Grow Your Business Online: Reach More Customers This Holiday Season

TIPS FROM OUR LAST GOOGLE EVENT

For a replay of the livestream event, please watch below.

We had a nice turnout for our Grow Your Business Online event by Google! We shared with those in attendance a Marketing Wonderland Webinar. Those that presented were industry experts with the Small Business Administration; namely, Google's Stasia Kudrez, Facebook's Cara Lewin, Constant Contact's Dave Charest, and Square's Katie Miller.

What were some of the highlights from each speaker? We'll take them one at a time...

Stasia (Google) mentioned the following: 

More than 50% of shoppers are willing to buy from new retailers. She also advised not to expect immediate results, but don't let that be the reason to put off beginning either. The sooner you do begin on a digital marketing campaign, the better. 

For SEO, there are four tips: Keywords, Content, Mobile and Speed. 

1 in 3 smartphone users ended up going with another store or brand because it answered their questions in less time than the product's site they intended to buy from originally. This highlights the importance of content. Content should be written not for search engines (bots) but for human beings. 

60% of smartphone users have made a purchase from their device in the last 6 months. This is just one reason highlighting the importance of having a mobile website. Additional tips for mobile: Create a responsive website, include call to action buttons, use simple navigations, and implement touch to call buttons. 

Cara Lewin (Facebook) was next on the list of presenters. Here are some takeaways from her segment: 

The key times to keep in mind to focus on during the holiday season are the following dates: 

• Black Friday, 11/24
• Cyber Monday, 11/27
• Super Saturday, 12/24
• Christmas, 11/25
• New Years, 1/1

She also mentioned that video is the new universal language. Building an engaging video involves, many times, shooting for 15 seconds or less. For imagery, show your brand front and center. Add text overlay when relevant, and use emotional imagery (i.e., things appealing to time spent with family and friends). 

With images, here are some more tips: Manipulate light with foam board and contact paper. Set your mobile studio near a window or lamp with regular foam board (white background) for bouncing light off of. 

She next demonstrated how to create your mobile studio...very simple and effective! The tools you'll need include a cardboard box, tissue paper, tape, scissors, bent white paper and two clamp lights. 

When it comes to social, when are the best times to post? Between 4pm and 9pm. This is when people are on their phones. 

Mobile shopping also means avoiding lines at stores. So, having a good mobile website experience is very important to reach customers effectively. 40% of shoppers stay busy in January to take advantage of post holiday sales. 

The next speaker was Constant Contact's Director of Content Marketing, Dave Charest. He spoke on the topic "Email All The Way to Your Best Holiday Season Ever". Here are some highlights from his segment: 

20-30% of total sales happen from November through January. Email drives 174% more conversions than social media. 

The 7 essential elements of email design are: 

1. Header
2. Preheader
3. Logo and colors
4. Image
5. Text
6. Call to Action
7. Footer

Use the 3 Step Persuasive Formula

1. What are you offering?
2. How will it help the reader?
3. What should they do next?

Have a good email marketing plan, which includes: 

• Announce offer (initial, 3-4 weeks out)
• Send a reminder (one week out)
• Send a last chance reminder (two days out)

The last speaker, Katie Miller (Square) talked on the subject of how you are planning to take payments from customers and all the ways to be prepared for their methods. 

Accept all payments (any way the customer wants to pay). For example, now customers want to be able to pay from their phones or watches. Are you prepared to do that? 

She also talked about the value of using gift cards to attract attention. 

At the end there was a Q&A session. Among the concluding comments from each speaker were the following: 

Facebook - If you have a product to shoot (video), try it out (the lightbox demonstrated in the video), it takes less than 30 minutes to make! 

Google - Don't wait. A lot of colleagues have great ideas but they miss out on opportunities because they're putting it off due to thinking too much 'big picture'. 

Constant Contact - Use email, talk to your staff and make sure you are reaching as many as possible. 

Square - train your staff for smooth payment processing. Take a moment to order mundane but important things like gift cards and wrap. 

Be sure and stay tuned on our blog and social media channels for upcoming Google events. Sign up for our newsletter to be sure and receive a direct invitation to events for next year as well! And don't forget to contact us anytime if you'd like to discuss how we can help with your website and digital marketing needs.

Best wishes and keep growing your business online!