The holidays are that time of year when the inner child awakens in all of us. Whether we’re tough business people with a double-figure team behind our back or parents managing a home business with a handful of clients, we all wish to just bask in the warmth of the season.
As business people, however, we also know that our hearts won’t be at peace until we settle critical business tasks abounding this time of year. Tasks like personalized holiday marketing campaigns for our clients.
We know that to grab hold of customer’s attention in the busiest shopping season of the year, holiday marketing should be fresh, surprising, and reflect the values of our brand. Something that makes people stop and go, “Wow, how cool is that!”.
But how do you offer unique experiences to customers without losing peace of mind at a time when balancing business and family is super vital? Moreover, how do you take into account the intricacies of being a SaaS, B2B, or B2C company?
To answer that question, we asked small business owners nationwide in SaaS, B2B, and B2C businesses to share their favorite tried and tested holiday marketing ideas.
Check these out and replace the pains of holiday marketing with the pleasure of giving back the blessings of the season!
Navigate:
- Holiday marketing for SaaS business: Special strokes for special folks
- Holiday marketing for B2B business: Gather everyone round the table
- Holiday marketing for B2B business: ’tis the season to give back
Holiday marketing for SaaS business: Special strokes for special folks
Companies that make their own Software as a Service (SaaS) product have a lot going on at any given time of year. If you’re a SaaS company with a freemium-type business model, then the task of getting users to upgrade from the free version to a paid plan is especially tricky.
What you want to do here isn’t just offer a juicy deal. It’s to offer a juicy deal to the right people at the right time. Olga Mykhoparkina, CMO at Chanty, shares exactly that kind of thinking.
“One of the best holiday marketing methods we’ve seen is to target our free users and offer them a discount to upgrade to a paid plan,” Olga says. ‘We’re a SaaS business and we have pretty solid data that tells us which of our free customers are using our app extensively. We send them out targeted email campaigns and offer them a holiday discount. This year, for example, we’ll be giving 50% OFF the annual Chanty business plan.”
How to do it
To get your SaaS holiday marketing right, step into a regular software user’s shoes for a moment.
So many of us have downloaded free SaaS tools that we’ve used several times this past year, at best. What happens when we get a newsletter from one of those companies with a good upgrade deal? For most of us, nothing. We just ignore it.
Now, imagine you’re a customer that uses the free version of the software consistently. You love the service and have been thinking of getting those extra services they offer but were kind of waiting for the right moment. And that’s when the 50% off coupon lands in your inbox.
Will you grab a deal like that? I bet you will.
If you’re a SaaS company that offers a free starter deal, use analytics to find customers that use your free product version most often. It’s those user categories that you’ll want to target with holiday marketing deals. For best results, personalize marketing offers specifically to the age groups and industries of those users.
SaaS companies that don’t offer free products can use the same idea to target their most active ‘basic/starter’ plan customers to invite them to upgrade.
Holiday marketing for B2B business: Gather everyone round the table
As a B2B company, your clients are the busiest kinds of people out there. In contrast to regular consumers, they’re currently preoccupied with the same things you are: year-end business reports, holiday marketing ideas, and 2020 business strategies. They’ve got as little time as you do (and perhaps less) to be convinced to buy.
All this means that to grab hold of client attention, a B2B company has to do some outstanding holiday marketing. How exactly do you go about that? Catherine Cohen of Cohen Coaching may just know the answer.
“[As a B2B company] the way we market, especially around the holidays, is very different than B to C businesses,” Catherine shares. “The majority of our marketing this time of year is social media in the form of posts and our podcast, Funnels & Follow Up. But the best marketing this time of year for our business is picking up the phone and making calls.”
With a B2B company, 5 minutes of one-on-one conversation means the guaranteed 5 minutes of their time devoted to you. Let’s face it: getting those exclusive 5 minutes of attention via social media or e-mail marketing would be practically impossible.
“By calling prospects and clients individually, we can zero in on the pain that business is having around the holidays and get them into a coaching package that is right for them,” Catherine adds. “More than any advertising or marketing, having conversations is the BEST way to market past the excuses of the holiday season.”
How to do it
What puts B2B marketing apart is that you market to help, not convince.
When another business is interested in your services, it means they have a specific challenge to be solved. In order to understand that challenge, you have to forge an honest conversation with your clients.
By striking up phone conversations with B2B clients, you gain insights into their daily challenges and the kinds of products/services that can help them. This makes it easier to suggest this or that feature that clients may not know about.
Here are more questions on how communication impacts your holiday marketing:
- Am I calling to make a sale or understand how my product/service can help the client?
- Should I be recording the call to remember important information?
- Do I keep track of my existing clients with a built-in mobile CRM system?
- Are my voice greetings and auto-attendant messages all set for the holiday season so clients have the pleasure of interacting with my business?
- Should I use WhatsApp Business or other business messengers for holiday marketing?
An incredibly important part of your holiday marketing, a phone conversation will help people on both ends of the line save time. To make sure that your business saves money as well, discover the user-friendly virtual phone system for small business that protects your privacy and saves up to 60% on business communications costs. Learn more about MightyCall VoIP.
Holiday marketing for B2C business: ’tis the season to give back
2019-20 consumers are looking for something special to make them buy. Something more than another coupon or promo. As Cone Communications puts it in their research about corporate social responsibility, “Companies must now share not only what they stand for, but what they stand up for.”
Craig Blume, Managing partner at The Baltimore Biker Trading Company LLC, is focusing on raising money with his products this holiday season as a way to both grow his startup and raise funds for a special cause.
“We are a new entrepreneurial start-up company,” Craig shares. “We partnered with a local business man (Steve O’Donnell) and a large National Organization (the CMTA) to create the $1 Million Plane Survivor CMT Challenge – A Million Reasons to Believe.”
At first glance, Craig’s holiday marketing is as simple as selling a T-shirt. But through partnering up with a national organization like the CMTA (Charcot Marie-Tooth Disease Association), the whole country can now learn about the business. This is something that no email marketing or holiday sales campaign could’ve accomplished on its own, especially for a startup.
“We are donating $5.00 for every Plane Survivor CMT T-shirt sold to achieve the $1 Million challenge,” Craig says. “There are 2.8 million people affected with CMT [Charcot Marie-Tooth Disease, a neurological disease] in the world. We want the world to know about [it] and we want to help pay for the research. We will all celebrate together in a monumental way when the cure is discovered.”
How to do it
Showing your customers that you care is a great way to associate the name of your brand with a worthy cause and create a bond of trust with consumers that goes beyond marketing. Both local businesses and online ones can partner up with organizations on a community or national level.
The 2017 Cone Communications CSR Study gives food for thought on what holiday marketing for socially responsible businesses should look like.
Here are some of the CSR study’s top findings:
- Four out of five U.S. consumers expect businesses to continue improving their CSR (corporate social responsibility) efforts.
- Millennials are your company’s best organic marketers.
- 71% of millennials want businesses to take charge of leading environmental and social change.
- 92% of consumers have a more positive image of the company that supports a social or environmental cause.
- Racial equality, women’s rights, immigration, and climate change are among the top issues U.S. consumers want companies to address.
When choosing a charity to support, check that the cause suits your voice and relates to your audience demographics. Talk to your team and/or your clients to learn about the problems they care for and ones they relate to. Finally, browse legitimate charities on websites like Give.org to find something that ‘clicks’ with your business and customers.
For additional exposure of your charity and brand, Liz Jeneault, entrepreneur and the vice president of marketing for Faveable, suggests hosting giveaways through social media influencers. “Social media giveaways are a great holiday marketing tool to use,” Liz says. “It helps increase your social media following and also introduces you to new potential customers. Plus, having an influencer recommend your product or business brings legitimacy to your business.”
Final word
With everything else you have to do this season, holiday marketing may look like yet another challenge to solve. But with the right mindset and the right tools, everything changes. This holiday season, your holiday marketing can take off and connect you with new people and opportunities you never thought possible!
To help you connect with customers in the most friendly and simple way, take a look at MightyCall’s VoIP business phone system, now with a special limited-time offer.
