18 Oct 5 Ways To Secure More Leads During The Holiday Season

The holidays can be challenging for building business relationships, especially when you’re not in the retail business. Since most B2B businesses will wind down for the holiday season, it’s essential to have a marketing strategy specifically designed for this period. 

Coming up with an effective way of reaching critical players in the B2B landscape is also complex as offices wind down. Most decision-makers and executives take time off at the end of the year, leaving your business wondering what it can do to keep relationships alive and strengthen client retention. 

However, this information shouldn’t make you dread the holiday season. There are proven techniques that can be incorporated into your business’s outreach campaigns to ensure your sales funnel never runs dry. These are the top five ways we’ve discovered to help enterprises to secure tons of leads during the holiday season. 

1. Elevate your social game

People spend more time on social media during the holiday season. Since more people are either on their phones or computers more often, staying active on social media during the holiday ensures you’re still on your prospects’ minds. Optimize posts for different devices and create a schedule to ensure you post frequently leading up to and during the holiday.

It helps to establish goals for each post. Staying active on social media also presents an excellent opportunity to gather feedback. Listen in on prospects’ conversations to learn what your target audience is interested in. 

Pay attention to what content they engage with, the comments they share, or conduct polls and collect feedback. Doing this can help you collect data that’ll be useful for engagement strategies in the new year. This data can inform the kind of content you put out, and will also ensure you’re not so heavy on pitching sales but more focused on sharing valuable information.  

2. Focus on new-year value addition and plans

Many decision-makers spend the holidays preparing for the new year, especially the first quarter. They may be reevaluating some decisions, co-considering new approaches to meeting their goals, or working with new vendors. Since they have more free time, C-suite executives will likely be reading more emails. It’s an excellent time to send longer, more detailed emails highlighting the value additions your business will offer in the new year, and how it can help them achieve their business goals. 

3. Up your customer loyalty, rewards, and referral programs 

Offering increased rewards during the holidays not only incentivizes prospects to make a purchase, but it also strengthens client retention. A report from Salesforce shows that 78 percent of consumers are likely to keep purchasing from businesses with loyalty programs. Also, rewards are a major way to attract new prospects to your brand. 

They’d be interested in benefiting from increased rewards during the holidays and any referral programs you may be offering. Your prospects are definitely spending more than usual during the holidays, and offering them rewards, such as exclusive offers, early shipping, or first access to holiday deals inspires them to keep doing business with you. 

 4. Offer special pricing, discounts, add-ons, and last-minute deals

Another way to build business relationships and get more leads is to offer holiday-themed special prices and discounts. It’s also a great way to play into the holiday spirit and make your prospects happy to do business with you. Giving them price cuts, such as a percentage off your subscription, discounts or add-ons, and time-based deals on your product or service are just a few ways B2B businesses can take advantage of the seasonal cheer to connect with leads. 

Free gifts can be a great conversion booster as it makes people feel special and shows your brand cares about their well-being more than turning a profit. You may also offer holiday combos and product bundles to make them purchase more. Customers love this as it gives them more value than when standalone products are purchased. This is an excellent way to increase the number of items you sell. Time-based deals create a sense of urgency, so leads are excited to make a purchase and not miss out on these deals.

5. Focus on retargeting and re-engaging with cold leads

Research shows businesses are likely to sell more to existing customers than new prospects. Retargeting and re-engaging with cold leads during the holidays can rekindle their current interest in your brand, making them more interested in converting. This technique goes well with offering discounts as a cold lead targeted with offers of discounts and rewards would have a high chance of making another purchase without much prompting. 

Giving them a nudge with suggestions or a reminder of where they last interacted with your brand reminds them of the value you offer and how they can benefit from it. You can also send them appreciative messages thanking them for their previous business or interest in your business and reminding them of new offers you may have. Nurturing existing leads across your sequence touchpoints to find these cold leads who may have stopped interacting with your brands for whatever reason.

Important takeaways 

Employing these techniques may not work for all businesses. Understand what your prospects respond to and employ the best strategy for those channels. Keep your messaging timely and relevant, and don’t wait too long before you start rolling out the holiday-themed marketing. Most businesses start amping up their holiday outreach campaigns in November.

Personalizing messages and tailoring them to your prospect’s challenges, needs, and industries are also important. This helps them feel like they aren’t being mass-targeted and they’re less likely to ignore your efforts. Automation also adds a great advantage to your campaign, making it easier to reach a wider audience promptly and without much effort. 

Linked Strategies has years of experience developing effective marketing strategies for Fortune 500 companies all year round. Contact us today to learn more about securing more leads as we celebrate the holidays.