About This Column
This monthly column on Online Business Canada is intended to inspire action. You know digital transformation is critical to growing your business, but there are so many moving parts and so much to learn! It’s easier to navigate if someone points you in the right direction so you can take the first steps. You don’t have to master anything right now, you only need to move forward and learn as you go.
If one growth tip doesn’t work for your business, pick another one and try that. If you do that over the course of a year, you may be surprised at how much your business has grown and how clear your path is to further growth. A custom strategy will naturally emerge from your efforts, all from trying something new every month.
Content for this column will vary from month to month. We’ll cover what’s trending, motivation, tools, diversification, funding, actionable Canadian data, expert quotes, and how & where to grow your business online over the following month. New posts will be announced in our newsletter, so sign up to ensure you don’t miss a single month of growth.
Grow Your Canadian Small Business Online in October
In October, businesses and marketers are bracing for impact. The fourth quarter brings enormous opportunity and many retail businesses rely on it heavily to make their year profitable.
Your ads should be ready to roll out as the season progresses. Leave some room in your advertising budget so you can quickly leverage trends or other opportunities as they happen throughout the quarter. You can still book influencer gift guides but don’t delay, they fill up fast. Shipping sample products should be well underway, but you still have some breathing room.
The following bite-size tips reveal fast ways to grow your Canadian small business online this month.
[DISCLOSURE: We may receive compensation for links to products on this website.]
TIP 1: Grow With Gift Shoppers
Holiday gift shopping begins earlier every year. This is especially true of ecommerce, where delivery time shortens the shopping season.
Gift shoppers are elusive creatures and catching them often means casting a broader net than you normally would. For starters, the shopper journey can be entirely different from direct customers. You might want to broaden your touchpoints to include additional social media channels, for example, or change your ad targeting and ad copy to speak directly to the gift buyer.
It should come as no surprise that diversifying your influencer pool improves your chances of reaching the right buyer. That said, the number of ways to work with influencers grows every year. Most of us can’t run every type of promotion, although trying as many as possible should be a testing goal.
Influencer marketing campaigns can include many types of promotions, such as unboxing videos, social media ‘takeovers,’ or cobranded events. Over time, you’ll find some types of influencer marketing campaigns and strategies work better than others, not only for sales but also according to the campaign targets and goals. It can put you in front of audiences you’ve never tried to reach before, and help you engage those audiences. In the case of gift shoppers, it broadens and diversifies your marketing strategy and positions your brand for growth.
Learn the 5 Types of Influencer Marketing Promotions to Grab Gift Shoppers.
TIP 2: Q4 Growth Opportunities
I’m sure I don’t have to tell you how lucrative the fourth quarter can be for most niches. Whether it’s a gift or business software, you can build promotions around holidays and observances beginning in the Fall and ending as the new year is born.
We go into these opportunities further in 2025 Shopping Days in the 4th Quarter (Infographic).
TIP 3: Haunting Landing Pages
Halloween may not be the holiday that comes to mind when you think of warm, fuzzy nostalgia, but you can channel some of the best memories most adults have of their childhood.
As of July 2024, nearly 6.3 million young Canadians were in their trick-or-treating years (0 to 14 years old). 53% of Canadians planned to celebrate Halloween last year, with 83% spending the same or more than the previous year, according to an RCC/Caddle survey. Just over half will spend up to $50 on the holiday, 29.7% will allocate $51-$100. Almost a quarter of those purchases will be made online.
One way to use Halloween for business growth is to create special landing pages and digital sales funnels for the holiday. It’s easy if you use marketing automation tools that lead you through the process, step-by-step. To that end, Thrive Themes Funnels offers lots of funnel functionality for small businesses on a tight budget, and the Systeme suite of tools has a free level.
Halloween-theme lead magnets can work especially well, such as 25 Easy Halloween Decorating Ideas or 25 Ways to Bewitch Halloween Shoppers. Contests with prizes that appeal to your ideal customer are a great way to cast a wider net, while still achieving sales or high-quality leads.
Keep an eye on marketplaces like Amazon for examples of sales strategies. You can bet they’re proven or they wouldn’t be used by the giants. Steal These Amazon Halloween Design Tricks for your Site
We have more tips and data for you in Canadian Halloween Stats and Online Marketing Tricks.
TIP 4: Digital Download Growth
Digital products have been a popular source of revenue for online businesses for a couple of decades now, and for good reason. You can create virtually any digital product and then profit from it for as long as it is current and fulfills a market demand. Digital products (from PDFs to courses, videos and games) can also be used in marketing as lead magnets or in sales funnels.
“Selling ebooks and other PDFs online is super popular. This probably reflects the low barrier to entry of creating this kind of product,” reports SendOwl. “However, our customers also successfully sell software, audio, pictures and video (or a combination of these). We have customers that sell tiny house plans, doll clothing patterns, a Jamaican Patois language audio course and dictionary, and best-selling indie video games.”
However, all digital assets should directly support and compliment your business.
“But you also need to think about how this download plays into your business as a whole, say the experts at Podia. “Because making a few sales is awesome. But building a full system where you use your digital download to attract ideal audience members, run sales funnels to let them know about other offers and boost sales, and send great newsletters to continually share value and build trust? Now you’re unstoppable.”
When you’re ready to move foreword:
Get Started with Online Learning Products – Choosing a Topic
How to Create Your Own Online Learning Products
Top 6 Ecommerce Platforms for Digital Product Downloads
TIP 5: October Content
Grow your traffic, grow your business! Timely content can differentiate your business while generating traffic that converts.
Note: We post a list of holidays & observances (monthly, weekly and daily) for marketers in the Online Business Canada Facebook group. There’s a lot of them! You’re bound to find some that are a perfect fit for you business.
Here are just a few October holidays & observances:
Bake & Decorate Month
Book Month
Car Care Month
Child Health Month
Computer Learning Month
Cyber Security Awareness Month
Dental Hygiene Month
Dollhouse & Miniatures Month
Financial Planning Month
Kitchen & Bath Month
Pet Wellness Month
Self-Promotion Month
October content themes and slants can include Autumn, leaves, pumpkins, gratitude, and the colours orange and black. October holidays in Canada include Thanksgiving Day on October 13th and Halloween on October 31st.
TIP 6: Business Books Worth Reading
Here we share quick quotes from business books we’re reading to help your knowledge grow with your business, and your business grow with your knowledge.
“Content is often under-estimated in terms of its impact on driving growth. In my experience, leveraging experimentation to ensure you have the right content at the right time in the journey contextualized for a particular user can be key. For example, when I was leading growth at Mailchimp, we found that surfacing specific knowledge base articles at key moments improved the likelihood of successfully completing the ‘set up moment’ (or core value prop) for the first time. In the case of Mailchimp, moving the aha moment metric by every 1% (basis point – e.g. – 25-26% was worth $XM in revenue.” ~ Lauren Schuman, VP of Growth, Bitly, as quoted in The Content Advantage: Succeed at Digital Business with Effective Content 3rd Ed., by Colleen Jones.
Incremental Change
Changes spread out over the year will combine into powerful results. When growth based on technology overwhelms us, we can make small changes to continue growing and develop further as we feel our way through it.
How will you grow your online business in October? Please share your ideas or questions in the comments below, or join us in the Online Business Canada Facebook group.
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Melody McKinnon is an internet entrepreneur with 25 years of experience in a wide range of online business models, backed by a formal business/marketing education and enhanced by training and mentorship. She has owned or managed both educational and ecommerce websites. Her book, 7 Recession Proof Online Businesses to Start From Home, is available from all major ebook retailers.
Melody has worked with many businesses in a multitude of capacities. She can often be found on CanadianDigitalMedia.com, CanadiansInternet.com, CanadianFamily.net, and AllNaturalPetCare.com, as well as other quality digital publications. Her content has earned reference links from highly-respected websites, magazines and university textbooks.
such a fantastic idea Mel! Ideas and inspiration all-in-one to start my professional month off right. And I like the focus on growth because it digs deeper into the opps this great business model has. Its the kind of actionable information Canada needs to BUILD BUILD BUILD!!
Great article, thank you for sharing these insights!