marketing Hacks For The Holidays

We all know those last-minute shoppers that aren't interested in Black Friday or Cyber Monday sales (maybe you're one yourself!). Regardless of when or where they go shopping, people are in the mode to search for what they need. This means as a startup, your marketing strategy needs to be intentional and holiday-focused to make the most out of this consumer-focused season. Here are six last-minute holiday marketing hacks to help you make the most out of this holiday season.

1. Focus on Emotions as well as Urgency

All year long, we urge customers to buy a product or service by making them feel that there is an urgent need. We cater to their fear of missing out on value by offering goods and services for a limited time or featuring flash sales. While this works during the year, smart start-ups take a different approach during the holidays. In addition to last-minute urgency, it’s important to focus on emotion. The holidays bring out many mixed emotions in people, and if your marketing can relate to those emotions, you have a better chance of adding customers to your database.

Remember that just because holidays bring out emotions in people, that doesn’t always mean they are positive emotions. Whether we like to admit it or not, holiday shopping can be stressful, overwhelming, and frustrating. If your product or service can be the solution to these problems, you’re on your way to growing as a business.

2. Address Abandoned Carts

If your business offers online shopping, it’s critical that you are providing an easy-to-use site that makes shopping simple. The top reasons customers abandon their online carts are:

• The website takes too long to load
• The website is not mobile-friendly
• Too much branding, not enough product
• Price of shipping
• Anticipated delivery dates

We’ve all done it: we spend an hour online shopping and then get to the checkout and realize that shipping is going to take us over budget or our goods won’t get to us on time. Most of the time these issues are beyond your control, but offering a fast, user-friendly website is one way you can prevent abandoned carts.

Consider offering a special deal to entice customers to come back and finish their purchase. Sometimes people just need a little reminder and a small incentive to get them to complete their online shopping.

3. Marketing Hacks For Social Media

Consumers will be spending more time than usual on their phones and computers during the holiday season, scouring the web for the best deals and last-minute offers. If you plan to use social media as a promotional tool during the holidays, implement some of the social media holiday hacks to ensure you reach your target audience.

4. Hashtags

If you’re not familiar with how hashtags work, it’s important you brush up on this social media strategy in order to get your product or service in front of people who are looking for it. Instead of using the most common holiday hashtags (#Christmas, #holidays, #happyholidays, #merrychristmas), we recommend using hashtags that are a little less popular during the holiday seasons. If you can narrow down your hashtags to a more specific niche, your company will find itself in the Instagram feeds of people who are looking specifically for what you are offering. For example, #Christmas is going to be used a million times a day, and your post is likely to get lost in the endless feed of Christmas-related posts. It's likely that #giftsfordad or #HanukkahForToddlers will be seen by fewer users, but the users who do look at your posts will do so because they’re looking for what you’ve got. This works best for Twitter and Instagram.

5. Run Holiday Promotions

People go crazy for a limited-time sale, and your social media platforms are ideal places to reach consumers and offer them a holiday discount. Facebook allows you to change the way your promotions appear to your audience, so you can post a holiday promo and then change the way the ad looks and post it again a day later. While we don’t encourage flooding your users’ page with the same ad over and over, it is an excellent way to offer a special deal without spending time recreating the ad.

6. Change Up Your Posts

If you tend to stick to text-only posts, the holidays are a great reason to switch it up. With the holidays being festive and colorful, it makes sense to post bright, eye-catching photos and seasonal-themed videos. Post polls to increase your customer interaction via social media or add quotes and questions to get the discussion going. The more you change up the content on your social media feed (while staying consistent) the more attention you will bring to your product or service.

Keep Going!

It can be easy to want to take a break from social media over the holidays but do not be tempted. Power through and keep your online marketing game strong during the season when people have money burning holes in their pockets. Your audience interaction may dwindle during the holidays since people are busy shopping and traveling, but stay consistent. Use Facebook Messenger’s drip campaign to keep the content rolling even when you’re too busy to manage it.

The holidays can be a stressful time for small businesses, but they can also be wildly successful. The success of your marketing plan during your holidays is based on being proactive and organized. Heading into the holiday season with a solid marketing strategy (and a few of these holiday hacks) will help you connect with the right audience at the right time and keep your company on the minds of holiday shoppers well into the New Year.