From the Editor

The holidays are upon us! It’s an excellent time to get creative with your marketing…to thank your loyal customers and referral network, and to gather new customers. If you want to use some special holiday activities but haven’t yet decided on a plan, I’ve included a guest article on just that topic to help get the creative juices flowing.

Don’t forget that I’ll be presenting a SCORE workshop in Lancaster this Thursday (November 5)! It’s on search engine optimization and improving a website’s effectiveness. View the details, and sign up here.

Feel free to forward this newsletter to a friend if you’d like to share what you’ve read. Also, follow Dream Seed on Twitter and Facebook for more tips, tools, and special offers!

All the best,

Adam J. Barkafski

Marketing IdeasFestive and effective holiday marketing ideas

In addition to being the “Season of Sweets,” the period of time between Halloween and New Year’s Day presents a wonderful opportunity for your company to thank your customers. It also is a time that you can drive new business to you. Here is a list of easy and effective marketing ideas to help you promote your business for the holidays…

Catch the marketing bug with these terrific holiday ideas…

Insightful TipHoliday marketing on your website

So how can you apply holiday marketing to your website? The possibilities are limitless! Here are just a few suggestions, and if you have any creative ideas, I invite you to share it with all of us!

One of the simplest things you can do to get in the holiday spirit is to dress up your website! Perhaps a few graphics of snowflakes, candy canes, or holly will do the trick. It shows that you keep your website fresh and up-to-date.

If you’re considering a holiday gift or special offer for your customers, why not have it accessible from your website? This is particularly useful if it is a report, piece of software, or any kind of coupon offer to print. By directing your customers (or anyone you give the gift to) to your website, that translates to more web traffic!

You could also encourage your current customers and referral network to help refer more customers to you by sending holiday greetings with a gift provided by you. You can have an ecard mechanism set up on your website, and when your customers send these ecard greetings to others, your special offer or discount is automatically included.

Of course, these are just the beginning of holiday website marketing suggestions. What are yours?