The best marketing practices for the holidays is to follow Stephen Covey’s advice about the 7 habits of effective people: “Start with the end in mind.” Your “end” is to get more customers and make more profits.
Editor’s note: This week WAGN’s blog features a post from guest blogger Ginger Myers, Marketing Specialist, University of Maryland Extension. Read on for Myers’ tips on how your farm or food business can ramp up marketing and boost holiday sales.
The holiday season is the most important shopping time of the year. In 2014, $81.1 billion were spent on holiday shopping. That’s 17% of annual retail sales in just two months. For many direct marketers, ramping up for the holiday season starts with fall events. But there’s still time to capture a greater share of the winter holiday season.
Here’s how to get a slice of the pie.
- Start planning your main campaign right now so you’re ready to launch well before Black Friday. By doing so, you’ll be able to take advantage of last-minute marketing opportunities.
- Analyze your inventory. Take a good look at all the products and services you
provide. Are there any offerings that would be more useful at certain times of the year or around certain holidays? Organize all your products into specific groups according to their usefulness or tie-ins with specific dates. - Buy a large desk calendar with lots of room for writing. Take a colored pen and highlight all the upcoming holidays and any other special events or season you want to plan for in the upcoming months. Decide on target dates when you’d like to get an offer out to your current customer list or start a new marketing effort or promotion. Instead of promoting your items a week ahead of a certain holiday or event, you can begin a starter campaign two months before an event and escalate your efforts as a specific day draws near.
- Repetition sells, so market often. Send multiple emails or holiday cards announcing your sales.
- Concentrate on marketing your niche products to a highly targeted audience.
- Host a holiday season kick-off event to bring customers in, such as a tree-lighting ceremony with hot chocolate and a visit from Santa–and make sure customers leave with your holiday catalog.
- Use email, social media and your website to let customers know about your upcoming deals.
- Feature your upcoming holiday specials on your blog and reinforce the reasons its better to buy from you.
- Partner with a restaurant to print table tents that promote your company to their customers
- Make sure all your holiday marketing is measurable so you can track your return on investment and plan for an even more profitable campaign next year. Record what is working for your business and what is not. Mistakes can help better channel your choices for your marketing resources.
About th
e author: Ginger holds a B.S. from Penn State University, additional certifications in agricultural economic development, and serves on a wide variety of committees and organizations including: the Maryland State Agriculture Commission, Maryland’s Agricultural Marketing Professionals, and is an officer with Future Harvest- a Chesapeake Alliance for Sustainable Agriculture. She has over 25 years of experience in agri-business and small farm production. She has worked as an agricultural marketing specialist in Maryland since 1999.
This article was adapted from an article that original appeared in the fall 2014 edition of the University of Maryland Extension’s Ag Marketing Newsletter.
