As consumers, it seems that Christmas starts earlier and earlier every year with decorations appearing in stores from around mid-October. While this may seem early for most people, for retailers, advertisers and marketers, Christmas starts even earlier!
It may still be the summer and yes, we’re halfway through a heatwave, but there is no reason business owners shouldn’t be starting to consider their Christmas plan. Be it your Christmas marketing, your festive deals or your Yuletide delivery services, there’s a lot to plan and surprisingly not a lot of time to do it. If you’re looking to ensure everything runs smoothly for you this Christmas, here’s our guide to utilising the summer for planning your Christmas success.
July - Stock Your Inventories
The summer is the perfect time of year to start planning what exactly it is you’re selling. Are you launching new items for Christmas? Are you planning on catering to different themes? Or perhaps you’re interested in just having plenty of stock available. Whatever it might be this is the perfect time to start stocking up and making your buying or creative decisions.
August & September - Work On You Seasonal Message
With your stock sorted and your planning underway, it’s important you work on your seasonal message for this year. It may be something new or maybe a typical ‘Happy Christmas’ style message, whatever it may be, you need to work out how to incorporate this within both your marketing materials and your website.
By starting this in August it allows you plenty of time to study your audience, think about your message and create any assets or materials needed for your Christmas or seasonal campaigns, including any videos, graphics or print work.
October & November - Roll Out Your Marketing Campaigns
It’s time to get your marketing underway! October is the time to start unveiling your marketing campaigns to your customers, with most businesses also launching their campaigns around mid to late October.
It’s worth noting that November hosts special events such as Black Friday and Cyber Monday both of which offer great sales opportunities, therefore it’s good to remember to market special deals during this time too. Offering discounts, special deals or even coupon codes can be ideal during this time, so be sure to take this into consideration!
If everything has been planned out and delivered effectively throughout October and into November it’s likely that your campaign is going to be successful through to the big day itself.
December - Monitor Your Sales & Offer Last Minute Deals
With your marketing strategy out there for all to see you can use December to monitor how successful your campaign is, deal with your orders and deliveries and also concentrate on offering any last minute offers or sales you might be offering to your customers.
Last minute offers in the run-up to Christmas can encourage visitors to make valuable purchasing decisions in the final push to get everything together for Christmas Day.
You can also use December to ensure that your marketing steps are optimised for success, for example, you can use this time for changing your ad copy, swapping images or getting involved in trending topics on social media or in live events. Just because Christmas is in December doesn’t mean there’s no time to keep making changes if needed.
Christmas is such an important time of the year for businesses and organisations, it can have a huge impact on your profits and your overall yearly success. By planning early it allows you to take advantage of the season and have plenty of time to reach out to customers and generate both sales and leads.
Timing is critical when it comes to Christmas, it can be very easy to think ‘oh it’s too early for Christmas’ and then end up leaving it until too late, meaning you miss out on a lot of opportunities. With Christmas related searches up during the first week of November, it’s evident that people are willing to start looking before December arrives, so you need to be there ready!
We’re now offering Google Ads packages developed to run throughout October, November and December in order to help our customers promote their products and services in the run-up to Christmas!
With a number of sales events throughout November and into the December Christmas shopping rush, there’s no better time to launch your Google Ads campaign, build specially to target your ideal audience.
For more information about this Google Ads package and how you can benefit from it, contact a member of our team today!
