Whether you wait all year to cash in during the holidays or you dread each week that brings you closer to the inevitable slowdown, promoting is your only option.
There are many businesses that can offer customers incentives to purchase before the end of the year – tax breaks, insurance benefits or heavy discounts. Whatever the industry, there is usually something that can be done to capitalize on the time of the year.
What to offer?
A good way to market for holiday spending is to determine if you can offer a loss leader. A loss leader is something you offer that you either break even on or lose money on just to get a customer in the door. Many times the customer will buy more than just what was offered in the promotion, which makes up for the "loss." Ever wonder why Wal-Mart can afford to have such low prices? Well, I read once that they bank on every person coming in the door spending an average of $45.00. So, even if someone came in to buy the super-discounted item that was on sale that week, they would end up buying more before they walked out of the store.
I can come up with a few ideas here…if you are an optometrist; you can offer a pair of sunglasses at 50% off with a purchase of one pair at full price for a limited time only. Someone could buy themselves a new pair and then one for their spouse for Christmas or Hanukah. Don't forget, there are many holiday shoppers that end up buying gifts for themselves when they are shopping for others – I am one!
If you are a jeweler – imagine having a sale where you offer the matching earrings for a designer ring for a whopping discount. Or if the jewelry designer does not allow discounts (many don't), you can offer some other non-brand piece of jewelry for a nice percentage off. Imagine all the men who would buy more just to get that extra bling so they can appear even more generous to the women in their lives (moms, sisters, wives, etc.).
If you are a dentist (and who really wants to go to the dentist for the holidays?), you can make sure your patients know that they might lose their medical benefits for the year if they have not used them before December 31st. Many benefit plans are able to be used during one calendar year and expire the last day of the year. Think of all the dental work people have been putting off thinking they had benefits to use whenever they wanted, only to find out they won't have those benefits if they don't use them before December 31st! What a flood you will have in your office! And you can go all out with a special Christmas offer of free teeth whitening or some other such offer.
If you are a business that promotes only to other businesses, think of what you can offer before the end of the year that would not only pad the books profitably, but allow you to deliver products and services well into the New Year by having companies gain an incentive to pre-pay for their next year's business. There are tax breaks for some companies who do this and many will just so they don't have to report so much income at the end of the year.
Really, I could go on and on. But the purpose of this article is to get YOU thinking and solving your own holiday income problems.
Once you figure out what you are going to offer, get started on the promotion. Direct mail postcards mailed to your target market multiple times are not only cost-effective, but a very targeted method to promote your offer to the people that will be most likely to respond. But to make your new ideas come to fruition, you have to start early. Six months is optimum. Three months will do. And 2 months is still better than NOT promoting. If you have waited too long to get started, start planning for next year's holiday campaign.
And remember; get ALL your staff excited about your promotion and offer so they talk it up with e-v-e-r-y single customer that they come in contact with. Excitement is infectious and even if one particular customer does not bite, they might just go tell another who will!
Happy Holidays, Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah! Or whatever you celebrate! Get your new year off to a good start by promoting heavy and early to end this one off with a bang!
Author Resource:
Joy Gendusa began PostcardMania in 1998 out of her home, with nothing but a phone and a computer, never taking a dime of investment capital. Joy originally started PostcardMania as a full-service postcard marketing company helping clients create turn-key marketing campaigns with graphic design, printing, mailing list acquisition and mailing services. Over the years, Joy has grown PostcardMania into one of the nation’s most effective, top marketing agencies specializing in lead generation for small to large-sized businesses. Since then, PostcardMania has expanded to offer its clients more services including website and landing page design and development, email marketing and full marketing evaluations — all while continuing to educate clients with free marketing advice.
Joy and PostcardMania have won many awards for creativity, best business practices and expansion and have been recognized on the Inc. 500 and 5000 lists. By 2008, revenues reached nearly $19 million and the company now employs over 160 people, prints 4 million and mails 2 million postcards each week, and has more than 40,000 customers in over 350 industries. Visit (www.PostcardMania.com )
Download the first three chapters of Joy's book "The Ultimate Postcard Marketing Success Manual" here: (www.PostcardMarketingSuccessManual.com )
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