Is marketing during the holidays worth it? Let’s dig in…

I can understand the idea that advertising is a waste for a small business during the holiday season because everyone is in “holiday mode,” and nobody will take any action.

It makes sense for big corporations for branding reasons, but not for small businesses that need their marketing to actually generate sales, right?

I can confidently say, after 25 years of marketing small businesses, that this idea is absolutely the furthest thing from the truth – the holiday season is ripe with business opportunities, no matter what kind of industry you hail from.

There are some important things to remember:

• Results-oriented marketing is a continuous process, and halting it during the holiday season results in losing the year’s momentum
• Holiday spending is forecasted to be at an all-time high this year, and every industry can capitalize
• Everyone is less busy with work and at home, which is an opportune time to get your business in front of them

The best holiday mailing campaigns play on external elements. Read on to see how you can build a holiday direct mail campaign that will generate results.

Marketing is a snowball effect — keep it rolling or start it all over again from scratch

You know what the snowball effect is, right?

It’s a metaphor for something that starts small and builds on itself to end really big. In this case, the snowball size is your marketing results, and the hill’s incline is the consistency of your marketing.

The steeper it is, the bigger your snowball will be!

“Never stop marketing” is one of our company mantras for a reason. We always preach that marketing consistency is the best route to generating real results, well, because it is.

If you haven’t read one of my articles or blogs before, here are the cliff notes why:

• The more you get your company in front of a potential prospect, the more they become familiar with your business. The more familiar they are with your business, the more they’re likely to engage and convert.
• Consistent marketing means you’re consistent, and being consistent means you’re a reputable business. Maybe they don’t convert after the first, second, third, fourth, or even FIFTH month after seeing your ads. But these continued efforts will build on each other to show your prospects that when your product or service is needed, you’ll be the one they come to.

This concept doesn’t make an exception for any holiday or event. No matter what the outside circumstances are, keep pushing out messaging.

If you stop for the holidays, you have to rebuild the marketing snowball in January and build up your campaign’s momentum again.

Take this client, for example, a military college located in Cleveland, Ohio.

During their first year, they consistently mailed postcards, month after month. This directly attributed to their massive increase in college registrations.

However, they figured with all of these new registrations, they had no need to be consistent anymore, so they started sporadically mailing – making their registrations plummet. Once they returned to mailing monthly, it built their momentum back up and thus their registrations!

This holiday season will have a 33% spending surge – take advantage

Holiday spending keeps growing year after year, and despite all the craziness and the turbulent economy, this one is no exception.

In fact, Adobe has predicted explosive growth for holiday shopping.

The  New Year brings new opportunities for everyone, both personally and for businesses. This is why January is so big for PostcardMania in particular; everyone is looking to get a head start for the year. If you don’t stop (or start if you aren’t) your marketing now, you’ll have a leg up on everyone else trying to build that Q1 momentum.

Besides, everyone is at home with less work to do. They’re spending a lot of time lying around and being lethargic after eating all of the traditional holiday carbs and sweets, with not much to do except consume media content.

If your website isn’t getting much traffic at all (or *GASP* you don’t have one), check out our Website Critique or Website Design services.

And ensure your website is ready for the inevitable holiday traffic and attain up to 95% more prospect contact information with our Catch & Close Booster Package.

There’s also less promotional mail volume during this time, and more people checking their mailboxes for holiday cards from friends and family, which means there’s more opportunity to be seen in mailboxes. There is an “Exclusivity,” per se, the week of Christmas in particular.

From experience, I can tell you that PostcardMania mails the same amount to be delivered on Christmas week every year, and our consultants are just as busy (or busier) that week due to this.

We have done it year after year for over 2 decades because it brings results!

Make Sure You Get a Piece of that New Year’s Resolution Spending

New Year’s resolutions are a fantastic opportunity for any business. An estimated 164 million adult Americans (64.6% of the population) reported being determined to learn something new, make a lifestyle change or set a personal goal to better themselves last year.

Think of relations of your service or product to various New Year’s resolutions, and voilà! You have the focus of your holiday marketing campaign!

Some of our most successful holiday campaigns are:

• Dentists or surgeons– cosmetic work, “Get that look you’ve always wanted” campaign
• Gyms or fitness centers– fitness resolutions (you can also lock into a contract so when people fall off of their resolution, they have to keep coming back to the gym)
• Home or pool remodeling, landscaping– “Do that project you’ve been putting off” campaign
• Financial advisors, tax agencies, banks– financial-based resolutions
• Colleges, technical schools, singing/instrumental lessons, martial arts/dance studio, etc. – “Learn that skill you’ve always wanted this year” campaign

If you’re in a B2B industry (business-to-business, aka your clients are other businesses), this is a great time to push people to put in expenses before the end-of-year for tax reasons.

And for specific B2C (business-to-consumer) industries that rely on health insurance coverage, a lot of these benefits are use-or-lose by end-of-year, so this is something they should push to get people in before they lose those benefits. People like dentists, physicians, optometrists, and other specialty doctors.

Many businesses capitalize directly on holiday spending, such as:

• Retailers or home goods
• Christmas Tree farms
• Jewelry stores
• Flower shops, candy stores, etc.

How you present this information isn’t important. What’s important is that you’re getting out there. You could run an end-of-year sales event, holiday specials campaign, or anything you think of; it just matters that you’re getting in front of consumers.

And here’s the kicker with direct mail. Even if they don’t decide to act during the holidays, a mailing piece can be held until they choose to act.

One of our postcard magnets can ensure that the postcards “hang around” for longer than other mail!

So that special discount? Have a limited-time offer expire at the end of January. Perhaps an “Enjoy this time with your family” marketing-oriented copy or a “Beginning of the year’s sales event.”

If you want to be absolutely sure you’re catching your prospects attention during the holiday season, I have an easy solution:

Place your advertising everywhere consumers look with our Everywhere Small Business Platinum package. It places advertising for your business literally every place your prospects spend time – hence the name.

Any time a prospect:

• opens their mail (postcards),
• scrolls through social media (Facebook and Instagram ads),
• finds a good Christmas cookie recipe (Google ads),
• looks up the music video to their favorite holiday song (YouTube ads),
• or checks their email for holiday coupons (Gmail ads)…

YOU WILL BE THERE!

If you need any help with your holiday or 2024 marketing, don’t hesitate to reach out! Call one of my marketing consultants at 800-628-1804. Remember, their marketing advice is always FREE!

You can also email me directly at joy.gendusa@postcardmania.com.

Best,

Joy

P.S. It’s never too late to start a marketing campaign, and we’ll have associates here all through the holidays. Give us a call at 800-628-1804 when you decide to create some change!