Tips To Prepare Your Business For The Holidays: Planning Your Marketing Content Early Means Less Stress And More Success This Holiday Season

My Number One Tip For Planning A Successful Holiday Season Is *Drum Roll* 

📣 Start early! 

The holidays are a busy time for every business owner. Whether you offer products or services, you’ve got sales to promote, social media content to create, a business to run and (hopefully) some holiday fun to enjoy, too! 

Getting organized, thinking strategically, and making some magical holiday content now (yes, now!) is going to give your business the best shot at a successful holiday season. Even better, you’ll be able to kick back with a sugar cookie oat latte (Starbucks, I’m looking at you! 👀) and enjoy some of that ho-ho-holiday cheer with your family and friends.

Read on for tips on preparing your business for the holidays. 

It’s Never Too Early To Start Thinking About Your Holiday Plans.

Did you know that 24% of Canadians start their holiday shopping in October? (Confession: I *may* already have a bin of Christmas gifts stashed in my basement. #GuiltyAsCharged) It’s true. And, this little nugget of information tells us two really important things.

First, it tells us that a whole lot of Canadians love celebrating the holidays by gifting products or services to their friends and family. (Yay!) 

Second,  if your business is waiting until November to roll out holiday content, you’re missing a huge opportunity for sales. 

Getting your products and services in front of people when they’re ready to buy is a pretty critical part of a successful holiday marketing campaign. So, if people are thinking about what to put under the tree in October, you’d better start planning and creating content in September.

Making Your List And Checking It Twice (Aka. Planning For The Holidays)

If you know you’re ready to prepare your business for the holidays but aren’t sure where to start, it’s time to make a list. Here are some things I recommend thinking about when you sit down to plan your holiday content and workflow. 

Products and/or services you want to promote

Do you have specific sales targets in mind? 

What products or services do your customers love this time of year

Are you launching anything new?

Messaging

How can you support your audience this time of year?

Email marketing 

Will you offer exclusive promotions to subscribers?

Do you want to create a branded holiday greeting to connect with the people on your mailing list? 

Facebook Ads 

How much is your holiday marketing ad budget? 

Holidays and important dates (including your own time off!) 

How will these dates impact your timelines? 

How can you craft a clever Out Of Office message? 

Creating inclusive holiday messaging

Market dates and shipping cut-offs 

If you’re a product-based business these are important! You’ll need to leave yourself enough time to make, pack and ship your products and give your customers enough time to shop!  

Once you’ve planned these different elements, it’s time to get to work creating and scheduling all that wonderful content. 

How To Put Your Holiday Content or Marketing Plan Into Action. 

Once you’ve set some goals and planned out how you want to get your products or services in front of your ideal audience, the next step is to carve out some time and start creating that content. Get out your calendar (or hop into an app like ClickUp) and block out specific time for: 

✅ Taking holiday-themed photos (Need some inspiration? We’ve got a blog for that!) 

✅ Creating graphics 

✅ Designing emails 

✅ Writing social captions 

✅ Drafting an OOO message & holiday notification for clients

✅ Scheduling content in advance 

Remember, September is an ideal time to start getting your business ready for the holidays. It might feel early but it really is the sweet spot. It’s far enough ahead of the holidays that you’ll have plenty of time to get strategic but not SO far ahead that you can’t tap into that holiday spirit and get creative! 

Dig out some of your favourite decorations, put on some holiday tunes (I think we all know I’ll be singing along with T-Swift’s Songs of the Season album) and think about how you can talk about your products or services with a fun holiday spin. 

Schedule Your Content Now To Avoid Holiday Stress Later

Once you’ve got your emails drafted and your social captions written you can start to pepper your audience with holiday content as you ease into October. Scheduling your posts, emails and FB Ads is an investment of time upfront but it’s one that’s going to pay off later (literally) when you’re busy packing orders or booking calls instead of scrambling to come up with content. 

When it comes to scheduling your social content, there are lots of scheduling tools to choose from. I like Plann, Later, Planoly, and Facebook’s Creator Studio.  For managing your mailing list, I’m a big fan of FloDesk and ConvertKit. Their templates are gorgeous and easy to use and you can incorporate brand elements like colours and logos with a few quick clicks. 

Set Yourself Up For More Success And Less Stress By Preparing Your Business For The Holidays Early.

The holidays might seem like they’re a long way off but for small business, the countdown starts ticking early. To give your business the best chance at a successful holiday season you need to plan ahead and get your products and services in front of your target audience’s eyes sooner rather than later. 

Save yourself the stress that comes with last minute content creation and spur of the moment sales by planning for the holidays early. Your content will be more strategic and streamlined and it will get to people when they’re ready to buy—not as an afterthought. Plus, you’ll give yourself the gift of downtime to enjoy the holidays the way you want to.