How to Market Yourself During December

For those of you who will be busy this season shipping holiday orders and selling at gift fairs, I’ve come up with a few ways to sneak in some marketing efforts to follow-up on when things slow down again. Rather than do a big marketing blast when everyone’s concentrating on holiday stuff, just be available and don’t disappear behind your mountain of packages. If you’ve been agonizing over how to market yourself during December, read on:

Entice people to join your mailing list!

If you’re at a craft fair, you can create a sign-up sheet, or maybe even have a fish bowl to collect business cards for a giveaway. On your website or social media, try letting people know what they’re going to get if they join the list.

Connect with people on social media

Connect with clients, customers, colleagues, and people you wish were clients, customers, or colleagues on social media. It only takes a few minutes to reply kindly to their post or share something with them you think they’ll find interesting, and over time these little “chats” can build into a relationship.

Send your newsletter

If you have a mailing list but aren’t sticking to a schedule, find a way to get in touch with those people fairly regularly. You don’t have to send the most amazing content ever every time (I have a hard time with this myself, wanting everything to always be mind-boggling) – it’s better to check in now and again with small bits of news and items of interest than to surprise people with a giant newsletter after six months of silence.

Maybe just a quick paragraph and photo about a new line you have? Information about holiday shipping deadlines? Sales going on that week? A little customer appreciation giveaway? Remember to make your content valuable to your customer, but don’t pressure yourself so hard to make it perfect that you can’t get it out at all.

Make a Pinterest board

You can either set up one that promotes your work (but remember not to spend all your time on Pinterest promoting your work) or something that shows off your business’ style. Once you have your board up (which only takes a few seconds), then you can just pin something to it as you come across it, and don’t have to invest much time.

Reply to whoever is getting in touch with you.

This could just be keeping on top of email, or could be replying to comments on your blog, replying to comments on your Facebook page, or thanking people for mentions or retweets on Twitter. Be approachable and friendly and people will remember you.

Send a card

Have a pile of thank you cards at the ready to send. These can either be thrown in packages or sent at the close of projects/collaborations with clients or colleagues. We send thank you cards at the end of each project, and send our Christmas cards to our clients each year.

Whew, that wasn’t so bad, was it? Then, when you’re feeling ready to go in the new year, you’ll still have interested people who are ready to hear from you!

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