Tips for holiday marketing

If you are a business owner with a marketing plan you may think that it will work well for you throughout the entire year. However, it is important to consider what effect the holidays may have on your marketing. Keep in mind that certain holidays will be more important to any particular business. This means that you should not base your holiday marketing plan on what any other business is doing. Your business will be affected in a unique way by the holiday traffic that you will want to market to. However, you should not overlook the opportunity to reach out to your existing and potential customers during the holidays since this can be highly beneficial to your business. Here are some tips for holiday marketing-

- Start with a plan-Just like you have an overall marketing plan you need to have a holiday marketing plan. You should also have marketing goals that you want to achieve through the holiday season no matter how short or how long it will be. You should start making your holiday marketing plan by taking a careful look at the calendar and determining what holidays may affect your business throughout the year. Keep in mind that it is crucial to start your holiday marketing plan well in advance of the holiday. You don't want to have to be putting together a holiday marketing plan at the last minute. It is also important that you consider both the needs of your customers and the overall market condition as you plan your holiday marketing. Finally, you may want to have some cash available in case you need to revise your holiday marketing on the fly.
- Consider your operating hours as part of your marketing-There are many business owners who feel that it is simply not profitable to stay open on a holiday. However, before you make that decision you should check the historical data to determine if you should consider staying open on the holidays, offering holiday hours, or closing all together. Many times businesses that buck the trend and stay open on certain holidays can reap the profits that other businesses are giving away by closing. No matter what you decide you should make sure that your operating hours part of your holiday marketing so that your customers will be aware of when you are going to be open.
- Get creative with your marketing-The holidays can be the perfect time to go big with your marketing. Let your creativity loose and come up with a slogan, logo, or even a catchphrase that will help to get your customers in. Remember, that with creative marketing you won't need to reduce prices or have a large sale. You just want your customers to make an emotional connection with the holiday and look at your business and its products and services as what they need to make their holiday complete. While you may want to discount a few things (it can be added to your marketing material), what you really want is to design marketing that will bring in customers during whatever holiday is going on.
- Let your customers know well in advance of the holiday-It won't really matter if you have designed the best holiday marketing ever if you fail to let your customers know. You want to send out applicable marketing material well in advance of the actual holiday. This way your customers can plan on coming into your business and taking advantage of the holiday shopping. If you simply assume that your customers will just show up this will negate any efforts you have made with holiday marketing.