How to Start Preparing Your Marketing for the Holiday Season

It’s the most wonderful time of the year – the holiday season! With Halloween only 46 days away, Thanksgiving in 69 days, and Christmas only 101 days away, now is the time to start preparing your marketing efforts for the upcoming season.

If you’re wondering if it’s too soon to start planning for the holidays, the short answer is no. As consumers start shopping earlier and earlier each year, with consumers starting as early as November 1, ideally, your marketing efforts should start no later than mid-October in order to get the most out of your time and budget.

Holidays and Shopping Days to Keep on Your Radar

• Halloween – October 31
• Thanksgiving Day – November 23
• Black Friday – November 24
• Small Business Saturday – November 25
• Cyber Monday – November 27
• Christmas Eve – December 24
• Christmas Day – December 25
• New Year’s Eve – December 31
• New Year’s Day – January 1

‘Tis the Season to Prepare Early

This time of year can be hectic for many – for marketers, for businesses, and for shoppers. One way to keep a level head is to get in front of the chaos and start preparing campaigns, promotions, and sales in advance.

The holidays are one of the largest opportunities for businesses, with overall retail spending forecasted to increase by 4.5% in 2023. With consumers spending more during the season, and starting earlier every year, preparing your business’s seasonal marketing efforts early in advance can give you an advantage during one of the biggest shopping times of the year.

Set Goals and Objectives

Before you can start marketing, you’ll need to address what objectives you want to hit and what goals you want to achieve from your campaigns. This can include reviewing last year’s numbers to see what could use improvement, where you’d like to see growth, or what you’d like to do differently. 

Strategize, Strategize, Strategize

Let’s talk strategy. Your strategy is one of the key components in your holiday marketing, as it will address things like:

• The holidays and sale days you’d like to plan for
• Specific promotions or sales you’ll be offering
• Your plans for products and services
• Creating a schedule
• Identifying the materials and content needed

To kick off your planning, you’ll want to start by identifying which holidays to shopping days to target. If you’re looking to increase your online sales, Cyber Monday should be on your radar. If you want to see a rise in sales and have a promotion you’re running, plan for Black Friday.

Starting from there, you can initiate the process of strategizing promotions and deciding which products or services to highlight. These initial steps set the stage for planning your schedule, including deadlines for creating and gathering all the necessary assets and materials, finalizing sales details, launching campaigns, and assessing progress to make necessary adjustments.

Preparing Materials

Prior to launching your campaign, it is important to ask yourself, “What do I need to have in place for a successful launch?” This can include a range of items such as collateral materials like banners or signs, high-quality product photography, and promo codes for targeted sales. These are all essential elements that need to be prepared beforehand in order to create an effective campaign and schedule it accordingly.

Schedule and Launch Campaign

Now comes the exciting part – creating and scheduling the campaign. Whether you plan to launch your holiday campaign through email, digital advertising, or social media, scheduling it in advance can help you avoid the chaos that usually accompanies the holiday season. We understand that business owners are swamped during this time of year, so if managing campaign creation is not your forte, you can rely on us to take care of it for you!

Making Spirits Bright with Your Holiday Marketing

Holiday marketing is no joke. All of this – from strategizing to launch, can be done with the help of our team of marketing professionals, so don’t wait until the holiday craze to start planning your marketing efforts! Let BOOST Creative help you get ahead of schedule. We’ll check your list and check it twice to ensure your business’s marketing efforts are ready to attract clients and bring them into the new year.

About BOOST Creative

BOOST Creative is a proven resource for design, website, and digital marketing needs. With creativity at our core, we offer a forward-thinking and innovative approach to the services we offer, including website development & hosting, corporate branding, SEO & SEM, social media marketing, email marketing, print production, and more. In the past 20 years, BOOST has served over 500 clients and managed over 15,000 jobs. We serve clients nationally with locations in Cape Coral and Orlando, Florida.

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