After over twenty years of helping clients with last-minute holiday panic marketing, these are some of the things we all often regret not addressing in September.

As autumn begins each year, we remind our clients to start prepping and ordering gift bags, greeting cards, holiday decor, gift certificates, gift tags, posters, etc, and plan online marketing: e-mail campaigns, seasonal website changes, and Google Ads campaigns.

Besides setting yourself up for a less stressful fourth quarter, preparation in September means free or economy shipping prices instead of ridiculously marked-up rush shipping for last-minute orders. (Reminder of our rush project policy.) You’ll also have more time to jump on the inevitable last-minute holiday opportunity or crisis.

SEPTEMBER TO-DO

Start a Halloween through mid-January calendar showing holidays, planned marketing campaigns, events, team meetings/training, and drop-dead dates.

• Why into January? Because there’s often a drop-off in business in the new year. September’s the time to check into your previous January numbers (what worked, what did not) and also what your competition previously did for Q1 marketing. Use the heavy holiday traffic to share online or print January bounce-back offers.
• Note drop-dead dates by working backwards from when you need assets finalized and in-hand. Remember that free or economy shipping may take longer over the holidays and plan accordingly.* For example, if you want a printed bring-back card to include with Halloween treats, note placing the order with the printer by October 17th, and working back from that, mark your calendar for October 3rd as your day to start developing the asset.
• Calendar reminders to update your holiday hours over all platforms (especially Google Business Profiles).

Research community calendars for events and reach out to potential partners and charities early. When you move forward be sure to plan offers that are trackable and unique to each event/partnership/charity so you have data for informed decisions next year.

Prep a stash of beautiful, printed hand-outs with a generic offer so you have an inventory ready and can jump on last-minute partnering opportunities without needing to rush a design and print order.

As you plan your holiday promos, be sure to use a unique, trackable code and/or a unique promotion for each offer. That way, next year, you’ll have data on what promo worked and what you can drop and replace with a different idea. This can be tricky, so check in with us to talk this through. Basically, if you do 10% off on all promos, print and online, throughout the holidays, you won’t know the difference between a Black Friday partner campaign that worked and a SMS campaign that did not.

Check your gift card inventory now! (Gift card companies may have five week lead-times—and possibly longer—October through January.)

Review your assets library. Do you have the photos, video clips, or artwork you’ll need to support your holiday marketing: gift sets, products, staff, seasonal services, and decorated locations?

Start penning your Thanksgiving gratitude message to customers, your holiday greetings, and your Happy New Year wishes so they are ready for social media and email campaigns. During the holiday rush, you won’t have as much bandwidth for sincere message scripting.

Are you sending cards, party invitations, and/or gifts to your clients and partners this year? Let’s get on that too!

Selling gifts? Check your inventory and the lead times of items you wish to stock. From October onwards, order fulfillment and shipping from your vendors may take additional time. Also, be sure you stock plenty of festive packaging and shipping supplies if you plan on mailing items.

Sadly, if you are hosting a holiday party and have not booked your caterer, entertainment, and venue, September may be too late. Skipping the printed invites and going online is a good option to save a few weeks.

Don’t forget your team! The holidays may be extra stressful for them too, so set them up for success and a bit of joy with prepared customer service scripts, holiday season incentives, and share with them your holiday marketing how-tos and goals. Start gathering their holiday plans for your shift schedule.

Take time in October to reach out to your customers (especially your VIPs) with reminders to book their holiday appointments early, before your books fill up.

Plan software updates or IT work in advance. Avoid major website migrations, email-platform changes, computer replacements, or other potentially disruptive technology projects during the busiest part of the holiday season unless they’re essential.

Audit your website now! On mobile and desktop devices, check contact forms, booking links, gift-card purchase links, online ordering, responsive display, checkout, promotional codes, and confirmation emails. A holiday campaign is wasted if the conversion path is broken.

With busy holiday traffic, assume your email and text sign-ups will increase. Be sure your drip campaigns are running smoothly, so in the background, you hook these new customers programmatically.

As you plan your holiday offers and gift-giving promos, make your landing pages early. Not only does this lighten your load during the holidays, it helps you walk through the offer, planning clear language, that there’s a workable CTA, set up promo codes in your system, and include all the needed fine print to protect your customer-facing staff and your bottom line. Wording used on the landing page can then be fed into your AI editor and condensed with little effort on your part to fit Instagram, email campaigns, texts, etc.

No stress, added costs, and drama this year — let’s get started on marketing’s silly season work now! We’ve plenty of ideas and sources for product.

Here’s some key events to keep in mind…

OCTOBER

Halloween

NOVEMBER

Daylight Saving Time ends

Veterans Day

Thanksgiving

Black Friday

Small Business Saturday

Cyber Monday

GivingTuesday

DECEMBER

Pearl Harbor Remembrance

Green Monday

Festivus

Hanukkah

Christmas Day

Boxing Day

Kwanzaa

New Year’s Eve

*This often trips up our clients—planning two weeks for free or economy shipping saves so much money and stress. Ideally, aim for three weeks for shipping so you have time to react if an exchange or reprint is needed.