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Use Christmas to promote your business

Guest post by: Helen Dowling

Article Overview: It’s getting close to that time of year again – when everyone starts to talk about the ‘C’ word and looks forward to their two week break. Before you look forward too much to your break though, I want you to stop for a minute and just think about promoting over the Christmas period.

Use Christmas to promote your business

It's getting close to that time of year again - when everyone starts to talk about the ‘C' word and looks forward to their two week break. Before you look forward too much to your break though, I want you to stop for a minute and just think about promoting over the Christmas period. It's actually a great time to promote - after all, you were probably planning to send people a Christmas Card anyway, weren't you? We might as well kill two birds with one stone.

Let's have a look at some of the ways you could promote your business over this festive time.

1. Send out vouchers

My first suggestion is to send out vouchers with your Christmas Cards - what have you got to lose? If you can make it relevant to a product or service that people have to take advantage of before the New Year, you'll also get people acting now rather than forgetting about it when January comes.

2. Thank your current customers

Christmas is always the time of year when we tell our customers how much we appreciate them, so they'll be expecting this anyway. Why not think about doing something a bit different for them? Perhaps invite them for a few drinks or visit them in person to say thank you.

3. Have a Christmassy offer

People need a reason to act before Christmas - otherwise they'll just leave things until the New Year. Last year, we produced a CD on marketing that we told people about over December. This worked great because it was a low cost offer (they just had to pay for P&P) and it was something many people wanted to listen to over the Christmas period. What could you do?

4. The ‘Money Mountain'

Several radio stations do a ‘Money Mountain' in early December, which is about raising money to help good causes. You can donate a product or service and in return you will get free publicity on the radio for an hour or so on the day of the auction. How great is that? Get involved - you might be surprised at the result.

5. Do you have plans for a January sale?

Everyone likes to feel that they're getting a bargain when they buy something. Are you planning to have a sale for your customers? It could also be a big incentive for those who've been thinking about buying your products or services to do something about it.

6. Put in place a marketing plan for next year

While you've got a bit of breathing space between Christmas and the New Year, why not put a marketing plan for 2010 in place? A bit of thinking time is often just what's needed to decide on your goals for next year and how you're going to accomplish them.

7. Remember to be realistic

While you have all the best intentions to get more business over the Christmas period, remember that everyone is going to be starting to wind down between now and the beginning of January so if you run a service business and are expecting loads of customers, think again. Don't be too discouraged about it though - use the time wisely to give yourself a kick start for the New Year.

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Article Tags: amp, auction, c word, christmas, christmas card, christmas cards, christmas period, drinks, festive time, free publicity, great time, marketing, money mountain, new year, radio stations, raising money, suggestion, time of year, two birds with one stone, vouchers



Related Forum Posts
Being generous has its rewards! - My friend wants to go around the streets on Christmas night giving homeless people $20 bills. Maybe I'll tell him to start a fundraiser, find a few sponsors and hold an event instead? It could be for everyone who don't have a families to be with during Christmas? They can all get together on Christmas day and have some fun and get to know each other. (sort of like a little family?) It probably sounds better in theory though, lol.
Re: Moderators on vacation - Off on my Christmas holidays with my family later today! Actually, we are flying to England and have been watching BBC World News reports about Heathrow struggling to cope with the snow... Hope the trains manage to run on Christmas Eve... I probably won't appear on the forum very often until around 5th January, DV... Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year everybody! David H
Re: What are reasons to stay in touch with your customers? - To remind them of a holiday for which they may want to buy a gift from your business and give to the person (such as Mother's day or Christmas). Although I've never done it, I've heard that off holidays (such as Memorial Day) for which we don't think of getting a card on, are the best ones to send them on so they don't get lost in all the other Christmas or Easter cards people are sending at the typical times. I don't know if that's what you're looking for or not. That's all I can think of right now.
Merry Christmas everyone! - I'm just waiting for my son to wake up to start our Christmas traditions and I wanted to drop a quick note here to thank everyone for your support of the forums. We've have an exciting year and hopefully we can reach and help even more entrepreneurs in 2011! I hope you enjoy your families and have a fantastic holiday break... and then get ready to kick some butt with your business in 2011! Merry Christmas everyone!
Re: Want a better forum? Invite your friends! - Hi GT, Good point. In many cases the people we do business with would also benefit from the forum, especially if they also have websites to promote. I'm just now helping a designer to set up a website and this site would be an ideal place for him to learn how to promote his site, AND to promote it - via a link in his sig file of course! I'll mention it to him. Cheers! DH


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