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Christmas may seem far off right now, but it’s creeping up on us. There are a few things besides presents you may want to be thinking about, especially if you have a small business to market.

Many business owners use the winter holidays as an opportunity to thank and reward their customers. Some business owners send out a small gift to clients, others offer a holiday discount — but no matter what sort of marketing you’re planning for the holiday season, now is the time to start.

Christmas is for Rewards

Many Christmas promotions focus on rewarding reliable clients, and ensuring that you’ll get more business from them after New Year’s. In many ways, marketing to current clients is easier than getting new clients. After all, you already know quite a bit about your existing customers. You know that they all share a need for your service or product, and you can use that to guarantee return business. You already have a list of people you’ll be sending your Christmas marketing materials to.

There are so many options for promoting your company over the holiday season. Even something as simple as a thank you note for each of your clients guarantees that they’ll at least think of you at the beginning of the year. If you take the time to reward your clients in some manner, you let them know that you value their business. As long as they believe that value is genuine, most clients are more likely to stick with you on a long-term basis.

Why Start Now?

If it’s easier to market to existing customers, you might wonder why you need to start so far in advance. There are a number of reasons:

• Everybody else markets during Christmas, too. If you want to get your marketing materials designed and printed, you’ll need to get in line.


• Even a stack of thank you notes and postage stamps can be expensive. It makes sense to spread the expenses of your promotion over several months.


• You probably have year-round marketing efforts in place. Adding another promotion on top of that may just require more hours than you’ll have available in December.


• If you’re working with someone outside your company, they probably have already started their holiday planning. Magazines, for instance, often decide on their content (and advertising) four or five months in advance.

Getting New Customers For Christmas

Most small business owners would much rather get new customers for Christmas than two front teeth. And it’s a great time of year to move product: everyone’s looking for a present for that person that already has everything. You just need to figure out who is the perfect recipient for your gift.

Plan to market to that ideal recipient’s mother, student, employee or anyone else that might give him or her a gift. But get going on your marketing: many people start their Christmas shopping in November. If you’re planning on buying advertising for November or have any marketing materials you need develop, time is getting pretty short. You’ll want to get your marketing for the next few months ironed out now, before publications sell all of their advertising spaces and moms buy all of their Christmas gifts.

Planning for Any Holiday

Just as you should plan for Christmas a few months ahead of schedule, you should move scheduling up for any other holiday promotions you’re planning. Christmas isn’t the best time for promoting every product. Maybe Halloween or Valentine’s Day will get you a good response. But no matter what holiday you’re planning for, you will want to handle your marketing plans in advance.

There’s a secret that great marketers live by: if you set your calendar ahead six months, you’ll be right on time for every holiday.

Read more: SmallFuel Marketing Blog