The Giving Season is the Holiday Season

By Sharon • November 1st, 2009

Like clockwork, the day after Hallowe’en the holiday season marketing drive shifts from a whisper to a roar. As I watched a Sesame Street Elmo toy ad this afternoon I started to think about the typical entrepreneur’s holiday marketing season efforts.

If you created a marketing strategy this time of year should be highlighted as an opportune time to raise the profile on how you can benefit your clients/customers AND community this time of year. One of the the best ways to do that is to offer holiday deals to drum up interest in your business and your favorite charities.

As we’re just coming out of a recession it is probably a really good time to promote discounts and special deals. Right now consumer goods manufacturers are going to try to get everyone’s attention and they’ll do a bang up job of it.

Whether you sell widgets, or information products or professional consulting services – you can benefit from the gift buying fervor.

For the person that needs widgets (or some other non-sexy but necessary gadget or tool that I haven’t the vocabulary for) if you save them money with a holidy discount there’ll be more money for them to direct towards gift buying. That’s the perfect angle to incorporate into your marketing material.

If you create informational products that help business owners to understand social media, you can create the timeliest guide showing how businesses can boost their holiday sales by using social media. News wire agency, Reuters, just released a news item indicating that major consumer companies were planning to invest heavily into social media this season – more than ever before. Is your “holiday season” social media guide for businesses ready yet?

These are just a couple of examples, but the point is you have the opportunity to benefit from the general consumer urgency to buy over the next two months by tailoring your marketing efforts to capitalize on the biggest buying season of the year.

Don’t be dissuaded by news stories indicating lower sales because of the recession – that’s in comparison to boom years. People will still be purchasing in higher volumes and will be keeping their ears particularly attuned to anything sounding like a “deal.”

Here are some ideas to add to your own creative list of marketing activities this holiday season:

Host a teleseminar or other special event targeting your market and partner with other business owners to offer holiday themed prize draws for those attending the event
Offer to donate a certain percentage of every sale over the next two months to a recognized and respected charity
Sponsor high profile holiday events in your online communities and even in your local communities (if the exposure generated will reach your target audience)

Sometimes people complain about the overly commercial focus that colors this season of joy. There’s nothing preventing you or anyone else from changing that focus by incorporating charitable and giving initiatives into planned high profile promotions this season.

Any non-profit or charitable organization will tell you that this is the season when they receive the MOST donations. So many like you are doing their part. By and large we have an enormous ability to give, care and support one another.

I say it’s the holidays and lets begin to celebrate by showing how creative we can be with our businesses and how giving we can be to the community.

To your success,

Sharon

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