Fall is one of the busiest seasons for small business owners. The summer ends, people re-focus on work, and there’s a sense of urgency to get things done before the new year.
Fall is a great opportunity to take advantage of seasonal marketing. With all the holidays, events, and festivals, there are plenty of chances to attract and retain customers.
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DownloadThat’s why we’ve curated this list of fall marketing ideas. These strategies can work for any small business, plus we’ve added a couple of industry-specific ones for dentists, realtors, and healthcare workers.
18 Fall Marketing Ideas for Small Businesses
Below are 18 small business ideas for fall marketing campaigns. We’ve organized this list, starting with the best overall strategies, and then provided sections for different industries below.
Best Fall Marketing Ideas
These fall marketing ideas are great for small businesses, regardless of their industry.
1. Get involved in fall events.
Fall is packed with events, such as festivals, fairs, community gatherings, holidays, farmer’s markets, and more. Attending these events builds brand awareness and helps you promote your products and services within your community. Look for opportunities at local events to set up a booth or distribute promotional materials to attendees.
You can also sponsor an event and display your logo and branding for everyone to see. Check events calendars (like your Chamber of Commerce) to see what’s available and what these events offer for small business promotion.
2. Send out a fall newsletter.
You can create a fall email newsletter highlighting your business’s deals and events. Here’s one that JetBlue sent for its fall marketing campaign.
Be sure to use festive colors typically associated with the season, like red, yellow, and orange, to capture the excitement of fall. You should also use large text, like this example does, to highlight events, promotions, and discounts. Lastly, keep a seasonal focus in your subject line, as it will maximize open rates and help get more eyes on this campaign.
3. Create content for the holidays.
You’re probably familiar with the major fall holidays, like Halloween, Thanksgiving, and Diwali. These are some of the more prominent marketing opportunities, because many people are celebrating all or some of these dates.
But did you know that this season also offers smaller holidays like World Teacher Day, National Tradesman Day, and International Coffee Day? These might not be as high-profile as Halloween and Thanksgiving, but they’re still meaningful to those who celebrate them.
Do some research on holidays in your industry. Chances are, you’ll find one that aligns with your company somehow that you can make fun and personalized content for.
4. Offer fall-themed promotions.
About two-thirds of shoppers say promoted discounts are valuable to them. Along with your marketing content, you should add promotional offers that drive people to your business or convince them to buy another one of your products. Get creative here and offer incentives like discounts, freebies, and prizes.
Pro Tip: Try combining your promotions with the first and third fall marketing ideas on this list.
5. Celebrate fall on social media.
Another way to get into the season is to celebrate fall on social media. Fall is a great time to post photos and videos of your business, especially if you’re attending events like festivals and fairs. Not only does this give you a steady stream of content to publish, but it also helps your followers find you at these events.
Be sure to use hashtags, specifically those sponsored by the event. And don’t forget to respond to people who mention or tag your account, or who comment on your posts. It will help you nurture relationships with new or existing customers, leading to more sales for your business. Social media expert, Nicole Phillip, offers this advice when using hashtags:
If it’s a positive comment, you don’t have to say much; just a quick response like this will do:
6. Donate to charity.
Donations and volunteer opportunities increase around the holidays, so fall is a great time to get involved in your community and build a positive reputation for your brand. Be careful, though, because this shouldn’t just be about promoting your business. Your company should have a genuine connection with the cause, and your team should be passionate about it, as well. That will help showcase your brand values, attracting like-minded people to your business.
7. Create a fall-themed direct mailing campaign.
Direct mail is very effective when targeted and localized; in fact, it has a 90% open rate. That’s not too surprising, as it’s trickier to ignore something that’s physically dropped at your doorstep.
Like your newsletter, you should design these mailers to highlight deals, incentives, and promotions. Use the fall color scheme to make them festive, and make sure you have a way to track your offline marketing campaigns.
Pro Tip: You can highlight different holidays throughout the fall season and send mailers more than once.
8. Provide seasonal advice or tips.
Here’s another opportunity to get creative. Think about your industry and the pain points that customers have in the fall. Other than selling your goods and services, how else can you help them?
For example, the social media team here at Thryv created this Instagram post with posts for small business owners who work in auto services. It includes several ideas for social media posts that they for their businesses.
I shared this as an example because it shows how brands can use social media to showcase their expertise outside of specific promotions. These tips, for instance, save customers time and position our social accounts as informative resources. That can work for a number of industries; if you work in HVAC, you can use the fall season to share tips for making sure folks are ready for colder temperatures, and if you work in auto services, you can share tune-up tips for winter weather.
9. Get ready for Small Business Saturday.
Small Business Saturday is the day after Black Friday. It encourages shoppers to buy from small businesses and celebrate the contributions of small business owners. This year, Small Business Saturday is on November 30th.
The best way to prepare for Small Business Saturday is to promote the holiday itself. Most people will be aware of Black Friday but might not be as familiar with Small Business Saturday. By posting about it on social media, you’ll remind customers about your business during one of the busiest shopping seasons of the year.
10. Sponsor a team or sporting event.
As the weather cools and people emerge from vacation mode, fall becomes prime time for road races, charity walks, and fall sports for kids and adults.
Find a team to sponsor, whether youth soccer, a local 5K, or a company pickleball team. Facilities like courts and sporting fields have spaces where you can promote your business as a sponsor. These ads work as a steady reminder to players, coaches, and fans about your business.
11. Try a new slogan or tagline.
Slogans and taglines are present in almost every marketing campaign. They help people remember your business and typically highlight your brand values and deals.
For example, New England furniture company Bernie & Phyl’s once had the slogan, “Quality, Comfort, & Price. That’s nice.” Not only was this incredibly catchy, but it summed up the business in one, concise sentence. If you go to Bernie & Phyl’s, you can expect good furniture at an affordable price.
Fall is a perfect time to revamp your slogan or tagline. Make it festive, and find a creative way to describe your business. We have a whole list of fall marketing slogans you can use, but below are a few of our favorites:
- Harvest the Best Deals of the Year!
- Turn Over a New Leaf With These Fall Deals!
- Fall in Love With These Seasonal Savings!
- It’s Time to Leaf Those Old Prices Behind
- Good Gourd! These Are Great Deals!
Fall Marketing Ideas for Dental Offices
If you’re a dentist, check out these top fall marketing ideas for dental offices.
12. Lean into the holiday candy rush.
There’s one holiday that seems to haunt dentists more than any other.
Yes, it’s Halloween — a holiday where kids and adults eat tons of candy and then wonder why they have a toothache. The holiday season encourages us to stock up on sweet treats, but Halloween, in particular, can be a conundrum for dentists. While you don’t want to rain on your customers’ parade, you still want to encourage good dental health.
One creative solution is to organize a candy buyback program. Offer prizes to kids willing to trade in leftover candy. Then, donate that candy to a charity. That will make going to the dentist more fun, while helping parents manage their kids’ candy intake as well.
I like this buy-back program because it donates the candy to military personnel overseas.
Whatever you do, make it fun – this is one time when you don’t want to be scary during spooky season.
13. Plan events for National Dental Hygiene Month.
October is National Dental Hygiene Month, so dentists have several opportunities to promote their businesses. For example, get involved in local events and hand out branded toothbrushes or other materials with your company’s logo. You should also try to collect contact information so you can send reminders to schedule teeth cleanings after the holidays. It’s a perfect time to go to the dentist, especially after all the candy and celebrations.
Pro Tip: Marketing automation can automatically send emails to customers after they fill out a form on your website.
Fall Marketing Ideas for Healthcare
These fall marketing ideas are great for healthcare workers.
14. Start a wellness challenge.
A wellness challenge is a community event encouraging people to get active or promoting healthy habits. For example, you can host a “walk-a-thon” where people work together to see how long they can walk around a track. Or, you can host an even more inclusive challenge and ask customers to comment on your social media posts with their favorite wellsess tips that are welcoming to all abilities..
Your business can host a wellness challenge by asking people to sign up on social media or through a form on your website. That will help you collect contact information and send them updates and alerts about your event. You could even hand out prizes for things like most steps, most creative wellness tip, and more, making your challenge more competitive and fun.
15. Optimize your local search presence.
Fall is also a great time to increase your visibility on search engines and local listings, specifically Google Maps. Since fall can mark one of the more stressful times of year – end of summer vacation, gearing up for the holidays, and preparing for colder weather – and also marks things like flu season, people might be looking for healthcare providers, and you want your business to be easy to find online.
To optimize your local listings, consider adopting a local listings management tool. This software helps you manage dozens of local listings simultaneously and keep them updated over time. You’ll also respond to online reviews faster because you’ll receive alerts when new comments are published on any of your business listing websites.
16. Revamp your customer experience.
Many people — myself included — might find healthcare a little intimidating. However, fall can be an opportunity to add warmth and personalization to your customer experience by changing up your office decor and inviting customers to participate in fall-themed activities.
For example, a simple gesture could be a jar of marbles on your front desk. Whoever guesses how much candy is inside receives a prize from your business.
These small efforts can add up to a great customer experience, which can help you retain customers and drive repeat sales for your business.
Fall Marketing Ideas for Realtors
For many people, fall is also moving season. So, these marketing ideas suit realtors looking to promote their services.
17. Start a customer referral program.
Realtors, like many other small business owners, rely on customer referrals. Customer referrals are endorsements for your brand from people who had a positive experience with your company. They’re more effective than traditional advertising because they’re backed by customers who don’t have a stake in your brand.
One way to generate a steady stream of referrals is with a customer referral program. These initiatives reward customers when they refer your business to others, incentivizing them to talk positively about your products and services.
A realtor can start a customer referral program by asking tenants or new homeowners to refer them after signing a lease or buying a place. Send your clients a follow-up email and see if they’ll recommend your business or leave an online review. Even if this doesn’t lead to another sale, reviews will promote your business and grow your online presence.
18. Write seasonal blog content.
We’re biased – but blogs are great for several reasons. First, they help you establish authority and improve your rankings on search results. If you write a lot about a topic, search engines like Google will notice and position your pages at the top of search results for those topics.
Second, blogs are excellent supplementary content for channels like social media and email newsletters. You can repurpose blog posts as social media posts and add links that direct people to your website, where they can buy products, book appointments, leave reviews, and more. Our social media team did something like that with this post:
The best way to create effective blog content is to think about what your customers are searching for. You can also use an SEO tool to identify the keywords and search phrases your customers use on Google. That way, you won’t just create helpful content – you’ll create content that’s easy to find.
Marketing Your Business This Fall
For small business owners, fall is about more than just Thanksgiving and Halloween. It’s a critical period to take advantage of the shopping season and generate more revenue for your business. Use this list to inspire your fall marketing campaigns and attract more customers with personable, timely, and relevant content this season.
