Maximizing Q4 Profits as an Online Business Owner
Happy October, and more importantly, Happy Q4 to you online business owners!
If you’re wondering why I’m celebrating, online businesses tend to see their best profits in the last three months of the year. Part of this is because of all the wonderful seasonal sales and gift-giving holidays, but I’d argue what’s more important is your strategy for increasing your sales and profits before the year’s end.
So today, on the first day of Q4, let’s talk about how to make these next three months the best your business has seen! Let’s get into it.
Content Overview
– Get Ahead of the Game
–Specific Targeting and Audience Segmentation
–Optimize Your Offers
–Don’t Just Discount
–Predict & Personalize
–Automate What You Can
–Test the Tech
–Post-Sale Strategy
–Your Next Action Steps
Get Ahead of the Game and Plan Your Q4 Now
Every year, without fail, I have online business owners scheduling consultation calls with me, asking for help with their Black Friday sales just a week before Thanksgiving. And while I’m not one to turn away from a challenge, I just already know how much profit has been missed for that business because they didn’t plan, which results in more stress for everyone involved.
Here is a list of important dates that you can use to market your business (but be sure to pick what is applicable and appropriate for your business and target audience.)
October 2024:
- October 10: World Mental Health Day
- October 15: End of Hispanic Heritage Month
- October 16: World Food Day
- October 31: Halloween & Diwali
November 2024:
- November 4: Election Day
- November 11: Veteran’s Day
- November 28: Thanksgiving
- November 29: Black Friday
- November 30: Small Business Saturday
December 2024:
- December 2: Cyber Monday
- December 7-15: Hanukkah
- December 24: Christmas Eve
- December 25: Christmas Day
- December 31: New Year’s Eve
With any of these dates, there is no one-size-fits-all strategy to approach marketing for these days. When doing this work for clients, my agency always considers the business’s goals, target audience, and how any of these days fit in strategically with promoting their product, and those answers vary for each business.
It is NOT too early to start planning your Black Friday and Christmas promotions. So, if you haven’t already, it’s time to start!
FREE RESOURCE: Goal Check-In Workbook
Get Hyper-Specific with Your Targeting: Audience Segmentation Is Key
Most businesses will pour their ad dollars into the largest, broadest audience possible in Q4, hoping to attract more customers. However, one of the best-kept secrets to maximizing your Q4 profits is narrowing down and segmenting your audience with nearly surgical precision.
Ads around the holidays, especially Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and the like, will be SO competitive because businesses of all sizes, from corporate giants like Walmart to the small local mom-and-pop shop in your town.
Rather than casting a wide net, identify the subgroups within your customer base likely to spend more during this time. This could be your loyal customers, previous buyers who abandoned their carts, or those who’ve shown interest but never converted. Tailor your offers, creatives, and messaging for each segment to speak directly to their motivations.
Pro Tip: Use dynamic content in your emails or ads to automatically change messaging based on a customer’s past behaviors or preferences. Platforms like Facebook Ads and Google Ads offer powerful segmentation tools—leverage them to create personalized experiences.
FREE RESOURCE: Monthly Hashtag Calendar
Optimize Your Offers for Intent
Too often, online businesses create holiday discounts and promotions without considering the intent of their buyers. Understanding where your potential customers are in their buyer journey can make or break your Q4 campaigns.
At this point in the year, your audience may fall into different categories:
- Early Shoppers (looking for deals)
- Impulse Buyers (last-minute shoppers)
- Gift Givers (not your usual customers, buying for others)
Tailor your offers to match these different intents:
- Early shoppers want bundles or “buy now, save later” offers.
- Impulse buyers respond well to urgency tactics like countdown timers and stock scarcity.
- Gift givers are swayed by convenience. Offer gift guides, gift wrapping, and free shipping to streamline their decision-making process.
By offering a suite of promotions based on these buying personas, you can appeal to a more nuanced set of motivations and avoid losing money.
Don’t Just Discount—Bundle for More Profit
When business owners hear “marketing promotion,” they automatically think, “I have to discount my offers to a ridiculously low price to get people to buy.”
But discounting can eat into your profit margins, especially if you compete against big retailers who can afford to slash prices. Instead of relying solely on discounts, create bundles or exclusive offers that increase your average order value (AOV).
Bundles also allow you to move slow-moving inventory while still delivering more value to the customer. For example, bundling a best-seller with a less popular item as a “holiday exclusive” can entice customers without lowering the prices of high-demand products.
Pro Tip: Use your website and email marketing to make these bundles visible early, and run retargeting campaigns for those who clicked but didn’t purchase. That way, you’re priming your audience for those purchases well before Black Friday hits.
Leverage Data to Predict & Personalize
Your customer data is a goldmine, especially in Q4. Use it to predict which products will sell, when customers will buy, and at what price point they’re willing to convert.
For instance, predictive analytics on past Q4 sales can help you forecast demand and make better inventory decisions. You can also use your customer management software to track individual user behavior, allowing for more personalized offers and recommendations that feel bespoke to each customer.
Advanced Strategy: Run A/B tests throughout October to see what types of offers, messaging, or creatives resonate best with different audience segments. By the time November hits, you’ll have a data-backed strategy ready to deploy.
Prepare for Scale with Automated Systems
The last thing you want in Q4 is to get bogged down by manual processes. As sales ramp up, so should your ability to handle orders, customer inquiries, and marketing at scale. Automation is key.
Automate customer support with chatbots and pre-filled FAQ pages to handle common questions about shipping, returns, or product information. Set up automated email sequences to engage customers before and after purchasing without lifting a finger in real time.
Invest in automating your ad campaigns, too. Use rules-based systems in Facebook Ads or Google Ads to increase or decrease ad spend based on key performance indicators (KPIs) like cost-per-click (CPC) or return on ad spend (ROAS). Setting these thresholds in advance ensures you won’t overspend during high-traffic periods while capturing potential profits when campaigns perform well.
FREE RESOURCE: Facebook Ad Writing Workbook
Test Your Site’s Load Capacity
While it might sound technical, nothing kills Q4 profits faster than a slow or crashing website during a sales event like Black Friday. Increased traffic means your site must be prepared to simultaneously handle hundreds, if not thousands, of visitors.
Run load tests on your website before the holiday rush to ensure it can handle the expected traffic. Make sure your checkout process is streamlined to minimize abandoned carts. If possible, have a backup plan—additional server capacity or a streamlined version of your website—to avoid outages during peak shopping hours.
Invest in a Post-Sale Strategy
The post-sale period is one of the most overlooked opportunities for maximizing Q4 profits. After the holidays, most businesses see a slowdown in sales, but that doesn’t mean your marketing should go quiet.
Create post-holiday campaigns to:
- Upsell customers on related products or services.
- Offer early access to New Year promotions for VIPs.
- Gather feedback and reviews while the purchase is fresh in their minds.
By nurturing customers after their initial Q4 purchase, you create opportunities for repeat business, especially going into the New Year.
Your Next Action Steps
Those are my top tips to maximize your Q4 profits as an online business owner. Many of those might have seemed like jargon words you don’t understand, but that’s okay! Let me break down your next steps to finishing out 2024 strong.
Step #1: Plan for Success
If you haven’t already, outline and plan your content and promotions for October, November, and December. The more detailed, the better. Go ahead and figure out what the customer journey looks like for those promotions, what calls to action you want to use, and even the emails you want to send and posts you want to make. Plan out your blogs or podcasts, and do all of this with the mindset of your target promotions for that month.
You can utilize the steps outlined in this blog as an additional to-do list!
Step #2: Execute With Excellence
Being prepared is the key to running your Q4 promotions without losing your sanity. When you have detailed plans, all you have to do is schedule or hit publish when the time comes, making life SO much easier.
But that’s easier said than done. Right?
You’re probably laughing to yourself like “Jennie, I’m just trying to get through today, how do you think I’m going to be able to get ahead in the next three months?!”
Well, that’s where we can come in.
I have a few openings for clients in Q4, and I tell you, these spots go fast. Jennie Lyon Digital Marketing Inc. can assist you in everything I’ve mentioned today, including:
- Funnel Mapping
- Promotion planning
- Social Media Ads Management
- Tech Assistance
- Email Marketing
- And anything else you can imagine.
So why try to DIY it all when you could collaborate with us to save yourself time, energy, and sanity in the coming months?
If you’re interested in how we can help, schedule your free consultation call today to see where we can fill in the gaps and help your business grow in the next few months.
Links for This Episode:
–Marketing Office Hours
–Discover Your Digital Marketing Success Path
–How to Use Our Digital Marketing Team
–Schedule a free call with Jennie today
Get in touch with Jennie:
-Free Consultation: https://jennielyon.com/chatwithjennie
-Website: jennielyon.com
-Social Media: @jennielyonmarketing
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