How to Have a Stress-Free Holiday Season as a Small Business Owner
The holidays can be a stressful time for everyone, especially if you're a small business owner. The tasks can seem overwhelming — running a business, managing social media, and preparing for Black Friday, Christmas, and Thanksgiving, all while still balancing personal life and enjoying time with your family and friends.
Introducing your game changer… Planning for a stress-free holiday season.
1. Start Early and Create a Holiday Marketing Calendar:
If you haven’t started yet, the time has come! Planning in advance can be the make or break of your stress-free holidays. Allow yourself time for anything you’ll need to order (signage, thank you cards, gifts, etc.), creating content (or outsourcing the creation of your content), and time to breathe and make changes.
A well-organized marketing calendar for Black Friday, Christmas, and Thanksgiving helps keep things on track and makes sure you don’t miss anything. Start with a blank calendar and add all the important dates; holidays, last days to ship/order, any launches/arrivals, and any sales you plan on having. Use this to plan your content calendar.
Some things to consider when making our holiday content calendar include themes, hashtags, and posting schedules for these holidays. Plan out how many social media posts, emails, blogs posts, or other content you want included and what graphics, photos, or videos you’ll need.
2. Prioritize Key Sales Dates (Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, Cyber Monday):
The biggest tip to working around key holiday dates, work backwards. Mark the official dates and then figure out when you want to make announcements or additional promotions on social media and email.
Start with these important dates:
November 28 — Thanksgiving
Novembre 29 — Black Friday
November 30 — Small Business Saturday
December 2 — Cyber Monday
December 3 — Giving Tuesday
December 6-8 — Nantucket Christmas Stroll
December 7 — Cape Cod’s Holiday Love Local Festival
December 25 — Christmas and Hanukkah begins
December 26 — Kwanzaa begins
December 31 — New Years Eve
Add in your own announcements, sales, and release dates.
To get ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday, consider scheduling your social media posts and email campaigns in advance. We use Metricool to schedule our social media posts and MailChimp to schedule our emails.
3. Leverage Visual Content for the Holidays:
Visuals are SO important when it comes to holiday promotions. Using festive images, holiday-themed graphics, and videos will all be imporant. Host a photoshoot and videoshoot in advance so you have everything you need.
Don’t be afraid to hire a graphic designer to make festive, on-brand graphics that will stand out from the crowd this holiday season. A professional designer could save time and lead to a higher return on investment. DIY-ing your graphics can be cost-saving, but may cost you in the long run if not done right.
4. Engage with Your Audience Throughout the Season:
Your not just posting and expecting sales… if you are, there’s a chance that you’re not seeing the results you thought you would be. Especially during the holiday season, your engagement matters. Respond to comments, share customer stories, run contests, respond to DMs, and answer questions. Keep your audience active and do your best to respond promptly.
Set up a plan for receiving customer inquiries and order complaints. If you’re already seeing these, you can usually expect these to increasing during the holidays and if you haven’t seen it before, you should still have a plan in place. Talk with your social media manager on setting up a system to ensure no missed orders.
5. Schedule Time for Yourself and Delegate Marketing Tasks
Don’t forget to celebrate, relax, and most importantly, enjoy yourself. The holidays can be a stressful time, especially if your a women balancing business and family.
By planning for Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and Christmas in advance and prepping you have the opportunity to delegate, whether to employees or hiring a social media management service. Some things to consider delegating: photography, videography, scheduling social media posts and emails, printing flyers, ordering holiday cards, post creation, and even prepping promotional items like client gifts or giveaways.
If outsourcing your social media and marketing management, I would reach out to them sooner rather than later. For a lot of small businesses, outsourcing their marketing can be a relief, leaving time for holiday preparations and business.
So, now what?
Make your holidays stress-free by getting ahead now. With proper planning, visual content, and engagement, you can make this season successful, all while enjoying yourself.
Contact us today to help you with your holiday marketing management! Ask about social media management, marketing and promotional asset creation, paid social media ads, and content photography.
