If you’re one of the many businesses who rely on the fall/winter holidays for the majority of your sales, it’s time to fasten your seatbelt. Is your website ready to help you produce the best revenue season yet? Even if your summer-intensive business is winding down, warming up your website now can heat up shoulder season sales and get customers and prospects thinking about next year’s high season.
It’s not too late to make the most of website marketing ideas for fall that can smoothly transition into winter and Christmas sales. You need top website performance, too. Here are seven tips:
1. Transform your website with seasonal themes.
Regularly freshening your content is a must for website marketing. That includes images, because they’re typically your best attention-grabbers. Choose fall-themed photos that depict your merchandise or seasonal services. Post some of the images to Pinterest or share them with your Facebook and Twitter followers.
2. Help your customers, clients or patients refresh themselves.
With kids back in school, moms could use some “me” time. Feature merchandise, services or a special luncheon menu that caters to them, perhaps offering a nice discount. And not just moms. What do you do or sell that helps people look or feel better?
Everyone wants to be at their best for holiday company, with a great new haircut, fall-themed mani-pedi, a soothing massage or whiter teeth. Your customers want their homes to look their best, too, with fall-themed candles and tableware, clean carpets and a nicely trimmed end-of-season yard.
3. Sharpen your website’s SEO.
Successful website marketing depends on being found by prospective customers. Review your SEO tactics and study your analytics, and do everything you can to fix any weak points. Think “fall” keywords, and make sure your meta tags, photo descriptions, etc. use fall-specific terms your customers will search for.
While you’re working to improve SEO, make sure your website is working at top speed, too. Online shoppers are notoriously impatient, and pages that take even an extra second or two to load drive prospective buyers away in droves. You may never get them back.
4. Optimize for mobile users.
Smartphones and tablets are the devices of choice for most online searchers these days, whether they’re out and about or literally standing inside your business. Optimizing for those small screens will win you lasting friends and encourage shoppers to choose you. Frustrating them will cause them to look elsewhere.
5. Don’t neglect your blog.
A blog is a must-have marketing tool, to boost SEO and drive traffic to your website and to reinforce your credibility and value to customers and prospects. And it’s the perfect way to talk to your audience at greater length about fall topics relevant to your business and useful for them. Share decorating ideas, your favorite fall recipe, personal cooking or home care tips.
Remind your audience to sign up for your blog, your e-newsletter and your upcoming in-store fall marketing events. Getting their email address is the first step toward successful online engagement.
6. It’s the season of “thanksgiving.”
This is a perfect time to thank your most loyal customers for their patronage. Create an exclusive offer just for them, with a downloadable coupon they can redeem in-store.
7. Finalize your postcard marketing campaigns for the holidays.
No time to lose here. Your direct mail pros are especially busy, and you want to get your mailings out in plenty of time to deliver follow-up mailings that will generate maximum response.
Make the most of your fall marketing campaigns by cross-promoting them via your website and also your postcard marketing and other channels. You will reach the most people, most efficiently and cost-effectively, generating maximum sales and excellent ROI.