Holiday Marketing – Our post last month mentioned that you should have started working on holiday marketing plans (you always should start on that early if you want enough visibility for it to matter closer to the holidays themselves). If you haven’t done this yet, you really need to this month.

Remember, whether or not you personally celebrate a holiday is irrelevant. If the bulk of your clients do, you should be basing marketing tactics around that holiday.  If you haven’t written a report or something to give away as a gift, get started on it this month (I’ll be working on a free report this week). If you haven’t considered bonuses, discounts, or something else for the holidays, consider it. If you haven’t made a list of gift ideas on your blog yet, do it (you need it indexed and showing up in search engines before they sneak up on you; not right before the holiday).

Evaluations

Now to the “big” task for November – evaluating this year’s progress in your freelance writing career (or that of  your sites, blogs, products, etc.).

Let’s face it: you’re probably going to be pretty busy in December. That’s not an ideal time to start looking over the past year. At the same time, evaluating where you’ve been and how you’re doing are vital to your marketing efforts. Why? Because you can’t work on next year’s marketing plan update (or creating a brand new one if you don’t have one yet – which you should) without knowing your current position.

Are you earning at a level you’re comfortable with? Are you working with the types of clients you want to work with? Are you working on the types of projects you want to work with? Are your billable hours generally filled? Have you gotten mostly positive client feedback? Do you have a professional site already? Is there something you could do to improve it? Have you diversified your income streams to protect yourself? Could you add some new products next year? Have your products not sold very well, or are they bringing in a good amount of income?

These are just a few examples of the things you need to ask yourself in evaluating the current state of  your career as a freelance writer. Next month we’ll talk about setting resolutions for the new year. In the meantime, start taking some notes on what you’re not thrilled with at the moment so you have something to base those resolutions on down the road. A great place to start would be to look at your resolutions for last year and see how many you kept, how many you neglected, and why.

Who Needs to Think About Holiday Marketing?

Unless you want to completely blow off an excellent time of the year for promotions (and a time of year where people are often feeling generous and quite willing to part with their money!), you do! I don’t care if you celebrate Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanza, something else, or nothing at all. If your clients (and I mean any of your clients, or prospective clients) are going to be in the “holiday spirit,” you’d be a fool not to join them – at least when it comes to your work.

Am I saying you should pander to every holiday and every faith separately? No. A general “holiday” promotion can be all-inclusive, and great for marketing.

Why Think About Holiday Marketing so Early?

I don’t know about you, but all of the retailers around me already have their Christmas displays up – almost seems silly to do that at the same time where people are still shopping for Halloween candy, right? Not so.

October is the time of year where a lot of folks with “Christmas club accounts” cash them out and get started on early holiday shopping. That means there are people with a bit of extra money in their hands thinking about spending it! By the time the actual holidays roll around, those funds are often at least somewhat depleted, and people are in panic-mode rushing around trying to find their perfect gifts.

By beginning your holiday marketing now, you can reach out to both groups (those shoppers spending money now, and you can be fully prepared to get the later rush crowd involved in your business). How?

What Should You do Right Now?

There are plenty of things to think about regarding holiday marketing during October. Here are some ideas to get you moving in the right direction in promoting your services, information products, and even sites and blogs:

• Now is a great time to publish gift lists. Whether you’re monetizing them directly with affiliate links or just hoping they’ll drive some extra traffic your way, get them on your site or blog now if you want them indexed (and with decent inbound links) by the holidays when those searches pick up! In addition to gift lists, individual reviews can work too.
• Create a short report. It doesn’t have to be holiday-related itself. Instead, you’ll have it ready as a bonus or “free gift” to give away to clients during the holidays to entice them to place orders for your services. Not interested in creating a product? Think about other things you could give away for free – for example, if you’re an SEO content writer, maybe you’ll decide to give away a few extra articles for those ordering in bulk (or more than you currently do if you already give away freebies).
• Prepare Your Own Products for Sale. If you don’t have an informational product yet, put one together that you can sell well before the holidays (I’d say you’d want it ready in no more than a month at this point in time). If you do have something for sale already (like e-books), prepare some banner ads or fresh sales copy you can implement closer to the holidays, pushing your products as great gift items.

What do you plan to do to market your sites, products, or services during the holidays this year? Let’s all share some holiday marketing tips and make the most of it. :)