Is your holiday marketing up to scratch? It’s the start of the final quarter of the year and before you know it, holiday season will be knocking at your door and stores will have their holiday displays in full force. First it’s the pumpkins and scary decorations for Halloween and just before we recover from that, here come the wreaths & Christmas trees to take their place; it’s official the annual holiday madness begins. The marketing mistakes that you should focus on this holiday season.

What Does This Mean For You & Your Customers?

For shoppers, this can be the start of a busy time of a year as they rush around buying gifts for family and friends. For marketers, however, it’s an opportunity! It is never too soon to start thinking about how to leverage holiday fever in order to maximize the impact of your campaigns and promotions.

But, this is not always how people see the holiday season. There are some business owners who freeze their marketing efforts over the holiday season with the notion that they’re going to start strong in the New Year. Little do they know just how many opportunities have passed them by, by doing this rather than putting a strategic plan in place.

To help you prepare for the holiday season, here are 3 holiday marketing mistakes businesses make; so you can avoid making them:

  • Having NO holiday offers

We all love holiday season and most of us focus on gift giving, vacations and family time. Knowing this is the case for most, your business should look at how YOU can provide holiday specials to help your customers reach those goals. Here at Smart On Hold, we just last week sent out a Christmas email to our valued customers, with the offer of a Complimentary On Hold Message, to inform and educate their callers for the holiday season.

Another option that we have been able to offer, because your On Hold can help increase your sales, is that some of our customers promote their holiday specials through their On Hold Messages. Last year, one of our retail customers ran offers in the style of “12 Days of Christmas” for their customers and it was fantastic for their sales!

  1. Neglecting to make holiday marketing plan

It’s never too early to plan your holiday campaign!

Planning months in advance is the best way to kick off an awesome, results-driven holiday campaign. We started planning in September, which seems like madness. But you just need to figure out:

  1. what your objectives are
  2. how you are going to measure your success
  3. who your target audience is.

Finally, after you decide on all of the above, create a deadline to make sure your holiday campaign achieves everything you want it to. You can really use your Social Media to get all of these marketing efforts across to your target market. Having SMART objectives and ideas, can mean you measure their success and can improve upon them next year.

  • Forgetting to send holiday greetings to your customers

We all know that customers are the heart and soul of every business. They are loyal, making the decision to purchase from you and support your business all year round. So let them know that you are grateful for their business. Think of a way to show your appreciation; maybe you can write them greeting cards or maybe give them discount coupons that they could use with you next year, or a simple email greeting. Whatever the way, show your appreciation and make sure to keep your customer happy

There’s our 3 tips to help show what holiday marketing mistakes to avoid.

What are some of the best holiday campaigns you’ve seen over the recent years? Share it with us by leaving your comments below.

If you would like to get a Christmas message on hold or auto attendant for your customers, let our team know, as all of our current customers get this complimentary as a thank you from Smart On Hold for their loyalty through the year. But we can always assist new businesses to get set up in time for the festive season.