Blue Horizon Venture Consulting Blog

Business Ideas: Don’t Allow Personal Bias During the Holidays

Tweet

 

I have to admit it – I find the whole over-abundance of holiday marketing to be disgusting.   Black Friday.  Cyber Monday.  People acting like idiots to stampede into stores to save $30 on a waffle maker.  So my immediate instinct it to simple shut it all out, mute the TV during the countless jewelry commercials (and the idiot lady from Target) I’m forced to watch during football games and let the shopping season slide by until we’re closer to the end of the year and people start to get into the “real” holiday spirit.

But then I take a step back and look at the statistics.  Many retailers make a huge percentage of their income in the 4^th quarter and in December.   The aforementioned jewelry industry, for example, derives almost 40% of its income in the 4^th quarter, and 23% of a total years’ sales in the month of December alone.   Of course when I see the commercial on TV, during a football game, with football players actually standing there in uniform talking about diamonds, I start to understand why.  I have to concede, that one was pretty clever – at least the first ten times I saw it, anyway.

At the end of the day, the important lesson for business owners making business plans is that people at this time of year (and certain others as well – Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Back to School) are in a buying frame of mind.   All the other marketers have primed the pump and created the frenzy.  Now it’s just a matter of baiting a hook and casting your line in the water in a way that won’t get tangled up with all the other lines out there, yet you can benefit from the universal buyers’ mindset.

Or course there are some things that you just can’t sell in December.  Try selling real estate or renting apartments – that’s tough sledding when people are more of a mindset of baking cookies, putting up decorations, and going to Granma’s house.  So your product or service can’t be too far off the mark from the other things being offered. 

For business, the end of the year and the New Year may actually present to the best opportunity to benefit from season.  Many people take this time of year to reflect on the past year and plan for the next.  Some need to make year-end purchases in order to get a more immediate tax write off, while others are gearing up to launch a new initiative or venture on January 1^st. 

So the key here is to know your market and then figure out a way that you might be able to tap into the buying mood that comes but once a year!  If you can figure that out and put your own seasonal campaign in place, you too could see a nice holiday “bump” this time of year.

Todd Smith, CEO

Blue Horizon Venture Consulting

904-372-9222