Consumers will spend an estimated $241 billion this holiday season, up 8.4% from 2023. With so many people ready and willing to pull out their wallets, it’s time to set your service business up for success this holiday season.
Whether you offer holiday promotions or focus on gift card sales, there are many ways to capture the holiday shopping audience.
Let’s dive into why holiday marketing is important for service businesses and seven key tips that can help you capture more customers this holiday season.
Why Holiday Marketing is Important for Service-Based Businesses
People typically spend more during the holiday season.
People often indulge in services like spa days, home cleanings, and other seasonal necessities
As a service-based business, you can take advantage of the extra shopping that happens at the end of the year — you just need to do the right marketing.
Keep reading to discover how you can run a seasonal marketing campaign this year.
7 Holiday Marketing Tips for Service Businesses
Reach your target audience this holiday season with the right campaign. Keep these seven holiday marketing tips in mind when planning for the holiday season.
#1. Understand Your Holiday Audience
First, you need to know who you’re targeting during the holidays. Holiday audience targeting for service businesses may look slightly different from the rest of the year.
Start by identifying key customer segments like:
- People looking to use your services for group events or activities during the holidays
- Stressed individuals looking for services
- Gift buyers (perfect for selling gift cards)
- Last-minute shoppers
Customer behavior often changes during the holiday season, because instead of your typical client, you may be targeting people who are looking to treat themselves during this time of year or who are purchasing a service for someone else.
When you understand your holiday audience is different from your typical audience, you can shift your messaging accordingly.
#2. Optimize Your Online Presence for Holiday Marketing
Set up a website (or make updates to your existing one), update your Google Business Profile, and up your social media game in preparation for the holiday season.
This might include:
- Generating a service business website using Durable
- Updating your website with holiday hours and seasonal promotions
- Adding holiday-themed designs (i.e., adding a Santa hat to your logo)
- Including a promotional pop-up message or banner on your website
Durable can incorporate these updates into your website for you so you barely have to lift a finger. Especially during the busy holiday season.
If you only operate your service business off of social media or word of mouth, the holidays is a perfect time to set up a website for your business. Durable is the easiest and fastest way to do so.
Tell Durable about your business and watch it generate a fully functional website in under 30 seconds. You can get creative and easily add custom banners:
This is also the perfect time to start creating holiday-themed content, both on social media and on your company blog.
Durable’s Blog Builder can produce this content for you, even automatically helping you rank for local holiday SEO keywords.
#3. Leverage Social Media for Holiday Marketing
Leverage the power of social media to reach new audiences with your holiday marketing. Create and share holiday-related content as a part of your organic social media strategy.
Other social media ideas include:
- Running holiday-themed contests or giveaways, offering a free service package or gift card as the prize
- Posting in local groups to promote your holiday offerings
- Creative festive visuals and videos that showcase your services
Consider having fun with your online presence and changing your social media cover photos to be holiday-themed.
#4. Use Email Marketing Tactics for the Holiday Season
Email marketing is another great way for your service business to reach potential customers this holiday season. Create a holiday marketing email campaign that lets existing customers know about any promotions you have as well as holiday-themed packages they may want to take advantage of.
Start your email promotions early so you can consistently send reminder emails throughout the season, maximizing sales and conversions.
You can also share when your promotions end, creating a sense of urgency for subscribers to go ahead and make their purchases.
Easily communicate with existing customers and leads through Durable’s CRM tool. Simply sync your email to the CRM and manage all your holiday communications in one place.
#5. Partner with Other Local Businesses for Holiday Promotions
Reach out to local, on-brand service businesses to run joint holiday promotions.
For example, if you own a hair salon, consider teaming up with a local nail salon to offer a joint service package. This is a great way for both businesses to reach new audiences during the holidays.
Another idea is to co-host a holiday-themed event or workshop with other local businesses to generate leads for all involved companies. Cross-promotions are a simple way for your business to reach an even bigger group of potential customers.
#6. Measure and Analyze Your Holiday Campaigns
Use tools like Google Analytics, social media insights, and Durable website analytics to gauge website traffic, social media reach, and other key performance indicators to track holiday marketing success.
These metrics will give you an idea of how well your holiday campaigns are doing, how many people you’re reaching, and how many sales you’re generating from your campaigns.
Keep a close watch on these metrics so you can adjust accordingly.
#7. Prepare for the Post-Holiday Season
Once the holiday season is over, follow up with your new customers through Durable so you can convert those one-time holiday shoppers into loyal, repeat clients.
Create a segment in your Durable CRM for holiday customers and offer a post-holiday promotion so customers stick around.
You can even consider extending certain promotions into January to capitalize on that next wave of holiday spend.
Keep These Holiday Marketing Tips in Mind This Season
Don’t let retail stores have all the fun this holiday season. Take advantage of holiday marketing for your service business and watch your sales spike.
Find your holiday shopper, optimize your online presence, and have fun with seasonal promotions to get more customers in the door.
Start planning your holiday marketing ideas now so you can capitalize on shoppers throughout the season.
If you operate your business on social media and don’t have a website, set up a website using Durable this holiday season.
Durable’s AI Content Style Engine writes your copy, generates images, automatically optimizes all your content for SEO, and packages it into a beautiful website.
In under 30 seconds, you’ll get a fully customizable website for your service business.
