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How do you grow your online business? Grow your email list? Build a social media following? Start a webinar, online course, or podcast? For many people, creating a profitable online business is the dream. Discover why thousands of online business owners have turned to Jennie Lyon to help them grow their online business using digital marketing and virtual assistant services. Jennie shares her best digital marketing tips, practices, and strategies to get you optimal results!
Welcome to digital marketing made simple. If you're a small business owner or entrepreneur seeking advice on creating a profitable online business, look no further than your host, Jennie Lyon, founder of Jenny Lyon Digital Marketing and Virtual Assistant Services, award winning writer, and 20 year digital marketing expert. For many people, creating a profitable online business is the dream, yet they struggle and they don't have to. Each week, we'll share some of our best digital marketing tips, practices, and strategies to get you optimal results. We'll also chat with experts and share our favorite small business success stories.
Jennie:Together, we're going to strengthen every area of your online business from content creation, social media, and email marketing to online courses, webinars, product launches, and more. I hope you find this podcast both empowering and inspirational. Now, let's get started moving your business to the next level.
Jennie Lyon:It's holiday promo time, and I get asked a lot of questions about holiday promos. But I would say the biggest one that I've been hearing for the past several weeks is how can I stand out from my competition during the holidays? And it's a question that I get asked all year long. You know, competitiveness when it comes to marketing is a big challenge for a lot of people. But the answer this time of year is a little bit different.
Jennie Lyon:Holiday promos have a completely different energy. You need a completely different strategy. So today, I wanted to share with you how you can make your online business stand out from your competition during the holiday season and into the next year as well. Hello, and welcome to another episode of digital marketing made simple. I'm your host, Jenny Lyon.
Jennie Lyon:And today, I'm excited to talk about how you can stand out from your competition during the holiday season. So the first thing is, if you haven't heard the term before, the grunt test. So if there's ever been a time to review your website, your social media, your email marketing, your content, to ensure that your messaging is really on point and it's clear and it's effective, now is the time. So you see, you can really have the absolute best business in the world and have the most incredible offers on the market. But if your messaging doesn't communicate that clearly to your ideal client, then you're going to lose out on sales to the businesses who are clear on their messaging.
Jennie Lyon:So you wanna make sure that your website, your social media, your email, all of your content really passes the grunt test. So in other words, what does that mean? Well, it means, is your messaging so clear that a caveman could understand it? Right? So that's from StoryBrand.
Jennie Lyon:So if you guys are familiar with that. So, basically, I tell clients, you know, have someone in your world, hop over to your website, and ask them when they land on your home page or your landing page, whatever you're using, in the first five seconds without ever knowing who your business is. Can they understand who you are, what you offer, how you can make your ideal client's life better, why they should care about it, and how they can buy within 5 seconds? Sounds simple. Right?
Jennie Lyon:But you'd be amazed at how often clients come to me who are completely unaware that their messaging wasn't communicating their business. So if possible, ask for feedback from strangers, someone who doesn't know exactly what you do so that they can really give you that really clear feedback. You can find out really quickly whether your website, your landing page, your content passes the grant test or not. So that's something that I do with all clients if I'm gonna be auditing something, especially new clients coming in. Oh, first thing I'll do is go to their website, go to their landing page, and do the grant test.
Jennie Lyon:You know, can I see immediately who they are, what they do, you know, how they can help? Is there a clear call to action? And most times, there is not, or it's missing some piece of it. So definitely check that out. And it is really important during the holiday season because, hopefully, you're gonna see this, you know, influx of customers who are coming in, especially from a cold audience.
Jennie Lyon:So if you haven't had that opportunity to really look and see what that first impression is going to look like, you definitely wanna do that so that you can really hit that out of the park. Next step is to leverage personalization, because who doesn't love to feel like they're being taken care of? You know, the last thing that we want is our ideal client to feel like they're just a number. And one of the most effective ways that you can really grab that attention is to deliver personalized experiences. So personalization alone can boost engagement.
Jennie Lyon:It can increase your conversion rates, and it can really set you apart from your competitors because you're not offering a one size fits all in your promos. So one really great way to do this is by sending very targeted emails to segmented audiences of your email list. So you wanna think about how can you separate out your list? How can you segment it? What makes sense?
Jennie Lyon:Is it that you're going to separate them by preferences, by past purchases, by their engagement levels? What can you do to tailor those holiday offers? Personalized subject lines and even personalized messaging can improve your open rates and your click through rates and, of course, your conversions as well. Next up is to follow the numbers. We love the numbers.
Jennie Lyon:Right? So offering a really good promotion really comes down to understanding your ideal customer, and what better way to do that than to utilize their buying behaviors to lead the way. So, for example, say that you are a product based business, and you realize that you have a group of 2 or 3 items that are commonly purchased together. So you can really utilize that information to create a holiday bundle for those 3 products because you already know that people in your target audience are going to enjoy all 3 of them. So why not bundle them together and offer them some sort of an incentive, like a discount or maybe a bonus, a bonus item?
Jennie Lyon:We love a bonus item to drive the sale. And then, additionally, you can utilize dynamic content blocks or ads to reintroduce a product or a service to someone who has searched for that item or something similar. This works all the time. So I'll tell you guys a very funny story that happened this week. So there's a particular shoe brand that I love, and I'm on their email list, and I get their emails every day.
Jennie Lyon:And I recently ordered a pair of boots from them. And when they came, my husband, Jason, was like, those boots are very cute. I think I need some boots. And so I put that on my list, like, okay. I'm gonna get him some boots for the holiday.
Jennie Lyon:So I asked him, you know, what kind of boots do you like? He showed me, and I was like, okay. I'm gonna, you know, put that in my little bank here. And, you know, when I start my holiday shopping, I'm gonna order those boots for him. So lo and behold, yesterday, I got a promo, a holiday promo email from this brand, and they were doing a flash sale every day this week.
Jennie Lyon:And the email that came in yesterday had the boots, the boots that he wanted. I was like, I'm buying those boots. That's fantastic. I'm gonna buy those boots. I put the boots in the cart, and it wasn't free shipping until a certain dollar amount.
Jennie Lyon:So I was like, okay. Well, I guess I'm getting another pair of boots for myself. So I put a pair of boots in for him and a pair of boots in for myself, submitted my order. I was very happy. And then I thought to myself, oh, no.
Jennie Lyon:Did I order the right size for him? So I thought, oh my gosh. I better go check. So I went downstairs, and I tried to sneak in to the bedroom to check the size of his shoes, and they were different sizes. So it was of no help.
Jennie Lyon:He was like, what are you doing? And I was like, oh, I was just wondering what size shoe you wear. Then, after I got off work, I came downstairs, and, he made me a cup of tea, and we were sitting and talking. And he goes, did you buy shoes today? And I said, why?
Jennie Lyon:And he said, I bought shoes today. And I was like, And he was like, I was wondering if you bought shoes because you were, you know, looking into my shoes. What's going on there? And I was like, holiday surprise? What are you doing?
Jennie Lyon:And he was like, oh, no. Did you order shoes from that brand? I said, yes. And he goes, so did I. And I was like, no.
Jennie Lyon:And I went and he was like, did did you buy them for me? And I was like, yes. I bought them for you. And I asked him, did you buy them for me? And he said, yes.
Jennie Lyon:And he said, but I had to put a second pair in to ensure that I would get free shipping. And I was like, no way. I was like, pull up your order. He pulled up his order. I pulled up mine.
Jennie Lyon:He came and sat by me on the sofa. We ordered each other the exact same thing. So we now have 2 orders coming to our house with the exact same 2 pairs of boots for each of us. I mean, this is you guys, I can't make this stuff up. This is what happens when you've been married to someone for almost 30 years.
Jennie Lyon:This is what happens. But my point is is those emails that we get are so targeted. You know? They knew that I had been looking at those boots. They knew that he had been looking at those boots.
Jennie Lyon:And this type of thing happens all of the time. So you really wanna think about, you know, when people search for your item or they come to your website, you know, do you have something in place to ensure that you capture them? You know, if it's not today at a later time, that's where really having some dynamic content will really come in, and retargeting will work really well. Okay. Went off on a tangent there.
Jennie Lyon:All right. So next up is to amp up your social proof. So during the holiday season, customers are really focused on making safe purchases. You know? They are really seeking reassurance.
Jennie Lyon:You know? They wanna make sure that they are purchasing the best quality products, and they wanna make sure that they're purchasing from businesses that they can trust. So you really wanna make sure that your products and services have ample customer testimonials, product reviews, even influencer recommendations will go a long way in building that trust with that new customer. And the more recent the positive reviews and the testimonials, the better. So I always tell clients, you know, you always wanna be getting product reviews, testimonials, case studies.
Jennie Lyon:You wanna make sure those are up to date. And another great way to do that is to incorporate user generated content. So this is really a growing marketing strategy that encourages customers to share photos or videos of your product or your service on social media, which then humanizes your brand, and it creates this sense of community. So you see that a lot on, like, TikTok. You'll see a 1000000 influencers on there that are talking about some product or service that they love in hopes that someone will buy it.
Jennie Lyon:Next step is to optimize for mobile shoppers. This seems like it should just be such a of course of course, everything should be mobile optimized. Right? And if you have been online shopping and have you ever been frustrated when a website just doesn't work, you know, and then you immediately click away and then you never go back? Yeah.
Jennie Lyon:Absolutely. Me too. So you don't want your customers doing that when they land on your website this holiday season. So, really, make sure that you're checking to see what the mobile version of your website or your landing page looks like. You wanna make sure that you have a seamless mobile experience.
Jennie Lyon:This will absolutely help with conversions, but it also helps you to rank better in search results through mobile, and it really increases your online visibility. So think about things like reducing the page loading speed as much as possible by, optimizing your images, reducing any unnecessary code. You know? You wanna make sure that those pages load as quick as possible. So we did, this for a client just recently that we're running ads to their membership this time of the year, and their membership landing page was so slow.
Jennie Lyon:11 seconds. We were like, this is never gonna work. We have to fix the landing page before we can run ads to it. So we did all of this work. We, you know, we optimized everything that we possibly could.
Jennie Lyon:We reduced and removed all of the unnecessary code. We're able to get it down to 3 seconds. So, you know, now we're being successful. So, you know, you really wanna make sure that it's super easy for someone to check out. So, ideally, if someone's coming to your landing page or onto your website, they should be able to complete their purchase in no more, I say, 3 clicks, but 3 to 5 clicks, tops.
Jennie Lyon:You know, it needs to be fast. We don't want them click, click, click, click, click, click, click. You know, if you can make it very seamless that they land on your landing page, you know, they learn more, they click a button, it goes to the shopping cart, they enter their info, they hit submit, they're done, that would be great. The way that you can really you know, the more that you can reduce the number of steps in that checkout process is really going to minimize the friction of them not placing the order. And then last but not least, is to upgrade your digital marketing strategy.
Jennie Lyon:So if you do want your business to stand out from your competition during the holiday season, then it really is essential to approach your marketing strategically. You really wanna emphasize that customer experience at every single touch point. And if I'm honest, you know, I know that all of these techniques that I've talked about today can sometimes seem a lot easier, you know, easier said than done. But, you know, maybe you're not a digital marketing, you know, strategist. You know?
Jennie Lyon:Maybe you're not a website designer or developer or an ad specialist or an expert copywriter. So what can you do? Well, you can give us a call. You know? We have a team of all the experts that you could possibly need at your disposal, and we're really going to give your business the productivity of a 25 plus person team without having to go through all of the work to hire and manage the team.
Jennie Lyon:So we are accepting new clients, going into the holiday season and the New Year, which means all you have to do is schedule a free consultation at jennylion.comforward/chatwithjennie, and we can talk about your goals and where you hope, you know, you're going to be in the next year and really create a strategy for you that's going to move you towards your business goals. Alright. Well, that's what I have for you this week. Happy holiday promos. And if you do need any help, please reach out.
Jennie Lyon:If not, I'll see you next time on another episode of digital marketing made simple. See you soon.
Jennie:Thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed this episode, please make sure to click the subscribe button wherever you're listening, so you never miss an episode. And while you're there, please leave a review. If you wanna connect with Jenny, you can find her at jennielion.com or on social media. We'll see you next week for another episode of digital marketing made simple.