5 Marketing to-do’s for the Summer Holiday

The Christmas / New Year break. The two to four weeks where a lot of businesses shut down completely and relax. Well, if you are a big business that is. If you are a small lean business like us at Copy Express, you shut down because most of your suppliers and customers are shut down. It doesn’t mean that you can completely rest because every day you are closed is another day you are not earning income or getting new clients. So if you are going to be ‘paying’ for the time you are closed it’s a good opportunity to get the jump on your marketing planning for the new year. In this article I’m going to suggest 5 todo items you can do for your marketing planning that doesn’t take a lot of time to do, but will save you time and money in the future and make easier to keep on top of it when you are working again.

1. Look at the coming year events for ones you can use

It’s easy to plan for the public holidays, just hop over to the New Zealand at Work website and have a read. Not only do they have the actual and observed dates for public holidays current and next 5 years, they also do all the provincial anniversaries and highlight when Mondayized versions of holidays fall. If you are in a business that is effected by school kids being on holiday then the Ministry of Education website list when they happen and what years get off when. If you also tie any marketing into local or regional events then visit your city or regional council website for they all have pages listing upcoming events. For us at Copy Express we look at not only look at the events listed by Lower Hutt City Council but also Upper Hutt City and Wellington too. It’s a smart idea to book a regular time in your diary to check these sites as they keep a rolling window of events of 4-8 weeks out allowing you plenty of time to get some special marketing prepared for a new event you may want join in on.

2. Write up a ‘top-10 events’ list

Having looked up when the holidays and events a going to take place, this is a great time to work out when the most important times for your marketing. Everyone has a limited budget for marketing, both in time and money, so by sorting out a list of dates from the most important, it allows for you to best allocate your resources to which marketing plans are the most important. It also gives you a rough idea if you have some ‘slack’ in your budget to allow for unexpected marketing needs. The list doesn’t have to be a top ten either, put down as few or as many ideas or events you want to marketing for and then sort them out in order. Doing this will help you sort out what your market is and that may surprise you where you run a promotion if you haven’t looked in to it too closely before.

3. Set up a Marketing/Design ‘Bible’

A marketing/design bible is a cornerstone of all the big companies and should be part of your tool set too. In the most basic terms, the bible is a document that lists all the standards that a company uses when they use for any material that is created, from signage to stickers. Some design bibles have become so well known that they have created design movements (which are like art movements). For a small business, a design/marketing bible is just a simple document that set down a series of rules how all your stuff looks. It’s a list of the fonts you use, the colours, logos, and even examples of flyers, business cards, emails, etc. It does take a little time to set one of these up but then you will have the go to list of everything meaning that when you create something new, or ask a company like Copy Express to design something, it will speed up the process immensely and save a lot of guesswork.

4. Create a set of Generic Flyers

I’ve designed a lot of flyers for a lot of business and I’ve found the best way to make your life easier when it come to doing them is to work from a template. It follows on from having a bible for your material as it speeds up the process, keeps a consistent look for everything, and all round results in a more professional looking job. You don’t have to create finished fliers, just a basic framework that you can quickly adapt to each marketing project you have. If you don’t feel confident in doing that, why not talk to us at Copy Express. We can design generic flyers templates for you in the application you feel most comfortable using with a simple guide of how to use the template

5. Setup of an idea book/box

Sometimes the best ideas for marketing are other peoples. Why not grab a box or a copy safe folder and have it to keep flyers and other marketing stuff you receive in the mail box. As stuff comes in anything you think is a really good design, gets the point across, or come from your competitors, why not keep it aside for ideas. Jot a few notes on it, maybe highlight what really caught your eye. If you want to go really all out maybe write up some notes on how you would have done that item or how you could use the same idea/format. By doing this you will have a great idea of what works and what you can use that suits your style of business.
So that’s the 5 to do list item for your summer holidays. It doesn’t have to take too much time, but in return could save you a lot of time when you are busy working again.