Keeping Your Marketing Efforts Strong after the Holidays

Once the holidays are over, the decorations have come down and the presents have all been bought, will your cash registers still be busy? For many businesses, the end of the holiday season marks the end of the busy season. But those months don’t have to be slow ones for your marketing efforts. It's important to keep your marketing going strong, especially in the “slow” months.

For more than 25 years, hundreds of thousands of sales professionals and entrepreneurs have turned to Dan Kennedy, the “millionaire maker”, for help with their marketing.

Dan Kennedy, founder of GKIC, is a big believer in the power of direct response marketing. Usually January is a time when your customers are more worried about paying off Christmas bills than they are about making new purchases. Using some of Kennedy's marketing strategies could help you get more customers to take action in January

• Use attention-grabbing headlines.  Whether you decide to send out postcards or emails, you must be sure to keep your material from ending up in a potential customer's trash. Kennedy recommends “stealing from the best”, so keep an eye out for headlines and subject lines that get your attention. They are often the ones that start out “How to--” or “10 Easy Ways to--”. 
• Always have something to offer.  You want your customers to respond immediately, so give them an offer like “buy one, get the second one free,” or even “call for your free estimate”. The point is to give them something that will elicit a response. 
• Have a deadline.  Your goal is immediate responses. Always create a sense of urgency for customers with offers that expire by a certain date. Don't be afraid to be a little pushy, go ahead and say “buy now.”
• Follow up.  Then follow up some more. Anyone who calls, emails, or visits your business should be added to your mailing list. Send out follow-up emails to customers with abandoned carts, or to customers who have recently made a purchase to tell them about other products which complement the one they just bought (and give them a discount if they buy right away).
• Keep track.  Since you are asking for a specific action within a certain frame of time, it's easy to measure how much response a particular campaign you've received. This can help you make informed decisions as to how successful your campaigns are, and how they can be used.

Successful marketing is a year round operation. Even though the holidays are in the rear view mirror, don’t let the long winter months slow it down.