Archive for December 2009
3 ways to make your Website the Life of the Christmas Party!
Thursday, December 24, 2009
One of the greatest assets of having a website as a facet of your marketing strategy is that you can keep your content fresh with relative ease. Whereas a TV ad or a radio spot takes a process to change, your website can be updated at the click of a button.
In the spirit of the holiday season, let’s say that your website is akin to a Christmas party. Just like there are hundreds of home improvement and re bath business, there are similarly a plethora of Christmas parties that everyone gets invited to every year. You will typically avoid the parties that offered boring, lame, typical holiday festivities and attend the ones that offer more than stale Chex Mix and watered down egg nog.
This is exactly how customers pick and choose the businesses that they frequent. They act on past experiences, and if you’ve had the same content on your website from the day you started it, then you have little chance for making a lasting impact on a customer. Here are a few tips on how to keep your website fresh and in the Christmas spirit.
1) Give the website design a holiday tinge!
You know those houses on the block that shine like the house in National Lampoon’s Christmas Vacation? Well, it doesn’t have to go that far…but you have to admit, it certainly is attention grabbing. This doesn’t mean you have to throw good design principles out the door in favor of all green and red fonts, but a little change can make a big difference. For home improvement and re bath businesses, you might think of taking a page from Google’s playbook and altering your logo with a bit of snow, or some Christmas lights. Anything dynamic will perk the customer’s interest long enough to get your message across, which brings us to tip number 2.
2) Good eats = Good time
Party A – Chex mix, dollar store sodas, and a bowl of popcorn
Party B – 4 types of pizza, a 10 foot sandwich, holiday drinks, and and all the sausage and cheeze you can eat.
Which party are you going to? (You can’t say both!) Party B wins out because of pure substance. The good stuff is there, so the people will follow. Are you giving your customers the good stuff? No, not fluffed up persuasive copy, we’re talking about the GOOD stuff. Discounts, tips, videos, blog posts…in other words, fresh content. This is the perfect time to put up your helpful How To articles in your home improvement or rebath blog, post a video tutorial to YouTube, or give your customers a limited Christmastime coupon. Choose whatever juicy marketing tidbit is best for your business model, but choose something, because a website with stale content will generate absolutely no home improvement leads.
3) Good music, the greatest call to action.
It’s a party, not a wake! You want people moving around and laughing and dancing, but if you’ve got the best of Bing Crosby and Lawrence Welk on the background, you’re more likely to induce a food coma. Good music that you can dance to is the ultimate call to action, which is exactly what your website needs(see Beyonce’s “Single Ladies”).
What is your call to action? Every marketing endeavor has a desired result, and the call to action should invoke your customer to perform this action. Do you want them to buy something straight from your website, or do you simply want to collect their information for later use? Whatever the desired outcome, make sure it is front and center on your webpage, and that their is ample reason to perform the call to action. I.E, “call us now and receive X discount on this service. Sign up for our newsletter and get a FREE X”.
Unlike a frivolous Christmas party, the success of your business can actually rely on your website. Dynamic aesthetics, fresh content, and tempting calls to action are surefire marketing practices that can ensure your home improvement and re bath business will be the hit of the party, both this year and the next.
Merry Marketing: How giving can end up getting you a lot!
Tuesday, December 8, 2009
Yes, t’is the season to be jolly. It’s almost Christmas time, and everybody is scrambling around in their coats and scarves to catch the flying items falling off of store racks everywhere. Even in this weak economy, people are still willing to spend a little cash in the spirit of holiday giving.
As a marketeer, you should already be asking yourself, “how can I leverage this as an advantage for my home improvement or rebath business?” But that’s when the guilt kicks in. Like a sharp kick to the side, the pang of guilt forces you to say, “I should be thinking about giving, not receiving!”.
Consumers experience something similar to this called Shopper’s Guilt. It’s when people who can afford to spend money forgo doing so in response to feeling guilty that others cannot afford it. This effect is amplified in a weak economy where there is high unemployment.
The good news is there is a way to quell both your need to indulge in holiday charity and to get customers feeling right about spending money again. All you need to do is pick a charity and team up with it as a holiday promotion.
Something similar to this might work: “For every home improvement project or rebath product purchased in the month of December, 5% will be donated to ___________”.
Of course, you’ll have to crunch the numbers and figure out what your company can afford to donate, but once you have, you will be able to both quell shopper’s guilt and help a charity at the same time. You don’t want put your business at risk by contributing too much of your sale to where it becomes detrimental, but you also want to keep in mind that these might be customers who otherwise would not have purchased anything, so any profit is a good profit.
Once you’ve figured out the numbers and the program semantics, make sure to tailor a specific marketing campaign (social media is great for quick response campaigns!) for your holiday promotion. People need to know that you’re teaming up with a charity for the holiday, and once they do, they wont have to feel guilty about getting a little something this Christmas, because they’ll be giving a little something at the same time.