BizNet OnLine Magazine, Are You Ready For Your Holiday Marketing Campaign?

Are You Ready For Your Holiday Marketing Campaign?

By: Jeanne Harwood
Staff Writer
Jeanne@biznetonline.com

I know what your thinking..... Do I have to think about Christmas already? We'll if your interested in cashing in on the millions of dollars that are going to be spent online this Christmas season you'd better!

We have been flooded with questions from people this past month on what they needed to do to prepare for Christmas online this season. For some this is their first year online & therefore their first X-mas shopping season. Their first opportunity to run holiday promotions & decorate their pages for the season and to blare "Jingle Bells" from every visitors speaker. We'll let's hope they refrain from the latter!

An effective holiday marketing campaign cannot be thrown together in November & should start even before October. It's no different from retail stores who start planning Christmas in July! You need to have time to devise a whole marketing plan & develop all the necessary components to go along with it. Here we will list some Holiday promotional ideas & what you will have to do to prepare for the Christmas season when you sell online!

Promotional Ideas - What Draws The Crowd?

There are many things that you can do to promote the Christmas season online. Choosing the right one to match your product or service is the key. You want your promotion to help you achieve your end goal, whatever that may be. Do you want to generate leads? Are you looking for immediate sales? Define your goal & then choose the promotion that will best help you achieve that goal.

For instance, if you are looking to generate leads then you can find an inexpensive free gift to give visitors that stop by & in exchange for their contact info or you can offer a free personalized letter from Santa for their kids or a downloadable Christmas budget/shopping list etc. Any business or service can come up with something related to the holidays that they can give as a freebie.

If you are looking for immediate sales then you want to handle your promotion differently. You might offer a Christmas sale with "% off discounts" on your products or you could offer free gift wrapping & shipping with a purchase.

Once your promotion is chosen you can move on to the next step.

Getting Prepared To Advertise & Run The Promotion -

In order to run most promotions you must prepare your marketing materials, make printing arrangements, prepare art work, etc. The web is no different! For an online promotion these are just some of the things you need to prepare:

Create the webpages necessary to advertise the    promotion

Modify existing order forms or create new ones    specifically for the promotion

Register these new pages in the search engines

Setup email autoresponders to send any leads your sales    letter and..

Prepare graphics & banners for use on new webpages   and in advertising campaigns

If you are your own webmaster I suggest you get started very soon on your marketing campaign for this Christmas season. It is better to take your time & prepare a highly effective campaign than to throw one together last minute. Your results will reflect the effort you put into the campaign.

If you need to hire a Internet Marketing company to handle your holiday promotions I suggest you call today! Many companies are already booking up into October. And that's just when they can start your campaign work. To be complete in time to launch the campaign around late October early November work needs to begin now. At LRS we are already booked for many of our services thru September & are scheduling into October. Website design work is scheduled on a first come first serve basis so contact us today to get your Christmas Promotional Campaign started!

If you are a business who supplies businesses with what they need for the Holidays such as promotional items manufactures, custom greeting card distributors, caterers, party planners, custom gift services, etc. I suggest you start marketing towards your Christmas clientele right away too. As Christmas approaches your potential customers will be making their Holiday plans. This is the time of year they are most receptive to your message. Be the first to approach them with an easy & affordable way to handle the holiday chaos & you will more than likely get the sale!

Advertising your campaign -

Once you have everything put together for your campaign you will need to think about how you are going to promote it. Better start securing your advertising now! Pretty soon there are going to be slim pickin's for choices of targeted advertisements. Our contact at Yahoo has told us of many keywords that are booked through till next year already. You may end up with an across the board advertisement instead of a highly targeted one. If you sell widgets & the keyword widgets is taken you may have to pick alternate keywords or settle for a regular run of site promotion.

Ezine ads will be booking up as well so you better get your classified ad reserved soon! Sure there are tons of ezines but the good ones with the highly targeted readership for your product may be booked. We all know the value of targeted advertising, don't we? Most high quality ezines, including ours, limit the number of advertisements they run in each issue. That's how they keep those happy readers! So yes, there will be many ezines that will accept your advertisement but do you want to be number 35 out of 50 ads? I know I would want to be.

So my advice to all of the new businesses online this season is to start yesterday on your Christmas campaign. Many of us seasoned online entrepreneurs have already started ours which means your already playing catch up with the competition! Merry Christmas & welcome to the online world!

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