Everyone Gets Gussied Up for the Holidays. Why Doesn’t Your Marketing?

This guest blog is by Janet Muto, a veteran marketing executive with strong expertise in SaaS, technology, sales, and the small and medium-size business (SMB) market. Janet's current role is Partner and Co-Founder at High Start Group. Before joining High Start Group, Janet served as the Vice President of Marketing and Chief Marketing Officer for Constant Contact, where she grew the SaaS business to 25,000 SMB customers.

Many of us decorate our homes for various holidays. Home decorations  are an easy and inexpensive way to give your home a facelift and keep it “fresh” for your family, neighbors and even people who just drive by Done right, a decorated home can cause neighborhood traffic jams as people come from miles away to see the show.  Why not utilize the seasonal changes of your business to update your website and other marketing materials in a similar fashion?

I don’t mean that you need to add a holiday wreath or jack-o-lantern to your marketing. But understanding the seasonal nature of your business can help you build a plan to keep your site, message and content fresh and interesting for your visitors, customers and potential new customers.

Not convinced?  Here are just a few top-of-mind seasonal opportunities to use video to promote your offerings:

• Hairdressers and tailors can feature videos of the fun, cool prom services they offer.
   
• Non-profits can shoot video of their annual events and even arm their participants with video cameras.  For example, first person narratives by people biking the Pan Mass Challenge make great recruiting video for the website.
   
• Local farms offering corn mazes and Halloween wagon rides can shoot “Blair Witch Project”-like video to lure new customers in to their events.

Today, there are many ways that your customers and potential customers can understand who you are and what you offer through your marketing-- not just on a website or email, but also from your blogs, your YouTube channel, and via Facebook company pages. 

Think about your busy season – and capture that on video.  Be ready with new and fun videos when your existing customers come back to visit – don’t let them see the same thing over and over again. Mix it up! 

Video showcases how you are different from competing businesses.  It can add personality to your brand as well as encourage customers and potential customers to engage with you. Video also spotlights what makes your business unique, fun, and most-suited for your target customers. 

Done right, you’ll not only keep your customers and visitors coming back, but they will bring their friends as well.  A virtual traffic jam!

Posted by Yelena Kadeykina
Wednesday, 29 September 2010