5 things to do right now to boost holiday sales for your small business

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While my staff and I have taken every effort to ensure these strategies are accurate and

have the potential to help you grow your business, I do not make any claims that this is

a “get rich quick” scheme and there is no guarantees you will earn any money. The level

of success you reach will depend on a number of factors including your ability to

comprehend, strategize, as well as other factors such as taking action. At no point is

this material intended to offer professional legal, medical, personal or financial advice.

Under no circumstances will Tina Brinkley Potts or any of its representatives or

contractors be liable for any damages that result from the use of, or the inability to use,

the information or strategies communicated through these materials.


5 Things To Do RIGHT NOW to Boost Your Holiday Sales For Your Small

Business

While personally I prefer to build campaigns well in advance, I know my phone and

inbox has been flooded with requests asking “How can I maximize my sales during this

holiday season?”

After brief consultations with many of those seeking ways to maximize the holiday

season in the short term, I began repeating myself so I decided to write this ebook and

share it with as many small business owners as possible.

With the official holiday shopping season well underway, I want to help you create a

plan that will work immediately. The 5 items listed below are powerful on their own over

the long term but used together can have a very quick impact on your business’

revenue.

If you haven’t put a plan in place to maximize your revenue over the holiday season or

over any short term, get ready to implement. This strategy WORKS!!!

#1 Power of One

Pick one product or service that you have great experiences selling.

This is your low hanging fruit.

You are already successfully moving this product or service so it’s the easiest to

increase. Amplifying the sales of this product or service is as easy as sharing the

experience from the customers point of view.

I know you may have some other products or services that aren’t moving that you would

want to concentrate on and I just want to tell you that it is like bringing bees to pollen.

You already know how to sell your main product or service. Bring them in with this

experience and then later we will talk about upselling the product or services that aren’t

moving.

If you haven’t already done so, ask your customers why they buy this product or service

from you. Really listen for the benefits your customers are saying they get from using

your product or service.

This is probably different from your previous marketing or advertising. Most small

businesses focus on the features of their products or services.


Let me give you a couple of examples:

Example # 1

Let’s say you were selling a pair of UGG boots. Now I personally think these are the

ugliest boots ever. That’s just my own personal opinion. But I do wear UGG boots. I

wear them anytime I know I am going to be outside in the cold for long periods of time

because my feet will absolutely stay warm.

Now considering that I personally buy shoes based on the aesthetics of them, I would

have never purchased a pair of UGG boots. My daughter had a pair and let me where

them to my son’s football game. I absolutely fell in love with those boots.

Is it because of how they look- absolutely not!

Because I hate cold weather and they helped me stay outside and keep warm long

enough to watch my son’s football game.

A customer’s personal emotionally charged stories of WHY they love a product or

service will help you sell many more of them than you presenting the features.

Here is another example:

I am a small business consultant that teaches strategic marketing and technology to my

clients so they can grow their business in this new economy. My clients sleep better at

night knowing they have a strategic partner that has given them sound techniques and

strategies to grow. In this example, “sound techniques and strategies” is a feature of the

services I provide while “my clients sleep better at night” is one of the benefits.

This came out of the mouths of my clients. After one client said that to me, I asked

another. And another.

Seriously, think about it from your own perspective. Many of my clients told me that they

were getting real frustrated with gaining new business, stay on top of the latest in

marketing and strategies and deliver their day to day services. It was overwhelming.

Once they met me it helped them sleep better at night.

Any business owner that is going through similar circumstances will be able to relate to

this.


While many business consultants offer similar services, it is how I am impacting the

lives of my clients that not only keep them coming back but why they refer other

business owners and entrepreneurs.

Using emotionally charged reasons your customers are buying your product or service

is like sending out a signal to possible customers saying “Who Would Like This

Experience”

Now that you have your researched and can match the features of your product or

service to the benefits from your customer’s perspective, create a landing page for your

product or service. A landing page is a one page website. Or if you are using

WordPress to manage your site, add a page to your site exclusively for this product or

service.

Your content on this page, should follow this blueprint:

Write from the client’s perspective

Use words that evoke emotion

Utilize great On-Page SEO (search engine optimization)

Use images. The images should show the product or service as well as the

reaction a customer might expect from using the service. Video would be a

bonus and will accelerate your results.

Use the worksheet below to organize your thoughts.

Bonus Tip: Create status updates for your social media using the information outlined

above. Samples following my example are at the bottom of the worksheet.


POWER OF ONE WORKSHEET

Product/Service Name

Price:

3 Reasons Why Customers Buy - From Their Perspective

1.

2.

3.

3 Features of the Product/Service

1.

2.

3.

Sample Status Updates:

Not having enough customers coming through your door keeping you up at

night? Let’s change that http://bit.ly/XfP81z

Not getting as many customers as before? Talk to me and find out why.

http://bit.ly/XfP81z

Would you rather new prospective customers show up at your door or the other

way around http://bit.ly/XfP81z

Accelerator Tip: If you have a budget to place online advertising, use this information

and images to create ads.





#2 Facebook Comments

Now that you’ve built a customer experience driven landing page about your product or

service, it’s important to use the power of Facebook to spread the word.

Facebook is the largest experience sharing community on the planet.

Read that statement again.

I hope you took the time to let that sink in. Now that you’ve created a page that is

based on your customer’s experience instead of about your business, customers will

share it more easily.

As you know, most customers say they “don’t want to be sold to.” If the information you

are sharing is more about your business than about your customer experience, it can be

viewed as intrusive. And what you may not know is many of the people you think are

seeing your message have passively removed you from their site.

Now I know what you are thinking. My friend count or my like count (if you are using a

fan page) isn’t dropping. Remember, I said they are passively removing you from their

view. It can happen just like this:

On Facebook, in order to get in the News feed, where the magic happens, it’s important

to be a little more methodical. This is where the magic happens because we expect ads

on the side of the screen but if you end up in my news feed, either I’ve liked your

company or someone that I am connected to has liked something you’ve done. Either

way, I will pay attention.

First, it started with the customer experience centered page.


Next, let’s add Facebook comments to the bottom of the page. If your website is in

WordPress, there are great plugins that make it absolutely easy to install on your page.

Facebook also has tutorials and information on how to install their commenting system

on your website.

Once you have the comments loaded to the page, give your customers incentives to

comment on their experiences using this product or service. Offer them something like

10% off of their next purchase or a free giveaway that your customer will find as a

massive value.

Make sure this is a massive value that makes it a no-brainer for your customers to leave

a comment. It’s definitely worth it.

Let me explain why:

Each time your customer leaves a comment through the Facebook comments on your

product or service page, it shows in their newsfeed. This is a personal endorsement to

all of their friends on Facebook.

I’ll explain a little deeper.

They say the average person on Facebook has 130 friends on their facebook profile.

When your customer leaves a comment on your product or service page, this comment

is showing to those 130 friends.

Let’s say in the next week you get just 10 customers to do this. You’ve now been

endorsed to 1300 people.

WOW! That was easy.

They say that word of mouth advertising is the best advertising in the world because it is

personally endorsed by someone. I absolutely agree.

This is word of mouth advertising at its best. And you haven’t spent a dime.

This is only the first way we are going to use Facebook.


#3 Facebook Fan Page

I know many business owners started on Facebook using a Facebook profile which was

meant for personal use. There are many reasons why business owners need to use the

fan page. This strategy, however, is going to focus exclusively on traditional brick and

mortar businesses that have a physical address where they do business.

When you set up a fan page, and you select local business or place, this is just like

getting into the phone book of Facebook.

So if you haven’t started a fan page, start one right now. It’s free and if you follow the

steps outlined. This is a very important part of our next strategy. When you set up your

fan page, make sure to select “Local Business or Place”.

This will show a map of how to get to your business as well as help your business get

found in the search engine search of maps.

There are many advantages to having a fan page. But the most important one for our

strategy to get customers fast this holiday season is Deals.


#4 Facebook Check-In Deals

With a local business or place Facebook fan page, you can create what is known as a

Facebook check-in deal.

How many times have you used Facebook or even Foursquare to check in to a

restaurant or a place of interest? How many of your Facebook friends “check in”?

Check-in deals are a powerful way to spread the deals you are offering FAST!

Not only do Facebook deals help you generate awareness but you can encourage in-

store traffic and repeat business as well.

Once someone checks in and takes the deal, it creates a story in the news feed. For

this strategy, we are going to create two types of deals: Individual deals and A Friend

Deal.

*Individual Deal*

This is a deal you can offer to new and even existing customers. The more people you

get to take the deal, the more exposure you will get for your promotions. Remember

back in an earlier example that an average Facebook user has 130 friends. By taking

advantage of your deal, they have shared your offer with all 130 people via the news

feed.

Now, I know what some business owners are saying. I already have this customer who

is willing to pay full price, why do I want to have them utilize the check-in deal?

Here is a great example:

Let’s say one of your best customers come in the store to purchase a $20 item that they

have purchased several times before. You’ve created a 20% off for this item through the

Facebook check-in feature.

You offer this to your customer so instead of paying the $20, the customer pays $16

($20 less 20%). This customer has 100 friends on Facebook. Once the story goes in

their news feed, another of your customers clicks ‘like’ (they have 200 friends) and

comments how much they enjoyed the item. Now the two customers go back and forth

about it and this is now in the news feed of 300 people (based on their privacy

settings)….100 people from the original customer and 200 people from the commenter.

So essentially, you’ve just paid $4 to get in front of 300 people with a two person

endorsement that they know!


Here is an example from my own profile.

I happen to love a restaurant called Firebirds. Every time I am there, I check-in and

many of my friends click ‘like’ or say how much they like it. This is giving them great

testimonials and exposure. With a deal it would be powerful.

A bonus - this check-in will show up on your fan page helping you create more

engagement on your page as well. Again, word of mouth at its best!

*Friend Deal*

This is the above example on steroids!

Most people don’t shop nor eat alone. Friend deals are when you discount to groups of

up to 8 or more when they check in together.

Let’s go back to the example under individual deals.

You offered 20% off your purchase if they check -n with at least 3 friends (total of 4

people).

1st friend has 100 friends.

2nd friend has 900 friends.


3rd friend has 430 friends.

4th friend has 62 friends.

When they all check-in together, this activity will show up to 1492 people from these

four news feeds. Let’s say the total of their purchases was $200 so the discount would

be a total of $40.

You’ve essentially spent $40 to get endorsed to 1492 people by their friends.

Now think about this for a moment.

If your friend recommended a business in writing, and you were looking for that product

or service, how likely would you be to check it out? Probably. Now what if you saw 4

friends? The probability goes up dramatically.


#5 Adding Offline Customer Service to Your Automation

Most small businesses that are doing email marketing or any type of autoresponder

series (an autoresponder is an automated message that goes out based on a specific

time frame or action…can be email, text, voice, etc.) do not personalize the experience.

Yes, many of them use the “first name” field but that is not what I am talking about.

What I am talking about is when you take the time to remember something about your

encounter and add that to your marketing sequences.

One of the best examples I can give you is when I am attending networking events.

When I take business cards, I write on them a couple of things: First I write a

distinguishable feature of their appearance or demeanor and Second, I write something

that we talked about.

When I return back to my office or anywhere that I have my iPad, I log into my

autoresponder system and type in the information. I have an autoresponder series that

intelligently uses the information in a way that the person receiving the emails knows

that I was paying attention. These emails also create engagement and helps build an

interactive relationship. I booked over 25% of my consulting business this way.

You can check out one of my networking autoresponders by clicking here

http://bit.ly/TKYQTZ

I gave you this example that you can follow so you can see this can help you sell more

of your products or services.

Do you have a bowl of some type sitting on your counter in your business giving away a

free drawing each week? I know many restaurants offer a free lunch, a free pizza to

gather this information. Let’s say you do this and offer one of your best products as the

giveaway. As your customers are leaving business cards or are completing the little

slips with their information on it, you talk to them so you can get some identifiers to add

to your autoresponders. One could be the purchase they made. Or maybe the customer

was talking about her grandson…whatever it is, the more personal the better.

This will help you keep in touch with these clients in a non-invasive way.

http://bit.ly/TKYQTZ


Strategic Upsell

Now that you have customers coming in to your business by referral, understanding

why they are buying the product from the Power of One is going to help you upsell the

other products and services you offer.

There is definitely a fine line on not being a pushy salesperson and not asking for an

upsell altogether. Upselling small amounts of money is relative to the purchase the

customer would have otherwise made anyway is the key.

Let’s say that the customer is about to buy a $20 item. Adding an item that compliments

that item and costs below $2 is a great upsell because it won’t require much thought for

the customer to make this purchase, especially if you can give a great reason why they

should have this $2 item.

For instance, I love my iPhone…can’t believe that I admit that out loud but it’s the truth.

Buying a case for this iPhone is a no brainer as it is helping me protect it. Funny

enough, I am going to purchase a case regardless so the salesperson where I purchase

the iPhone should ask me do you need a case.

Your upsell should be something that the customer will naturally want. In my iPhone

example above, if the salesperson brings over a couple of different cases to me and

says something like, “I’m assuming you are going to protect your investment, do you

prefer the hard plastic version or leather?

You must train and prepare your staff and you to upsell. Not doing it means you are

missing out of revenue. Doing it correctly is the key.

Here are your 5 strategies that if you implement today, you can have some extra

revenue in your business through this holiday shopping season. I know online marketing

for many small business owners has been a difficult thing to accomplish because they

don’t know where to start.

There are so many online marketing strategies but to infuse cash into your business

quickly through sales, you need to optimize what you already have in place and this

strategy does that.

This strategy utilizes:

Customer’s experience – I was just a guest lecturer for an online marketing class

for a university and just shared that one of the major differences in businesses

that are succeeding in this new economy is they know how to market their


business from the customer’s experience. Now that we are connected socially

online as well as in person, we have learned to share the human experience with

our online connections. By presenting your business through your customer’s

experience, you are allowing the senses to evoke an emotional response.

Many traditional small businesses are struggling because they are still presenting

their business like a resume. If you go to their websites, it still reads we’ve been

in business since 19xx and we have 5 locations and we…we…we…Too much

focus on the business and not enough about the customer. The sad thing is

many of these businesses that are struggling deliver a good product or service

and understand how to take care of a customer…they are just missing one

critical component…..how to get in front of and intrigue a customer in this new

economy.

Online viral capability – When online marketers talk about viralness, many people

think you need to have a million views on a video or hundreds of ‘likes’ to a

status in order for the “viral effect” to help your business.

That is absolutely un-true. The viralness is the word of mouth capability that you

can get in front of the right people with the right message and create an effect.

For a small business, if you are exposed to the right 10 people, it could have a

huge impact on your business.

The sad thing is many online marketers are teaching strategies that would have

you believe you need a big budget or be a big company because they are still

using the “cast a big net” philosophy and hope you catch fish.

I believe in fly fishing. Let’s catch the fish that are waiting in your market.

Automation – Automation using autoresponders gives you presence in front of

your customers and FOLLOW UP. How many times have you said I meant to

send that email or make that telephone call? It has been said many times that

you may need many touchpoints before a customer is ready to buy. This helps

you stay in front of the client in a non-invasive way.

Seems very simple right? So simple that you could have this implemented in your

business in less than a day.

So what are you waiting for?


Tina Brinkley Potts is a business consultant that specializes in business growth using

tools and strategies necessary to further your business in this new economy. If you are

seeking business growth and unsure how to accomplish, complete the contact us form

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5 things to do right now to boost holiday sales for your small business

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