It’s August. The kids are going back to school, summer’s winding down, and big box stores are breaking out their Christmas trees and decorations. In the business world, that means we’re heading into 4th Quarter. This is the quarter of the year that can make or break a business. Black Friday (named because it’s the day of the year that companies are finally ‘in the black’), Christmas Shopping, it’s all coming up.

Now is the time to start planning your 4th Quarter marketing and advertising to grab the biggest share of the holiday shopping cash. Everything should be planned out now before you get busy so you’re ready to pull the trigger at just the right time.

Here are 5 things Local Business need to start preparing now:

1. Make a Marketing Calendar.
   Grab a calendar or use one online and plot out Black Friday, Christmas Eve, any big events going on in your town, and plan out your special events and sales accordingly. Printing and signage usually take about a week for delivery. Mailers can take up to 2 weeks. Design can take anywhere from a couple days to a full month, depending on the complexity and whether or not your whole team is in agreement. So count backwards from those big days and you’ll get an idea of the rapidfire deadlines that are coming up.
2. Choose a voice.
   What does that mean? You have to decide on how you want your business to look and feel during the holidays. Do you want a very classy, elegant look with formal, scripty fonts? Or do you want something bright, bold and fun? Do you want your marketing to touch on the religious aspects, or do you want to go more for the pop culture side? Do you want to focus on specific holidays, like Christmas, Hanukkah, Kwanzaa, Festivus, etc., or go with a more inclusive “Happy Holidays”? Figure out how you want your holiday marketing to look because all of your marketing and advertising need to follow that one voice.
3. Pick your strategy.
   How would you like to advertise? Do you want to run ads in local newspapers and magazines? Do a mailer to your existing customers? Send out a broad mailer to everyone in town? Do you want window decorations and signage? Are you updating your website and social media? Once you have that list in your head, you can go back to your calendar and figure out when each of those things needs to be delivered. From there, count back and see when they need to be ordered.
4. Line up your designers & vendors.
   If you’re outsourcing your graphic design, web design or social media, touch base with your designer now before they get too busy. As we get deeper into the holidays, we see a lot of panicked customers with super urgent projects and impossible deadlines. We can’t always do our best work when we get a call at 4:59 in the afternoon and need files delivered first thing the next morning. If you meet with your designers and printers now and discuss your Marketing Calendar (see Step 1), they can do a lot more planning and block out time on their schedules for your projects as top priority. You should also check in with your printers and sign suppliers, as the few weeks leading up to Black Friday are insane. Projects booked during this time may take longer than any other time of the year. You’ll get much better work and save yourself the stress, panic, and extra costs that come with rushed projects or missed opportunities if you talk to everyone now.
5. Take advantage of Surefire’s FREE consultation.
   This article is made from our very own checklist for ourselves and for our clients. Since we handle every item on this list for our clients, plus we do all of our graphic design, printing, signs and more, we can worry about projects and deadlines for you so you can focus on running your business. You don’t need to juggle different designers, printers, sign shops, and more. You will have one point of contact at Surefire, so one single phone call or email takes care of everything.

Call Surefire Graphics & Marketing today at (484) 378-4033 to schedule your FREE consultation.
We’ll set up a free marketing calendar for you, help you choose your brand’s voice, help you develop your strategy, and set a schedule and budget for delivery of your ads and marketing materials. There’s no obligation – you can take this valuable info and use it to do everything yourself if you’d like.