What To Do With Your Marketing During The Holiday Season
November 23rd, 2011 by Diane Conklin under Marketing, Uncategorized. 2 Comments.
By the time you read this we will be close to Thanksgiving and looking at 2012. Hopefully, you have or are planning to take some time off for the holiday season, but not time off from marketing your business.
A common misconception during the holiday season is that nobody’s doing any business or paying attention to anything but partying and spending time with family and friends. While it’s certainly true that people are doing that, if you aren’t marketing and communicating with your clients during this, and every holiday season, you are making a big mistake.
While people are relaxing a little more than usual, and not concentrating on their businesses as much, it’s a great time for you to be doing more marketing and staying in front of your clients, if for no other reason than they have more time, are less stressed and not so busily running through their days that they miss an important message from you.
Your messages will stand out more simply because everyone else is doing less – your messages will more easily cut through the clutter because there is less of it there.
A mentor of mine advises to look and see what the masses are doing and then do the opposite. The holiday season is a time when this is particularly true, because so many businesses aren’t doing anything during this time. It makes it a lot easier for you to get attention and make sales.
The other huge advantage you have by marketing and continuing to reach out to your clients during the holiday season is that it’s a great set up time for the New Year. While all your competitors are eating and drinking and playing, you’re already set-up for a great January because of the marketing and work you put in November and December. Since you never stopped your marketing efforts, you don’t have to take the time to gear back up after the holidays and re-build your momentum – because you never lost yours to begin with.
To a large degree, we get what we expect in business, and in life, so if you expect your business to drop off during the holiday season, it probably will. If, however, you expect to keep doing business as usual, then you will probably get that result. While others are wondering what to do for the New Year and how to have a better year next year than this year, you’re still marketing, planning, developing new programs and services, and generally working IN your business, watching your year-end numbers grow and your business flourish.
At the very least, during the holiday season, if you do have some slower times than you want, take the time to put together your marketing plan for the next quarter or the next year, review your operations and systems to see what needs to be changed and updated, spend some time meeting with your key staff members for some strategic planning, and get prepared so that when January rolls around, you’re already ahead of everyone else.
Remember to look outside your industry for marketing and business examples rather than inside your industry all the time. You’ll get better ideas, be more creative, and because you can S & D (Swipe & Deploy) what you learn there, it will take you less time and effort to implement what you see somewhere else than it would if you had to develop, plan, implement and execute your own original plan from scratch.
As the leader of your business, your staff will follow your lead, so if you’re marketing and planning during this holiday season and they see you’re looking forward to a boom in business next year, they’ll pitch in, they will follow your lead, and they will help you make all those goals and plans happen with you.
Keep marketing during thi
s and every holiday season . . . it really will land you ahead of the pack.
Also make sure you take some time to enjoy the season and all it brings, spend some extra time with your family and friends, take some extra time off to recoup and rejuvenate so when the New Year arrives, you’re fresh, rested and ready for a banner year!
Krizia | The Women Entrepreneurs HQ Show on November 24th, 2011
Interesting article Diane because I’m kicking of a social media promotion on Dec 1 and going straight through the holidays.
I also have affiliate willing and ready to mail during that same time.
I’m also considering kicking off my CNN + Forbes promotion during the Holidays because people will have more time and in January there will be so much competition.
Thanks for the reminder.
I listened to myself on this decision and I’m so proud of myself and happy to read I’m on the right track!