We're nearly a week into November now. Maybe what happened day ago caused you to open a champagne or wine bottle or two? Regardless, the elections are over, and we can focus on the future.
Holiday seasons just right around the corner, people start busy, as buyers, lots of them are start to searching and looking for where and how to get the best holidays deals, and sellers, on the other hand, especially the small business owners are busy with how to marketing their business for the holidays.
In my personal opinion, I think marketing is very important for a business or for any business to survive, because it shows to potential customers that you are still there for them, even in these rocky times. Also, in order to have revenue, you have to drive people to your business, otherwise how do you intend to attract them? If you are not marketing, on the other hand, people might forget about you, or they may even assume that your business is in trouble because they have not heard from you lately. See, that's what I think marketing is very important.
According to Constant Contact (an email marketing company) recent "U.S. Small Businesses Boost Marketing Efforts in Response to Economic Uncertainty" businesses survey, 76 percent of their respondents are planning holiday promotions and last minute shopping offers, up from 62 percent in 2007, and more than half (53 percent) will begin marketing earlier this year. 63 percent of this year's respondents have even begun their holiday campaigns already.
"There's no question the economy is a cause for concern, especially for U.S. small businesses that rely heavily on holiday sales," says Constant Contact CEO Gail Goodman. "However, in true entrepreneurial fashion, small businesses are fighting back. Small businesses recognize the value of focusing their marketing efforts to enhance communication with their loyal customers, as well as to attract new business."
If you are selling products from the Internet, I assume you are now working harder on how to let your website get more holiday traffic, do you? But that is online stuff. What about brick-and-mortars business owners who don't have much of an online presence?
Based on my experience, here is what you need to do - you should have an online presence to let your business get more expose to the global market. However, due to holidays are approaching soon, it may not have enough time for you to create a website and get all those Internet marketing tactic into the place. If that is the case for you, then just focus on your offline business - get more customers to your store and have them buy products from you. Your online presence can be get done later.
Yes, you are facing lots of competitors who are selling similar products through the Internet, especially under current economy situation - many buyers would just like to stay at home and shop online since there are more chances for them to find great deals.
Well, hold on, don't feel down yet, think about buyers purchasing behavior, their financial status and their buying decision making habit etc - not everyone like to buy stuff from the Internet, right? So remember, there are always last-minute shoppers or a group of people who will not be able to afford to pay the priority shipping costs, or who will not have patient to wait for the items that they order online to ship to their door, or who will not want to give out their credit card numbers to online sellers.
To attract those customers come to your store, one of the obvious way is to give discounts. Secondly, you can set up some promotion programs, such as giveaways, contests or some other special events, like Santa, maybe? You can also adjust your working hours, like open store earlier and close it later, and don't forget to make sure that you have enough staff to handle the large amounts of customers as well.
See, you don't need to worry, there's no question that brick-and-mortars will lose some business to online shopping. Each business model (online and offline) has its own advantages and disadvantages, just do your best and you will have a successful holidays selling season.
Author Resource:-
Ann Liu, a certified professional Internet marketer and author of Online Profiting. To learn how YOU too can succeed in Internet and affiliate marketing, please visit http://Marketingbyann.com
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