Holiday Marketing Mistakes

There are simple mistakes many business owners make come holiday season and all because of a case of "holiday-head". The "holiday-head" syndrome can affect the most intelligent business owners and below are a couple of the syndrome's side effects noticed by 3L Publishing and M Communications.

What plan? Fa. La. La. La. La. Fa. La. Flake Plan". Many business owners fall into the a very sad trap of wandering into the new year without a business plan and even a marketing plan. I have witnessed firsthand what happens when you do not have a marketing plan. You spend money on a whim - here and there; completely going over budget and spending money on what your audience is not reading, etc. Even if you only have 100$ a month to spend on marketing -have a plan. You can change it if something is not working for you but at least you have the foundation and research completed ahead of time. P.S. If you do not have one in the new year we can whip one out in the next couple of weeks so you are still basically on time. And, we will even not make fun of you in the M-Dash; one of our weekly newsletters.

PR + Holidays = Bad. Bad. Bad. Are you liking my equations yet? The worst thing you can do during the holidays is do nothing. You can always plan for your January campaign and for example, complete your press release in December for a January public relations campaign. If you hire the right marketing company - they will tell you what will and what will not get December media pick up. If you have a holiday product, a unique sale, or a unique tie-in like my musician client being hired to play at the airport to calm down passengers - these are all good holiday messages. As always, new year - new ??? is always a good one as well.

Procrastination, Procrastination, Procrastination. We have heard this one a lot too, "I will decide after the holidays." I completely understand if this is a financially based answer, but just to put something off that can be a completed project during or after the holidays is not good for your business. Especially, when it means you have delayed income for yourself for about six weeks because you got "holiday head" around Thanksgiving. Unfortunately, many business owners could have done a red-light, green-light, yes or no answer and have a completed website or whatever just in time for the new year but have procrastinated which pushes their project out even further. The worst side affect of procrastination comes in the form of lost income over the holidays. Who wants to lose money? Not us.

Have a good story? I would love to hear from you. Please send me an email to: michele@mcommunicationsinc.com

Happy Holidays!

Michele Smith