Yes, you read that right – and no this isn’t an old blog post from December 2021. Despite the fact that the new financial year has only just begun, it’s time to start planning your festive season promotions!
Whether you’re hospitality, commerce or services based, we’re sure you know the craziness that the festive season brings with it! So why not get ahead of it all this year and start mapping out your end of year marketing now?
With special promotions, key sales dates, Christmas parties and last-minute appointments sure to pop up; getting your key marketing messages right well in advance will take some stress out of the end of the year!
Here are a few key things you should be planning for now:
Events
Are you hosting any Christmas Day, Boxing Day or New Year’s Eve events? Now’s the time to start discussions with your team to lock in your offering, themes and entertainment for these events!
Planning your events early means your chefs have more time to create a great menu for your event. You’ll have more entertainment options to book if you get in early, while they’re less likely to have committed to another event. Plus, if you use a graphic designer to create your event graphics they’ve got more time to create beautiful artwork for your event! And they’ll LOVE you for getting your brief in early and not adding to their never ending December to-do list (remember, everyone is busy in the festive season!).
Sales periods
With the festive season comes gift shopping! There are a lot of key shopping dates in the last quarter of the year and that’s the time that shoppers spend the most with Australians predicted to have spent $23.9 billion on everything from presents to Pina Coladas over the 2021 festive season.
The key sales dates in the lead up to the 2022 Festive season include:
- Click Frenzy – the Main Event on November 8
- Black Friday sales on November 25
- Cyber Monday on November 28
- Pre-Christmas sales on December 22-24
- Boxing Day sales on December 26
Retail holidays and yearly sales dates are not just a serious revenue earner — they can also help grow your business. Consumers plan for them with a lot of shoppers doing their gift shopping during these early sales, and they enjoy the shopping experience and the feeling of being organised for Christmas early.
Providing a great experience can create new regular customers, and a great experience comes down to planning! Locking in your offer nice and early means you can get your website in order and create a seamless online shopping experience. Your team can all be aware of what’s coming and provide an informative in-store experience. You can order and plan for extra stock to ensure customers can get exactly what they want during your sales. Your online ads can be set up early and ready to go when the time comes. And, you can tease your sales in the lead-up to the sales dates and create excitement around your offer.
Special offers
If you’re planning on providing a special offer, getting organised nice and early will allow you to maximise the impact your offers will have on customers.
Some festive season special offers may include:
- Christmas party packages at your venue for large bookings
- Themed gifts with purchases
- Complimentary consultations during November/December
Advertising your offers in advance puts you front of mind when the time comes for customers to make their decision. Take the Christmas party packages for example, if you want to maximise your weekday bookings during the peak celebration season you can offer groups a special deal for weekday bookings in December. Promoting this offer while people are in the research stage and deciding where to book their event makes more sense than advertising last minute when they’ve probably already booked a venue, right? So the earlier you have your plan locked in the earlier you can get it in front of customers!
Closed periods
Are you closing down for the Christmas and New Years’ period or just the key dates? Deciding this now means you can close your books for the dates you’re unavailable early so customers aren’t booking those dates and forcing you to have to manually cancel their appointment or booking. This will not only prevent customer dissatisfaction but also helps you lock in more bookings before you close if your customers know when you’ll be unavailable.
The benefits of planning early are so worth it! Not only for minimising your stress come the silly season but also for being able to create a concise marketing message for your customers that’s thoughtful and makes sense for your brand’s goals.
So, it’s time to get busy Christmas planning! If you need a hand planning out your marketing activities get in touch with us today to learn how Feed can help you.
