Christmas is Coming!
Marketing & Promotion April 25th, 2007Are you ready? With only 244 days to go until the big day, you should really start preparing now.
When we discussed the prospect of April being a quiet month in a previous post, I started to think about Christmas! As a rough guideline, I always think you should really start promoting your business for Christmas in the early weeks of November. That’s a full six weeks before the big day (pretty close to my birthday so that’s always a wake-up call for me!).
That leaves us with around 200 days from now, I’m betting it will take at least six weeks, maybe even eight, to come up with your marketing idea, rip that idea up, come up with a new idea, discuss it with colleagues, and then start work on it (we all know it happens!). So in eight weeks time (with around 150 days to go), you’ll start work on your idea!
Let’s say once you’ve created your idea it’s going to take three weeks, maybe four, for you to actually do the implementation (whether that be getting it onto your website, leaflets delivered, new stock in etc.), it needs to be ready go in early October!
Ouch! You are really starting to run out of days!
So, your knew idea will be ready for you to work on in eight weeks time, and you have to have it ready for October. That gives you around 130 days to actually create your idea, in the summer months (June-August) when I’m really betting you don’t want to be sat inside at a computer screen, looking at pictures of Santa!
So if I were you, and you’re having a quiet period now start thinking about Christmas - it’s really not that far away!
If you want to discuss Christmas Promotional ideas, please comment below!
April 25th, 2007 at 10:26 am
This is so true. I always say I shall sort something out and then forget or put it off and it’s then a mad panic around the tail end of October. It’s stressful as you’re busy for Christmas already and you’re kicking yourself for not doing it in July.
Don’t delay, crack on now.
April 25th, 2007 at 11:53 am
I once spoke to someone going to the spring fair in 2006 and asked him whether he was sourcing products for the coming Christmas (2006), he laughed at me, seriously he did!
I was politely informed it was “too damned late” for that now and he was looking to organise the bulk of 2007’s Christmas, at a push he might leave a few items until the autumn fair of 2006 (where he’d be speculatively looking at products for Christmas 2008!), but once it entered 2007 his sights would firmly be set into 2008.
I admire his forward planning, I think some of it is slightly risky, particularly in the retail game - you can’t gamble thousands on a fad that might be out of fashion by the time you’re looking to sell it comes round. On the positive side if you can work out the fad and buy before it gets popular and the price goes up, your profit margins will vastly increase!
Risk taking is just that, risky but can be highly rewarding!