I know you don’t want to hear it, but the holidays are approaching quickly!

And, according to an article from Think With Google, people are already doing their holiday shopping. In fact, 22 percent started in October and 59 percent are going to be starting in November, which is just a few short days away.

No big deal, right? Well, no.

November and December actually drive a huge amount of sales for a lot of businesses and can even account for 30 percent more revenue than the rest of the year—if you’re marketing for them the right way.

Ok, I’ll stop stressing you out and get into it. Here are three quick holiday marketing tips followed by a bonus section that will help you plan and execute your holiday digital marketing strategy for 2018!

3 Quick Digital Marketing Tips for the 2018 Holiday Season

1. Take care of the little things that will have a big impact right now.

These are things you can do quickly to make sure customers can find your business and that they will want to choose you over the competition, leave happy and keep coming back.

Do these things now:

• Update your holiday hours anywhere you can (like your website and Google listing)
• Check your info on Google, Facebook and Yelp to make sure your address, phone number, etc. are correct
• Add seasonal keywords to your listings, ads or blog posts (think “gift ideas” and similar holiday keywords)
• Train your employees on customer service – the holidays are a stressful time, so employees will need to be extra sensitive

2. Use social media to build hype about your holiday specials.

Imagery is a powerful way to bring in more customers. People will be looking for photos, and social media is a great place to host yours. You can get a little extra creative during this season and show cute displays or employees being silly and getting in the holiday spirit.

Here are a few social media ideas to get you started:

• Start posting on Facebook and Instagram to let followers know you’re getting ready for the holidays
• Do something fun, like 12 days of holiday specials
• Post photos of employees preparing holiday displays or wearing ugly sweaters
• Share photos from your business’s holiday parties

3. Create a sense of urgency.

The best way to get people to act fast is to give them a sense of urgency, and it doesn’t hurt at all to remind your customers that the holidays are coming quickly.

Use emails, ads, signage, social media, your website or any other digital channels you use to give them a sense of urgency.

Here are a few ways to do this:

• Run limited-time promotions and put a big emphasis on the fact that they’ll end soon
• Remind customers that everyone else is in a rush to buy with “get it before it sells out” reminders
• Run a countdown to the last shopping day of the year before the holidays hit

Bonus: Build Your Holiday Marketing Plan

Now that you have a few digital marketing ideas for the 2018 holidays, let’s talk about how to get started.

First, look at your budget. Be realistic. What can you do with your budget this season?

Secondly, create a marketing calendar. Add any promotions you have planned and mark the big shopping days like Black Friday and Small Business Saturday as well as any holiday events your business is planning or attending to help plan and coordinate your marketing strategy.

In order to coordinate your marketing with the big shopping days and your business’s promotions, plan to share on social at least a week in advance, longer if possible. Share each promotion once or twice on social, and dedicate a piece of your website to each promotion, even if it’s just a single coupon or blog post.

Finally, keep track of your marketing results. How much traffic did they drive to your website? How often did you show up for the right search terms? If you’re a RevLocal client, we can help you measure your business’s holiday marketing success so you don’t have to.

Use those results to plan and tweak next year’s holiday campaigns.

And, don’t forget to take time for yourself too! Slow down, eat too much food, enjoy yourself and spend time with your family this holiday season.