How to Prepare for Seasonal Marketing

It's not uncommon to have a business that relies heavily on certain seasons for increased sales volume. For most retailers, and other industries such as travel, the December holiday season is a significant time for sales. Depending on the type of business you own, back-to-school or other times of year are also busy.

You will need to plan your marketing campaign well in advance of your  .  busy season or seasons. A reverse timeline, created by working backwards from what you consider to be the kick-off of your busy season, will help you get printed materials in full gear with plenty of time to spare. Give yourself some flexibility. Your staffing needs may also require careful planning. For example, you may divide up the money in your budget to cover creative freelancers during the off-season and then to hire extra retail help during the busy season. Therefore, budget accordingly.

If your business has various high points throughout the year, try to piggyback one promotional and marketing campaign onto the next. For example, a popular East Coast amusement park ran a series of ads throughout the spring and into the summer — their busiest time of year. After Labor Day, they waited a month and brought a variation of the same marketing campaign back for their special Halloween party and activities. Once you've established a marketing campaign, you can usually run with it throughout the year with variations to fit the different busy seasons.

During your nonpeak season, unless you are closed, you will also want to keep your brand in front of your target audience. Save money by having fewer advertisements and less promotional activity, but continue to promote brand recognition so that you will draw instant attention to the seasonal marketing plan once you launch it.

Timing and preparedness are keys to handling seasonal activities. Often off-season planning is as time-consuming as the actual selling is during the busy season. As soon as one season concludes, some of your staff should be working on the next season. Be careful, however, not to be too hasty in launching seasonal campaigns. Trying to sell people on Christmas decorations in late August will be lost on most people who are still in a summer state of mind.