7 Business Blunders to avoid this Christmas

| December 14, 2018

As kids, most of us were pretty excited about Christmas way before 25 December arrived. When you grow up and set up your own business, you give way to a different feeling every time the holiday season approaches.

Christmas is undoubtedly one of the busiest times of the year for most business owners. However, a lot of businesses make some common marketing mistakes during Christmas time and put their brand in jeopardy. If you don’t want to fall in line with companies that breathed their last because of ineffective marketing strategies, avoid these 7 mistakes this holiday season.

  1. Going on an email-sending spree

Sending emails is certainly one of the most effective ways to get in touch with the customers. And since it is the holiday season, emailing the customers can be a great way to trigger purchases for your business. However, you need to make sure you don’t go overboard with the idea of sending numerous emails to your customers during Christmas.

An average person receives around 90 emails a day, most of which go unread. If you think sending too many emails will increase your chances of triggering a purchase, you are sorely mistaken. Sending too many emails might be invasive and annoying. If the customers realize that you send emails too frequently, they might prefer to unsubscribe.

  1. Sending out generic holiday greetings

Sending holiday greetings to the customers is a nice gesture. In fact, you can use it as a tool to reconnect with your old customers. However, sending generic emails does not serve the purpose if your agenda is to save some bucks. Mass emailing is even worse. If you actually care about the customers, you should put some efforts into sending them personalized holiday greetings.

As you may realize, losing a customer is not the end of marketing initiatives. You need to build a solid long-term relationship with the customers by delighting them. The holiday season is a perfect time to do so. Instead of being thrifty, take time to make your holiday greetings more personalized and memorable for your customers.

  1. Repeating the same marketing strategy every year

If you think implementing the same holiday marketing strategy every year is going to work for you, you are mistaken. You cannot get away with the same material and approach your clients the same way when Christmas is just around the corner. People, especially your long-term customers, can easily recognize if you are using the same strategy every holiday season.

Try something new and innovative every year. You don’t want to lose your reputation by playing it safe. Yes, revisiting the same campaign every year is affordable and convenient. But, if you look at the bigger picture, you are actually losing credibility.

  1. Not tracking the marketing efforts

Running a business during the holiday season is certainly different than the rest of the year. Sales shoot up during this time of the year, mostly because the customers fall prey to the shopping frenzy. However, the customers usually buy most of the things for others, not for themselves. This is why you need to track sales differently.

You may think tracking these results is futile, as they do not tell much about customer behavior. But, you should not skip these data, as they can still tell you a great deal about the shopping patterns of the customers. So, the idea is to track the results, keeping it in mind that the end user of the product may or may not be the one who is making the purchase. It is complicated, which is why you need to double your efforts during Christmas.

  1. Waiting out the opportunities

There is a right time for everything. You don’t want to begin your holiday campaigns too early as it might fail to make an impact when the actual holiday time arrives. However, waiting too long can also be bad for your business. As you should know, preparing your marketing strategy for a busy season takes a lot of planning. If you start working on your holiday marketing plan late in the year, you will definitely miss out the early shoppers.

September is probably the right time to start working on a marketing strategy. You can brainstorm for ideas and coordinate between sales and marketing teams to prepare a killer marketing strategy. This will help you to complete your strategy before things get hectic. Also, you will be more likely to influence the early shoppers if you roll out the strategy by the first week of November.

  1. Not watching out for the rivals

During the busy time of Christmas, you may like to focus on your sales more than anything. However, don’t forget that your rivals are also putting a lot of efforts to increase their sales during the time of festivity. The chances are that they are already targeting your customers.

So, even if you are occupied with other work, do keep an eye on your competitors during the holiday season. Observing their moves and strategies can help you learn a lot. If a rival is trying to steal your customers, you can take proper measures to prevent that.

  1. Investing in complicated campaigns

It is common for the marketers to get caught up in the holiday experience and do more than what was required. Yes, you do need a special strategy for Christmas. However, flooding the social media with lavish graphics and too many holiday slogans can over-saturate things for your audiences.

Instead of going overboard with your holiday marketing gimmicks, try to keep things as simple as possible. Providing the audiences with well-constructed, to-the-point messages will work better than the marketing extravaganza.

Being a marketer or a business owner might not be easy during the festive season. However, you can still have things under your control if you can avoid the aforementioned mistakes this holiday season. Here’s wishing all the best to your endeavors!

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