Entrepreneur’s Notebook—Make Good Use of the End-of-Year Holiday Season

0

By this time of year, you’ve probably already started to hear many professionals say, “We’d better hurry up and finish our marketing campaign for the year 2000, since everything stops after Thanksgiving.”

I cringe when I encounter that attitude, because it means wasting valuable marketing opportunities. You can view the six weeks between Thanksgiving and New Year’s as a total loss, or you can turn that month and a half into an extremely productive period.

If we all adopted the philosophy of writing off certain parts of the year, we could mark out a large percentage of our calendars. First, we would start with the several weeks around spring break. Then we’d slack off from mid-June until after Labor Day (“Everything stops in the summer”), gear up until Thanksgiving and go downhill from there until the close of the year.

Are there periods during the year when it’s harder to get hold of people for example, when they’re focused on buying and giving gifts? Yes, of course. Is it next to impossible to get hold of anyone between Christmas and New Year’s? Yep. Am I saying that you should not enjoy the holidays? No, of course not.

What I am saying is that by adopting a different perspective, you can plant seeds during marketing “downtimes” that will yield a rich harvest throughout the rest of the year.

Time to strategize

For starters, the last six weeks of the year are a great time to strategize and nail down your marketing plans for the coming year. If nothing else, you have three-quarters of a year’s worth of data to analyze. That data can show you how your marketing efforts have fared overall, what specifically has succeeded and what cries out for a second look. Use this information as a foundation to help you develop plans for 2001.

Break down your yearly goals into quarterly game plans. Develop a calendar that shows when you’ll put together your marketing initiatives and when they’ll kick in. (For example, if you’re planning to market to CPAs right after tax season, you may want to start putting that program together at the end of January, rather than get caught short on April 15.) Along with your timetable, develop a list showing which people in your company will be responsible for carrying out specific tasks.

As it quiets down toward the end of the year, you have an ideal opportunity to focus on aspects of your marketing that you wanted to get to but didn’t have time for. Perhaps you’ve spoken with editors about article ideas that have been rolling around in your head. Now is the time to hit the keyboard! Or this may be the time to take a fresh look at your firm’s Web site to make sure it’s up to date.

With all of its parties and other social events, the end-of-year holiday season can be a great time for building new business relationships. It’s also a chance to reinvigorate and cement old ones, especially by expressing appreciation to your existing clients and colleagues.

If you are planning to mail holiday cards, make sure your company’s database is “clean” and up to date as soon as possible. Many a firm scrambles around unnecessarily the third week in December, frantically trying to gather its employees’ mailing lists so they can be entered in an overall company database.

That personal touch

Your mailing will be most effective if your secretary doesn’t simply have the cards imprinted with your signature, without having you take a close look at the list to see which names should receive personal handwritten notes from you. Such notes tell recipients that you’re paying attention to them as people, not just as clients or prospective clients.

If you want to e-mail cards, the same principles apply. Send tailored e-mails, not just one standardized mass e-mail. When you send out a mass e-mailing, it’s clear to everyone that they’re merely part of your database, and that all you did was push a button without giving any real thought to them personally.

The earlier during the holiday season that you send out your cards, the more they’ll stand out from the pack. In fact, an increasing number of firms are foregoing sending cards for the Christmas and Hanukkah season and are mailing Thanksgiving cards instead.

This time of year is great for reconnecting. As you’re reviewing your mailing list, you’ll see the names of business associates you haven’t spoken with for a while. Now is the time to contact them, wish them happy holidays and make plans to get together (most likely after the holidays).

Networking opportunities are incredible this time of year. While you’re having a good time at your colleagues’ parties, keep in mind that social events can be networking gold mines if you’re prepared. Whenever someone asks what line of work you’re in, are you ready to quickly and effectively communicate what you do? Do you make sure never to attend a party without bringing along a supply of business cards?

If you’re in a business that’s usually hopping at the end of the year financial planning, for instance use your increased customer contacts to educate clients about the breadth of services you can provide, and to draw from them information about any other business needs and wants you can fulfill.

You can perform a lot of marketing magic at the end of the year. The key is to tune out the naysayers and stay focused on your own motivation, initiative, industriousness and creativity. Remember, what marketing seeds you plant this time of year are strictly your business!

Sharon Berman is principal of Berbay Corp., a marketing consultancy that develops programs with impact. She can be reached at [email protected].

Entrepreneur’s Notebook is a regular column contributed by EC2, The Annenberg Incubator Project, a center for multimedia and electronic communications at the University of Southern California. Contact James Klein at (213) 743-1759 with feedback and topic suggestions.

No posts to display