Can you believe that Q4 is coming up in just a few weeks? So many business make a majority or a very large portion of their income in the last quarter of the year and having a small business marketing plan is key for your success during this season.

The holidays provide a great opportunity to grow your sales and revenue before the year is over, especially during a time when people are actively looking to shop.

A successful holiday season starts with planning TODAY. That doesn’t mean it has to be wildly complicated, but if you can get ahead on your planning for the season, you’ll be able to go into the holidays stress-free, knowing that you’re putting your best foot forward.

This month in The Collective Business Accelerator group, we’re diving DEEP on creating our Q4 marketing calendars and getting everything hashed out for the best season ever. If you want to hop in and hear ideas and get feedback on your ideas, join us inside! You’ll walk away from our call with a clear idea of what you want to accomplish this season and how you’re going to get there!

How to Build a Small Business Marketing Plan for a Successful Holiday Season

Set Goals for your Small Business

This is such a good practice for every season of your business, but especially in this final quarter. Your ideas could include things like:

• Growing your email list
• Increasing revenue (I love setting specific financial goals)
• Increase website traffic
• Collaborating with another business or getting featured in a gift guide

Take a moment to think about what you really want to accomplish this quarter and set real, tangible goals. So, if one of your goals is to grow your email list, how many subscribers do you want to have by the end of the quarter? What can you do regularly to hit that goal?

When you have more specific, clear goals like this, it’s easier to nail them down!

Plan your Holiday Offerings

For product-based businesses, you might offer a unique line of featured products during this time of year. It’s always nice to have a product that’s under $100 for easy gifting.

For service-based businesses, you might offer special bundles, or a unique offering that you’ve never done before at a special price.

It can literally be anything, but come up with some offers that YOU are so excited about sharing. This might mean you need to create something new, or build out a new page on your website for this new offering.

Knowing what you plan on offering in advance will allow you to be totally prepared for it!

Consider Seasonal Shopping Days

As we know there are tons of seasonal shopping days where buyers are actively looking for deals and unique things.

• Halloween
• Thanksgiving
• Black Friday
• Small Business Saturday
• Cyber Monday
• Green Monday
• Free Shipping Day

There’s probably a few more that I missed, but my point is there are specific days during Q4 where customers are ready and primed to shop. You don’t have to do something for every single one of these, in fact, that’s probably overkill, but figure out which ones make sense for you, and pair it with one of your unique Q4 offers!

Plan Promotions Ahead

The holidays are a great time to show gratitude to your customers, and just about everyone loves a coupon code, a sale, free shipping, special deal or a giveaway.

Promotions are not required, but they can definitely help drive sales and give you a solid boost.

If you plan on offering any promotions, plan these in advance and put them in your marketing calendar.

Create Marketing Materials

Once you have your offers and promotions decided on and put in your calendar, it’s time to create marketing materials. Again, this doesn’t need to be anything crazy—maybe it’s a series of emails to go out to your list, a banner on your website, new holiday-themed photos or some graphics for social media.

Having these completed, or at least penciled into your calendar will save you from those last minute moments when you freak out and realize you have a promotion running, but didn’t actually tell anyone about it.

Update your Website

If you haven’t updated your website in a while, now is a great time. Make sure your copy makes sense, your offers are updated and showing the correct pricing. Make sure all of your pages are optimized for SEO.

Add holiday themed imagery (especially great for product-based businesses!), or add a tab for holiday gifts or holiday deals to your menu bar! Make sure it’s easy to find exactly what people want. In general, just give your website a little freshening up and then make sure to share it with your audience!

Make sure to join inside The Collective Business Accelerator for our call this month and get more ideas for holiday marketing and plan out the next 3 months for a successful holiday season!

BTW, how to create a stunning lead magnet and deliver it, and how to re-purpose blog content for Instagram.