What if your holiday marketing strategy could transform once-a-year shoppers into loyal year-round customers? Join me, Samantha Holyfield, as we navigate the art and science of planning effective holiday campaigns in this episode of Marketing Con Sabor. It’s all about foresight and precision—using your existing customer data to craft lookalike audiences that sharpen your focus and cut your advertising costs. Discover why leaning on seasoned marketing experts can be your secret weapon to avoid the chaos of last-minute preparations and instead, drive meaningful, long-term success.

Kicking off your holiday promotions early isn’t just smart—it’s essential. By integrating current social media trends with cultural touchstones, like Mariah Carey’s iconic Christmas anthem, you can harness the festive spirit to engage your audience. We’ll explore how proactive planning and blending these elements can help your brand stand out in the crowded holiday marketplace. The key is to generate buzz and enthusiasm well before the season swings into full gear, ensuring your business remains top of mind when consumers are ready to spend.

Our conversation also touches on the entire customer journey, from the first spark of interest on social media to a smooth and seamless checkout experience. Emphasizing modern payment solutions like Apple Pay can significantly enhance your conversion rates. Plus, by aligning your marketing strategies with your brand’s core values, you can forge authentic connections that resonate deeply with your audience. Finally, don’t miss our interactive Q&A segment, where I invite you to become part of a community united by a passion for innovative marketing with a cultural twist.

Where to dive in:

(0:00:07) – Strategic Holiday Marketing for Success (14 Minutes)

This chapter focuses on the critical importance of having a strategic approach to holiday marketing and promotions for small business owners. I emphasize the dangers of rushing into holiday marketing without a plan, warning that last-minute efforts can lead to wasted time, energy, and money. By planning ahead, businesses can maximize sales and customer retention. I highlight the value of utilizing existing customer data to create lookalike audiences on platforms like Facebook, which allows for more targeted and cost-effective advertising. Additionally, I discuss the benefits of investing in experienced marketers who can craft effective campaigns and strategies, rather than relying on less experienced individuals, which can lead to missed revenue opportunities. The overall message is clear: preparation and strategic thinking are essential for successful holiday marketing.

(0:14:32) – Maximizing Holiday Sales Through Early Planning (11 Minutes)

This chapter emphasizes the importance of strategic planning for holiday promotions, highlighting the necessity of engaging with your audience long before the holiday season kicks in. We explore the significance of blending social media trends with advertising to enhance brand visibility and customer engagement. By utilizing popular cultural references, such as the trending Mariah Carey Christmas song, businesses can creatively capture the festive spirit and build anticipation among consumers. The discussion also underscores the value of starting promotional efforts early to avoid missing opportunities in a crowded market. The chapter encourages small business owners to be proactive, think ahead, and leverage social media to foster an eager customer base that is ready to engage with holiday offerings.

(0:25:13) – Leveraging Marketing Strategies for Holiday Success (7 Minutes)

This chapter explores the importance of having a marketer who not only creates engaging content but also has a strategic plan to drive sales and conversions, particularly around key seasons like the holidays. I emphasize the significance of aligning marketing efforts with a comprehensive strategy that considers the entire customer journey, from social media engagement to an optimized checkout process. We highlight the value of using modern payment options like Apple Pay to boost sales and stress the necessity of starting marketing efforts early to fine-tune every aspect of the customer’s experience. Additionally, I advise on tapping into trends that resonate with brand values to foster authentic connections with customers. By ensuring that marketing efforts are well-planned and executed, businesses can maximize their potential for success.

(0:32:24) – Engaging Q&A for Better Holiday Marketing (1 Minutes)

This chapter is an introduction to Marketing Con Sabor, where I, Samantha Holyfield, invite listeners to engage and interact by asking questions that can inspire future episodes. As a Latin-owned small business marketing firm, we bring a unique flavor to our work, as reflected in the name “Sabor,” which means flavor. We express our excitement about connecting with our audience, particularly those in the 918 area, while proudly representing our roots in the 956. Through this podcast, I aim to share insights and build a community eager to explore the vibrant world of marketing with a cultural twist.

Proud to be in the 918 and from the 956!

Transcript:

0:00:07 – Samantha Hollyfield
Welcome to Marketing Con Sabor. I am your host, samantha Holyfield. I am an MBA, an entrepreneur, business owner, marketer, and in every episode we tackle the difference between tactics and strategy, so that way you can produce marketing that has flavor and you can stop wasting your time, your energy and your money. Today we’re going to talk about holiday marketing and promotions, because it’s huge and if you haven’t started you are in trouble. It’s already October and too often small business owners do this on the fly. They see something out there on social media, they see other brands running ads and they’re just like scrambling to get something done. And, guys, this is the most ineffective way to promote. Sure, they probably heard some story that you know. Their friend and fellow business owner created some posts, some reels, some TikTok, whatever, put some dollars behind it and, boom, their sales exploded. That’s great, but I mean that’s the same as saying like, well, I heard somebody went to Hollywood once and became a famous actor. Y’all, there’s like the 99% who just don’t. And the same is true for your ads. If you are not going into the holiday season with an actual strategy, you’re going to waste money. You might get some sales, but what if you could get more? What if you could upsell? What if those customers could stick around and become recurring customers? Guys, the biggest way that money is wasted in marketing is due to a lack of preparation and strategy. So many times, small business owners are just flying by the seat of their pants. They’re going with every new trend on social media. They are throwing money at things that just excite them temporarily, instead of really trying to nail down what works and what creates recurring customers.

Now, a lot of the holiday season might produce one-off customers, and that’s fine. That might just be part of seasonal sales if you’re an e-commerce brand, or like if you only sell Christmas ornaments, but for the majority of us, I mean, that’s pretty niche. Right To just sell Christmas stuff. Even then, you should probably be marketing in October, getting started now, y’all. If I go down to Ace Hardware or, you know, home Depot or Lowe’s, I’m already going to see some Christmas items. Yeah, there’s a lot of Halloween displays, but things are slowly creeping in and that should be happening for you too and your brand, especially if you’re not just Christmas ornaments, right.

So if you have not started your holiday promotion strategy, now is the time, and let’s discuss why on a more granular level. So if I have a business, an established business, I have customers from last year, maybe customers from the year before. I’m not just going to put up a pretty post. I’m not going to tell you know, my cousin’s niece’s nephew to like go on to Canva and create some kind of graphic to throw up that I’m going to put $10, $50, $1,000 behind. No, I have an existing customer base and that thing is gold.

And so, with things like Facebook, what you can do is upload that customer list and actually create a lookalike audience. That means you can find people on Facebook who look like your existing customers. Now, there are a few ways to increase revenue, and one of them is to just go find more people. So you’re going to, you could either create a new product, you could sell more to current customers that’s kind of the most cost effective way to increase revenue or you can go find more people that look like your existing audience. So that is pretty huge y’all. Now, by actually uploading your customer list and going and getting a lookalike, you are doing something that is so strategic, so cost effective, that you are already probably going to outperform last year’s ads. Why? Because it’s tailored. You’re not just throwing money at a pretty post. You are doing something strategic. You know these people bought and you know people like them will also buy, and so that is the point of starting early. You need to do that thing where you go create that lookalike audience, you go collect that data, you figure out how to upload that to Facebook and to do this process. Or you know, you hire somebody which is the most, again, effective way.

Too often we’re like man, I can’t afford this. You know, know marketing person because they’re you know they’re just too much money. That’s like X out of my budget. But you’re not thinking about the fact that if you just hire somebody off like Fiverr, or you have your VA do it, or your cousin’s, niece’s, nephew’s daughter do it that you’re actually wasting money. Yeah, they might be cheaper, but so much potential sales and revenue are left on the table because those people might not know what they’re doing. They might be excellent at what they do, in whatever capacity that is, but if you are actually looking to increase revenue, you cannot hold somebody responsible for sales that doesn’t have the work experience and the history to actually be responsible for sales. That’s like you’re going to ask you know your kid to do your taxes and then be like man, I don’t know why I didn’t get all my these you know tax breaks that I needed. Well, they didn’t know what they were doing. Sure, they were cheaper, but did they, you know, have the knowledge to actually get you what you need? No, and so you can’t hold them responsible for those results. If you hire an actual marketer, you can hold them responsible for those things, because somebody who truly knows digital ads has a path for revenue.

There is a difference between somebody who can just throw dollars behind a post and somebody who says, okay, we created a lookalike audience, we are going to reach more people who look exactly like people that we know by a lookalike audience. We are going to reach more people who look exactly like people that we know by, and not only that, I have this ad, but they’re going to click through to this landing page where we are going to collect their information so that way we can actually upsell them. Maybe they’re going to a landing page so that way they can kind of get a jump start on holiday sales, like, oh, it’s October, but you know what? What we’re reaching you with this special free thing so we can collect your information, you can get a discount code and then boom, you’re gonna have this special code on I don’t know Cyber Monday, black Friday or just you know in November and you can get a discount on this special product. But not just that because you collected their information early, you’re also going to upsell them, you’re going to package things, you’re going to do the most to get sales out of this highly qualified lead.

That’s the difference. If somebody has the right experience, they don’t have just a plan to throw money behind a post. They have a plan to actually reach the right person, sell them something or collect their information, upsell them and then sell to them again. Do you see? It’s not just one sale during the holidays. It’s creating recurring sales or upsells in that holiday season. Maybe you really do have an influx of one-time buyers during a particular time of year, but you still have the potential to upsell, and why wouldn’t you do that? So it might be as simple as okay.

Yeah, we’re running really focused e-commerce ads, meaning it’s not just about trafficking somebody to a landing page, like. We have really optimized the connection between facebook and the website so that way we can track to a point of sale again when you hire the right person, that is possible and we aren’t just going to track to a point of sale. Again, when you hire the right person, that is possible and we aren’t just going to track to the point of sale, we’re going to upsell so that person has optimized the checkout cart in order to encourage this person. Oh, you liked this item. Well, this, you know, buyers often buy this with it. Or this is actually a really good companion to this product with it, or this is actually a really good companion to this product. And so there is not just the one time sale, there’s the potential for additional sales. You are getting the most out of every ad dollar that is ran okay.

So I kind of came right out the gate with digital ads because it’s huge, it is a huge part of holiday promotions and it is often the place where there is tremendous missed opportunity. It happens when you have not integrated your website with things like meta, ad manager and business manager. It happens when you don’t have a plan on that click through for that ad to get somebody to buy. You’re like man, I got these clicks but I got no sales and I don’t know why. The right person and the right strategy will optimize every step of the way.

So if you have a marketer, these are the questions you need to ask. You’re like, okay, well, who is our ad going to reach? They should know who that audience is. And then, okay, is our ad clicking through to the website? If it is well, where are they clicking through? Is it just to the homepage? If you’re promoting a particular product, we need to make sure that click through is to that product. And then that product page. What does it look like? How does it help that person convert when they get there? Because here is the other side of the thing.

If you have a marketer and you are saying, ok, I need you to promote an ad, or even just you know somebody who might not be that experienced in marketing, but they know how to put dollars behind something and make sure it goes to the right place, you can’t hold that person responsible for sales if the only thing they have control over is just that click through, meaning they put, they put up the pretty post or the pretty ad, they optimize the audience, they optimize to click through to the website, and then you say, okay, I got, you know, 10,000 clicks and no sales. Well, if they didn’t have control of that landing page, that page on the website where people clicked through. Okay, if they potentially did their job, okay, well, there are questions, right, maybe they didn’t reach the right audience, but let’s assume they did. Let’s assume they reached the right people and they got those people to click through to the website. But this marketer had no control over that product page. Well, it’s on your web developer, then it’s on you if you manage the website.

What was wrong with that page? That it didn’t help people convert? You can’t have say, oh well, we got all these clicks and no sales, this is your fault, because you’re missing an entirely different piece of the puzzle the actual sales page, right? So if that product was just one image and a weak description and no reviews and no video and no this or no, that well, yeah, nobody bought, I mean, unless it’s like a highly compelling offer. But even then, sometimes what we perceive as a highly compelling offer might potentially not even matter to the buyer. So there are lots of steps to this puzzle that need to be addressed and you can’t do that on the fly y’all. You can’t do that by just throwing spaghetti at the wall and hoping for the best you have to plan.

I would say October is even kind of late, but that’s just me. I like planning personally, holiday sales and funnels in July. Why? Because I need to tell my client and myself, like, okay, hey, we’re trying to reach this group of people. We’ve refined this audience. We have this, you know, beautiful, refined this audience, we have this, you know beautiful, ad, maybe we had to take the time to create some video. Right, that takes time.

If you hire a videographer, right, and that person probably needs to work with your marketer so that video has a purpose, right, a call to action isn’t just I don’t know a pretty video, but actually as a strategy, we need time to create those things, to to take those photos. I mean, yeah, you can throw up a post in Canva, but if you’re going to put money behind something, do it right. Get the most out of this thing, especially seasonal sales, especially if your revenue really hinges on something like this y’all, do not do stuff on the fly, sure, you can. Do not do stuff on the fly. Sure, you can, you can, but it’s a huge missed opportunity and you’re leaving revenue and sales on the table. So all that to say you’re like, okay, well, I don’t know how to start a strategy, okay, well, you either need to hire the right person or get with your person and start talking.

Who do you want to? Who do you want to reach? Why do you want to reach them? Why do they need this product? Why do they care about this product? There are probably dozens of other options they could choose from. Especially if you’re a small business, it is a lot easier just to go to Amazon and get something on Prime rather than going through a small business, waiting the days for fulfillment, waiting the days for them to actually ship it. Why should they buy from you?

And that gets into the other side of things. So let’s say you’ve determined your audience. You know the product you’re going to sell. You’ve, you know, did your best at refining the landing page. But the big thing across all of this is going to be why they should choose you over the millions of other options that potentially are more convenient than buying from a small business. And this is where you have to make sure that you’ve done your brand work already. See, it’s not just putting up a pretty post and crossing your fingers. It draws back to okay. Well, have I done the brand work to really make sure that my brand, my business, can actually stand out in the holiday promotion market.

I mean, guys, bigger things are at stake here, especially when we need to make sure that our dollars count, especially when we are in an election season and people are inundated with all kinds of information on social media. A lot of this holiday season in 2024 is going to come down to how you make people feel. It is a massive thing Now there’s some really great brands that tap into nostalgia, like Coca-Cola. Even Budweiser does this well. You know they have their client sales and their little golden puppy that they put the red bow on. And so much is going to come down to how people feel right now in 2024. That is critical during any you know seasonal promotion, especially during the holidays, but it is a massive this year during an election cycle because emotions are high. So how do you get people to break, how do you get your brand to break out of all of this noise on social and actually connect with people that you need to connect with. And we again, we don’t want just people who are gonna come in for the holiday sale and leave us. We wanna put in the work to get new people that we know will be recurring buyers, people who will capitalize on that, upsell and so much of this. So much is going to come down to the emotion between you and your brand.

Let’s assume we’ve done everything right in getting in front of the right people. The next step is how do you show up in front of that person? This is where starting in front of everyone on social and guys, we’re just talking about ads. We’re not even talking about regular social posts. That should be happening in the mix with this thing, because you don’t just run an ad, right? No, in order to get the most out of that ad, you have been slowly reaching people through things like creative reels, through posts, through blog posts that are helping your SEO and your website rise. All kinds of little things are happening that, when that ad runs, it’s going to do its job and do it well, and so if you have not thought about how you want to show up in front of everybody during this holiday season, I encourage you to do that, and this is really fun work.

Okay, so there is a cute trend going on right now on TikTok and on Instagram, and it is of Mariah Carey, and it’s happening right now in October, people are putting up their Halloween decorations, their fall decorations, and they’re like they open their front door or you know, they’re walking inside and suddenly they hear that beginning of Mariah Carey’s famous Christmas song and they just listen and it’s like what was that? It’s sneaking up on us. The holidays are sneaking up and y’all they come faster than we realize. Every single time, especially as a small business owner, you’re worried about payroll, you’re worried about doing this promotion, that promotion, all of these things, all of the tasks that come with being a business owner. That too often these really critical things like seasonal sales and promotions kind of get put on the back burner because you’re in the now and that’s okay. Part of you has to be in the now, but you have to think ahead in order to capitalize on sales, especially during the holidays, especially when that market is going to be just wild, especially when you’re in an election cycle and people are distracted by so many other things, because the emotions that are going to happen in early November are going to carry over into the holiday season.

I don’t have to talk about my political affiliation. It doesn’t matter who wins. One side is going to be pretty cranky, and so you need to make sure that, while they are well, this is another thing they’re going to be on social y’all. Why? Because they’re going to be talking about either why they’re so happy their candidate won, or why they’re so upset that their candidate didn’t won, and what’s at stake because their candidate didn’t win, or you know their hopes and dreams because their candidate did win. You have to a huge task of cutting through all this clutter and again, it’s really going to draw back to how your brand makes people feel. So I’m going to draw back really quick to that mariah carey thing.

Mariah Carey is classic. It doesn’t matter if you’re Gen X or Gen Z or a baby boomer. Everybody knows this song, right. And so how are you going to tap into the magic, slowly, of the holiday season? Because people are like, oh my god, promotions for Christmas, like it’s not even Halloween yet. Calm down, right. But that little Mariah Carey thing was very sneaky and cute, right, I could see a brand that might be putting out some fall things. You know it might be showing oh, you know, look at our cute new fall hoodie. It’s so great for the weather. Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And then, all of a sudden you hear the little Mariah Carey in the background and they’re like what, what’s that? And you’re like, watch out, guys. We’ve got something so fun coming around the corner. So if you buy this right now, you’re going to get, you know, a first look at maybe some of our holiday whatever’s right.

The point is that you can take that energy of man. It’s so annoying to like start seeing christmas stuff right now, to actually start to promote your christmas things or at least get people excited because there are so. Okay. Here’s another example. There is a massive group of people there are already reels and tiktoks out there of like, oh, the weather is cold and you see my wife dragging out a Christmas tree in October. Right, you can get really creative with all of these feelings and things of nostalgia and these groups of people on social media that potentially are your people.

The person who’s dragging out a Christmas tree in October might also be the person who’s slowly curating their Christmas list. That is the person you could potentially reach out to to get some kind of exclusive offer for holiday sales. Right, you could be potentially building a whole email list of early shoppers that want your products by using these creative trends and things on social, to reach out to them, to connect with them. You could even get in the comment section of some of these big influencers who are talking about some of these things and be like, oh, my wife is already dragging out her Christmas tree. Be like, oh yeah, your wife is our people, right, we love Christmas too. So this is the thing. It cannot.

If you’re just waiting till you know the week of Thanksgiving to surprise your team and ask them to throw money behind ads, you’re leaving money on the table. You’re leaving sales on the table. You’re leaving so much brand work on the table. Because, again, we don’t just want our one-off fires and we don’t want to just put out a little post and get you know, maybe a hundred people to buy something. Okay, that’s great, they’re never going to come back.

No, we want to cultivate an audience that is eager to buy from us during the holiday season, and it’s going to start right now. I mean, it probably started last month, but it probably started. Probably started, like I said, in July, when you were thinking about all of these things. Maybe these trends hadn’t, you know, started happening on TikTok and Instagram yet, but that doesn’t matter, right, because in July, we would have been worried about our audience, our strategy, the emotion that we want to bring to this, the nostalgia that we want to tap into, the kind of you know, it’s not just our audience but like what are they thinking, feeling, experiencing, that we can get creative with, to create more than just a holiday ad that looks like here’s our product, here’s the sweatshirt, it’s really soft. No, to tap into all of those feelings of the season, right, and then from there you have this whole campaign planned. You have you have assurance that when that ad runs it’s going to take people through a particular funnel that will create upsells that will get them into your system so they can become a recurring customer.

Guys, it’s huge. Even if you have, you know, a website that converts pretty well and you are connected to social, there is a lot that you are leaving on the table I’m going to say 10 billion, jillion times if you don’t start early. So I’ve talked quite a bit about, you know, really creating an urgency, creating a preemptive kind of engagement with your audience before the holiday season, before these ads ever run. But you know a huge thing that happens during seasonal sales are promotions, right, limited time offers, creating a sense of urgency, all of those things, and I’ll tell you what those things are most effective when you do that other thing I just talked about, right, when you lay the groundwork. So when you have an audience that already likes your brand, that is tuning in for your social media stuff, those same people who are highly. That is tuning in for your social media stuff, those same people who are highly.

Here’s another thing y’all Okay, I got sidetracked, but it’s good to sidetrack. Let’s say you have been laying the groundwork for the holiday season. You’re creating cool videos, you’re creating reels, tiktoks, all the little things. You’re capitalizing on trends, quick note y’all a trend. That’s a tactic, that’s not a strategy, but that’s something else, okay. So you’re laying the groundwork, you’re engaging with your audience. You’re seeing your likes go up, you’re seeing your engagement increase. All right. So if you are doing that on platforms like Facebook and Instagram, your marketer, your digital advertiser, will actually be able to go in to Meta’s ad manager Meta is the name for Facebook like the company, and so they’ll be able to go into Meta ad manager and actually create audiences based off all of that engagement that you’ve been working on through September, october what’s October right now, you know, into November, even into the holiday season.

So, yeah, let’s say you created that lookalike audience we’ve talked so much about, about, you know, based off of your recurring customers that you already have, and you’re going to go find people that look just like them. Well, that’s not the only audience that you can capitalize on in terms of holiday sales, right, you have all of these people, theoretically, that you have been working really hard to engage with, really hard to build, you know, trust and relationship with on social media. Well, you can now go create ads that reach out to those people. You can go reach people that have engaged with your brand in the last 365 days. That is huge.

So this is where people are just like, oh, it’s not really good to just, you know, not post on social often or not show up often. This is why, guys, you are leaving so much on the table when you just, you know, wait for these things to happen, when you just don’t post often enough, when you didn’t have all this lead up to the holiday season in creating a relationship with your audience, and you just throw up a post and throw dollars behind it and then wonder why it didn’t work. Well, duh, it didn’t work. You don’t have an engaged audience and the people who buy they’re engaged. I mean, if you, let’s say, you know, you know, when somebody knocks on your door and they’re like, hey, will you buy the service, you’re like, no, I’m like eating dinner with my family. Yeah, you’re not going to buy.

But if you’ve seen this brand all around town and they’ve even seen them on social media and they’ve done a really great job in tapping into kind of this local pride and energy and all of these things, and then suddenly they knock on your door and you’re like, oh, my God, I know you. Yeah, hey, what’s up? Yeah, I’ve been seeing you guys around town and oh, yeah, I already heard that you know this cool thing that you’re doing. That’s so neat. Yeah, I would love to talk to you about it. That’s the difference, guys. If you’ve been laying the groundwork on social media, when those ads run, they’re like hell, yeah, I do want to buy that Heck. Yeah, I do want that limited time offer. That’s awesome. And then at checkout, I totally want to buy this other thing that goes with it, because you’ve been talking about it and it’s so cool and I’ve already seen it on social for the last two months that and it’s so cool, and I’ve already seen it on social for the last two months. That’s the difference.

All of this has purpose and sometimes it’s so hard as a business owner to see the fruit of these things. In the moment, you’re like I’m spending money on this marketer and they’re creating these videos and these pretty posts, but I don’t see what’s happening. Y’all, the right marketer should have a plan for you. They should be able to tell you yeah, we have spent, I’ve come in and I’ve, you know, worked with your staff on creating these funny you know TikToks. But they have a purpose.

It’s that we are leading up to the holiday season and I am trying to get energy and emotion behind the brand. So that way, when I run this ad, it’s going to reach all of the people who engaged with us over the last month and we are actually going to see them convert to sale. Or you know what? I’ve created all this energy and momentum around our brand and we’ve actually had some sales, and so now I’m going to go reach people who just look exactly like our you know best buyers and we’re going to bring them into our social for all these people who look like our best buyers, into our social funnel. They’re going to see all this hard work that we’ve done and they’re going to bring them into our social funnel all these people who look like our best buyers into our social funnel. They’re going to see all this hard work that we’ve done and they’re going to buy from us because they like us and they’re like our people who love us already. So that’s the point.

It’s like if you don’t have a marketer who can tell you that there is going to be fruit behind all this labor, you got the wrong marketer and it’s not perfect. Okay, a lot of marketers cannot guarantee sales. There are so many factors that happen with these things. Right, they might not like I said at the beginning of this, they may not have control of the website, so they could run the best ads in the world. But if you have a crummy checkout system that nobody wants to use or a website that’s super slow, I mean, that’s just not their fault, but the right marketer could tell you that right, they could say, yeah, I can run ads all day, I can do the best social media ever, but your website sucks, and so we’re never going to see sales because the checkout process is like from the eighties, you know or you know what. We just don’t have the right checkout system. We need to give people options.

There was a great example of this, one of the seo people I I follow. If you’re a small business owner, I’m sure you’ve heard this word search engine optimization. Your website should be slowly, over time, being seo optimized as we go, but um, with things like blog posts, fresh content and then, of course, all the rest of that. But that’s a whole other topic for an entirely different day. Anyway, back to the study. One of the SEO kind of guru-y I hate the word guru actual experts, and I don’t say that word lightly. This is the thing they do and they do it well. They said they did this study where they just added the option for apple pay in their checkout process and they saw sales increase like crazy.

This is another one of those things where if you haven’t started early, you can’t do stuff like optimize the checkout process on your website. Just last minute you might need all of. You might want to include something like Afterpay, apple Pay, google Pay to make that checkout process easy, and you want to make sure that okay, let’s say your marketer, they made sure we’re reaching the right people, they’re clicking through to the website and you have optimized the crud out of that product page so that way you can make that sale happen quickly, make that upsell happen. All of it matters. And you can’t address those little things if you don’t start early enough.

If, let’s say you did, let’s say you hired a videographer type person right To create all these cool reels and TikToks, but then you don’t have the advertising part of it, where you’re not reaching all the people who’ve engaged with all these really cool things, and so you never run that ad that capitalizes off all that work that that videographer person did for you. That’s a waste, you know. I mean, maybe, unless you know. Let’s say you’re brick and mortar and it does increase foot traffic Cool, but what could you do to push that foot traffic? An ad why? Because it can actually reach people within a certain vicinity of your business. This is the point. A lot is left on the table when you don’t hire the right person to do the right job and when you don’t start early enough. Okay, so here’s some really big things that I want you to walk away with today that you can do today.

Go look on social media, at some of these trends out there that you can use to start tapping into, to create momentum for your brand. Now we’re not just jumping on trends for the sake of jumping on trends. The truth is that if a trend doesn’t align with your brand values, your aesthetic, your message, it’s going to devalue what you’re doing. So you need to make sure that you find a way to capitalize on trends while staying dialed in to who you are as a brand, because, again, remember, in a crowded market, that connection between you and your customer or whatever is going to happen by how you make them feel who they believe that you are and how you build trust around all of that. So don’t jump on trends that are going to water that down. Find ways to use trends that tap into that, that build that up, that showcase that kind of thing. And so go look at what’s out there.

I already mentioned one. There’s that cute little trend where somebody’s putting up their fall stuff and then they hear the Mariah Carey song and they’re like what, what, what, like Christmas is sneaking up on them. There are, you know. There’s that one of a spouse and their other spouse. Their spouse is dragging out a Christmas tree just because it’s cold outside. I mean, you could even think of this like, let’s say you have somebody, let’s say you’re an e-commerce brand and you’re doing fall. Okay, so you have somebody in their cute fall stuff, they’re putting out their fall decorations, and then you hear the mariah carey thing or something like that, and you see somebody in the background dragging a christmas tree in your christmas, your new christmas apparel, and you could be like christmas stuff, you know, like a whole christmas line coming soon or so something like that. Whatever, I’m doing this on the fly, but you get the point. There are so many ways that you tap into your brand, the energy of the trends, make everything align, or even just like doing a positive spin, right? So let’s say there’s the spouse who’s kind of grumpy, that the other person is dragging out the Christmas stuff just because it’s cold outside, but it’s October, october, and you could put out that kind of message like Christmas people are our people, right? There are so many cute things you can do to build momentum and engagement. And then again that next thing I want you to do let’s say you’re building that momentum and engagement. I want you to remember, and you can ask your marketing person or hire the right marketing person guess who does this stuff to make sure that they then run a holiday ad with all of those people that you have spent so much time engaging with, because that is possible. That’s an entire type of audience. And remember that other thing that I want you to explore if you you have a customer list, you have the potential to put that into Meta Ad Manager and create a lookalike audience and go find people who look just like them. Those are huge. Three huge things you can do that will make the holiday promotion season more effective, and I can’t wait to see what you do with it.

Please comment and ask me questions. I want to answer them. I want to engage with you. The truth is that, just like a short podcast episode isn’t enough about this, I could talk till I’m blue in the face, and so questions might actually create a way for me to create a follow-up episode, and so I’m so excited. Again, this is Marketing Con Sabor. I am your host, samantha Holyfield, and sabor means flavor. I am your host, samantha Holyfield, and sabor means flavor. We are so happy to be in the 918 and we are from the 956. We are a Latin owned small business marketing firm and we want to connect with you. So ask me questions and let’s do holiday marketing better in 2024.