And so the Christmas marketing season begins in earnest. I’ve just created the December advert for local women’s only gym ‘Gym & Slim’, as part of their year long local newspaper advertisement marketing plan. Gym & Slim capitalise on events such as Christmas, New Year, Easter and more throughout the year to market their business to new customers.


What could you do this season to capitalise on Christmas for marketing your business?

I’ve compiled some ideas for you below:

1. Send thank you gifts/cards to your customer base. Spend more on those that have passed you regular or high value business over the last year or two.

2. Up sell customers by offering discounts or freebies for bulk (specific monetary value reached for instance) or bundle purchases. This can work well during gift season.

3. Can you save your customers money with your products/services? If so, this is the ideal time of year to pitch it from that angle in your marketing and advertising.

4. Can you save your customers time with your products/services? (I’m thinking of cleaning services, personal assistants/shoppers, concierge services and more). Again, this is the ideal time of year to pitch it from a holiday angle … think about how busy everyone is with the huge amount of time invested in gift purchasing, in addition to other time absorbers such as attending school plays, visiting family, large scale food shopping and cooking, cleaning (for the visiting relatives!) and so on.

5. Gift certificates. Is your business gift certificate appropriate? If so have those designed and printed asap and get promoting them at your business premises if relevant, on your website, on Twitter, Facebook and/or with traditional marketing such as flyers and adverts. If you do a lot of face to face business networking, you can even advertise these on your business cards.

6. Create an e-card. As well as (or instead of) sending out printed cards to your customer base, some companies invest in the design of a Christams e-card, which can be emailed to clients. These could be simple and corporate in design, or highly decorative. You could even send them a seasonal cartoon created specifically for your business.