Holiday Marketing - How to NOT Slam On The Breaks In Q4 | 97
If Q4 makes you let out a big sigh, you’re not alone… The mad marketing rush at the end of the year is enough to make any business owner want to pull out their hair. But as an entrepreneur, either going at it solo or with a small team, where does that leave you in your Q4 marketing?
If you decide to take a vacation or time off, does that mean you have to miss out on the marketing opportunities? And with everything going on, do you really have time to invest more energy in your business? Here are some things to consider when planning your Q4 marketing goals, and how to keep the business going - even if you take a break.
#1 Mindset
Walking into Q4, you need to do a mindset check. It will seem like everyone is doing everything. So before you start comparing, set your goals and ask yourself, “Where do I want to spend my energy?”
Then, make a game plan for how you will balance it. Between back to school. Holidays. Vacations. Client work. Marketing. Social media. You need to get real about what you can handle.
#2 Consistency
There is nothing out there like consistently. Even if you are stepping away from your business for a break or vacation, you need to consider consistency when planning your Q4 marketing.
I always recommend planning your quarters in advance. This doesn’t have to be set in stone but having a general road map will keep you from having a mid-quarter freak-out when time is getting more and more limited. (This may be coming from experience 🙈)
#3 Holistic Marketing
I talk about holistic marketing a lot because I feel like it’s the best thing you can do for your business. And Q4 is a great example of that. As ad costs grow more expensive during the holiday season, and extra time really just doesn’t exist - you can rely on holistic marketing.
This can include repurposing content to save yourself time. You can lean on your blog, YouTube channel, or podcast to keep nurturing your audience while you enjoy the holiday season. You can still provide value and nurture, even without investing ALL of your time and money.
#4 Batching
Nothing will be better for your Q4 marketing plan than batching! When you know time is limited, prepare your content ahead of time in order to save yourself the stress. Of course, you can also take a break for a bit - such as stopping emails for a few weeks - but I don’t recommend ghosting your people for three whole months. And if you are taking a break, let them know including when you’ll be back to hold yourself accountable!
#5 Nurture and List Building Ads
If you still want to promote via ads, nurture and list-building ads are the way to go for Q4 marketing. Not only are they less expensive, but they help attract new people, grow your audience, nurture relationships, and warm up potential clients. Focus your holiday selling on your warmer existing audience like your email list.
Remember that as you're looking at your Q4 marketing plan, you get to decide what is worth your time. If you don’t want to host a Black Friday sale, then don’t! And if you do, then do! There is a lot of pressure surrounding marketing in Q4, but you get to decide how it looks and feels.
Don't forget to follow me on Instagram @heyitsjenzaia and tune in next Saturday for more business tips and strategies!
xo, Jenzaia
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Episode Transcript:
[00:00:06]
Hey there, I'm Jenzaia and this is Market Scale Growth, a podcast created for ambitious entrepreneurs looking to have a bigger impact on the world, achieve freedom, flexibility and ultimately make more money with weekly strategy sessions and inspiring stories from fellow teachers just like you. My goal here is to help you create a customized marketing strategy so you can grow your teacher business beyond your wildest dream.
[00:00:36]
Okay, so before we hop into the episode, I just want to remind you to download my free guide to Facebook targeting audiences. It has been created specifically for teacher business owners and I go through the warm lookalike and cold interest-based audiences that you need to have set up to be running Facebook and Instagram ads. There are checklists and brainstorming pages so that you know you have everything. But as an exciting special, I'm opening up some audience audit calls where you can hop onto a 15 minutes zoom call with me and you'll get my eyes on your audiences so that you can make sure not only you have all the audiences, but they truly are perfect for your business. So head to Marketscalegrow.com/Audienceaudit to book your free audience audit call today.
[00:01:40]
Okay, now into the episode. Hello and welcome to Market Scale Grow. My name is Enza and this is a Saturday strategy session. If you are listening to this episode in real time, it is the beginning of November, which means holiday season just got started with Halloween, and it's just going to continue to ramp up until the new year and then we all go, I need a nap. That's how I always feel in January, like it just goes, go.
[00:02:15]
Those last couple of months of the year fly by and I just want to slow everything down. So today we're going to be talking about holiday marketing. But mostly what happens now if you stop marketing over the holidays because it's either too expensive or you're too busy or your people aren't showing up, so why bother, right? And really, this entire episode is focused on considering the impact of your actions today on your business in three months, six months, nine months from now. And so I know I told this story before, I talked about it a lot over the summer, but my first full year in business over the summer, and mostly like the end of July and August, I slammed on the brakes.
[00:03:04]
I was afraid of finding new clients. I wasn't trying to find any new clients because I was going back to school. I was only part-time. I went back two days a year for the 21-22 school year. And then this year, 20, 22, 20, 23, I'm back in school one day a week.
[00:03:20]
So in the summer 2021, I was terrified of what back to school was going to look like. I had no idea if I was going to have enough time to continue my business. And so I kind of just stopped. I stopped marketing, I stopped selling, I stopped promoting, I stopped all of the things. I think I even did a podcast break for a bit and just, yeah, paused.
[00:03:42]
And then when school started and I had the three days a week to work on my business, plus the weekends and yada, yada, yada. And I had tons of time to do all of the things like I thought I was going to, but I was terrified that I wouldn't. It took me three months to build back up and to really feel like I was going again. It took until December. I remember just feeling so sluggish and that nothing was happening and nothing was working and everything had been working so well in April, May and June.
[00:04:12]
And then I just thought in September it was just going to snap my fingers. I was going to start doing all the things again and it would just be the exact same. But there was such a backlog of that brake slam that I just felt it so hard for so long and it was brutal. It was brutal. And so this summer, summer 2022, I was very intentional about not slamming the brakes on and just trying to stay in momentum slowing down, but not like completely taking my foot off the gas and just like a little bit more coasting, but no brake slamming.
[00:04:50]
And my coach, she attuned it to the pilot light in her water tank water heater. Now, we don't have a pilot light in our water heater, but we do in our furnace. And so I totally understand the concept. In the wintertime when we're running our furnace all the time, it kicks on and it heats up. The house heats up and then the furnace shuts off and it's just the pilot light that's on.
[00:05:15]
And so my coach was like, you kept your pilot light on. You kept doing all the basic things so that when you needed the heat, you could turn it back on. And now that the summer slowdown is done and I'm back from vacation and all of those things, I can just turn it back on. But I don't have to go in and figure out how to relight the pilot light, right? And so that's really what I want you to think about over this crazy holiday season when you know things are going to be more expensive, when you know that their people are, including yourself, are going to be busier and you know that people are going to be showing up a little bit less in their business.
[00:05:53]
How can you keep your pilot light on? Now, here are my tips. The first one is a mindset thing. You have to wrap your mind around knowing that it is going to be more expensive to run ads this time of year. Typically, it is going to be busier for you.
[00:06:12]
You're going to have a harder time prioritizing content and prioritizing showing up. So what can you do now to prepare for that? So just in your mind, how can you prepare for being busier and then also knowing that people aren't going to be showing up on social media as they are busier with family and friends and they're enjoying the holiday season? People are just not going to be on social media as much as they are at other times of the year. So my first tip is to just get your mind ready for it and know it's coming and just accept that it is a more expensive busier time of year and then we move on.
[00:06:54]
Right? The second thing is to be consistent. And consistency wins over time, every single time. That means even if you are going to be taking a break from your long-form content, from your emails, you want to be as consistent as you possibly can be leading up to that break and then have the plan to get back into it after your break is done so that your break doesn't extend longer than you're planning. So, for example, right now we are planning on taking a break from the podcast December 17, 24th, 31st, and January 7.
[00:07:28]
So it's a month-long break. I do have an interview that might be coming and so it might shift things. So it may only be three weeks. We may not take December 17 off, we'll see what happens. But we're definitely, definitely not releasing a piece of content on the 24th or the 31st.
[00:07:46]
No, thank you, we're taking a break. But, yeah, like I said, we may shift things because of interviews and so the break may be shorter, but I also already well, not quite, but before the break starts, like by December 15, I will have a plan for quarter one and what the episodes are in quarter one. And I do this every single quarter by the 15th of the month before I have a plan for the next quarter. So that's like December 15, this quarter 1, march 15 is quarter 2, June 15 is for quarter three, and then September 15 is for quarter four. Right?
[00:08:24]
And just so that I know at least 15 days before the quarter starts, I have all those episodes kind of mapped out and yes, things change, yes, they shift, yes, all to all those things. But it gives me a guide of, like, what direction I'm going. And so make sure that before you go on your holiday break or things get too busy, that you have a plan of when exactly you want to be taking your break, how you're going to get to that time, and then when are you coming back. And at least, what is that very first blog post or very first podcast episode after the break so that you don't have to be sitting there in your holiday fatigue trying to come up with something. And if it changes, it changes.
[00:09:07]
And that's totally fine. But just having a plan is really important. The second piece of advice that I have I guess the third piece of advice that I have is holistic marketing, which is what I always preach, is going to help you negate some of those increased costs. It's going to help you have a plan for repurposing your content. And so I really, really recommend that you focus on providing value at this time of year over, really pushing the sales.
[00:09:37]
Because the value that you put in now and the effort you put into creating high value content and serving your community pays dividends. Long term, consistent high value content is going to help nurture your audience, build relationships, and bring new people in on autopilot. Because your long-form content is in search engines. If you're using Pinterest, the Pins are continuing to get out there. People are still looking for podcasts.
[00:10:07]
And so if a new person finds your podcast, hopefully, they'll binge. All of these efforts that you're putting into your long-form content will continue to pay. It also gives you a huge bank of content that you can pull from to repurpose into social media posts and so you can pull quotes from your long-form content, you can do teaching posts, you can do reals, like all kinds of different things that you can pull from those long-form content pieces. So that you're not trying to think of new content, you're not trying to think of new ideas, you're just pulling from those old ideas. So that is my next tip is just really lean into your holistic marketing plan and batch it so focus on providing value, but batch it.
[00:10:52]
So start now. Get the content ready for all the way up to and through the holiday crazies so that you're not like sitting there wanting to go Black Friday shopping or wanting to go holiday shopping or wanting to just take a day with your family to enjoy the season so you can't do those things you want to do because you have to do the content right or your content sacrifices. So now you still have a little bit of time. A little bit of time. Try to batch those and try to focus on the value and not just like, how can I make a sale?
[00:11:31]
Okay, next tip kind of goes along with that, but just remember the importance of nurture ads, list building ads, brand awareness, or supercharging ads. I like to call them, where you're bringing in new people, you're nurturing people with your ads. You're kind of creating this omnipresence where you're always there and people are thinking, oh, Gen Zia showing up. I never stopped seeing her. Not to the point of, oh, I've seen this ad from Gen Zia like 170 times, I need to stop seeing it. Not that, but just like, oh, I saw Jenze again, I saw her again.
[00:12:12]
Oh, I saw her ad again, there's another piece of content, maybe I should listen to her podcast. You're just always showing up in all kinds of different places. And those nurture ads where you're just driving attention to your long form content without necessarily even having a call to action, without trying to get someone on your email list, without trying to really do anything, you're just showing up in front of them. Again, those are great for this time of year because they're cheap ads to run, they grow your audience and they add those micro touchpoints. So a few, like a ton of episodes ago, I talked about the difference between macro and micro touch points.
[00:12:55]
And so macro touch points are what you're doing right now, listening to a full block, a full podcast episode. That's a macro touch point. It's big, it's huge, right? Buy micro touch points are getting more and more and more important. But it takes like 40 to 50 micro touchpoints to get that brand recognition and get someone to the point where they're really consuming your content and considering buying.
[00:13:19]
And micro touch points are things like they're scrolling through their Instagram feed and they see a post of yours. They don't even necessarily need to stop, but their brain goes, oh, that's a Gen Zia post, I recognize the Burgundy, or oh, that's a Gen Zepost, there's her logo. Whatever it might be, they're recognizing it. So they watch a couple of seconds of reality, they listen to a minute of your life. They sign up for your email list and they see your email in their inbox.
[00:13:44]
They don't even open it, nothing. They just, oh, there's Shenzhen in my inbox. That's brand recognition. That's their micro touchpoint. And the more micro touchpoints that someone has with you, the more likely they'll start to move to those macro touch points of actually consuming your content, clicking the read more, opening the email, listening to the podcast, right?
[00:14:05]
And that is really important. And nurture ads and list building ads are going to help you with those micro touch points and you won't actually need to be showing up everywhere again and again and again. You won't actually need to be creating any new content. You're just promoting the lead magnet you already have and you're just promoting the blog posts or the podcast episodes that you already have. And so nurture ads and list building ads are key at this time of year because again, low cost and help you with that.
[00:14:34]
Omnipresence. Okay, this is not a tip. This is just my last point for you to consider because there is no right answer here in my mind. It really depends on your business and it really depends on your personal beliefs and your personal feelings. So this is just a point to consider and that is, do you want to have a Black Friday sale of some sort or a promotion?
[00:15:00]
Do you want to do something before Black Friday or after Black Friday, do you want to do any sort of holiday promotion at all? Now, you do have to remember that every single year, Black Friday seems to get more and more and more saturated. So if you are going to be doing any sort of Black Friday promotion, I highly recommend, that is, to your engaged community only that's your email list or your Facebook group, I wouldn't be trying to do a gigantic promotion to people who have never heard of you before. Keep it small, keep it to your warm audience, and make sure you frame it as a thank you. Like thank you for being such a loyal person in my audience.
[00:15:42]
We're offering this for loyal followers only kind of piece because then it goes as a thank you and it's another way of providing that value and being in service of your audience. And yes, yes, I understand that the goal of a Black Friday promotion or any holiday sale is to make sales. But if you're framing it as a thank you, then it just comes off less icky to your audience. And again, you do not have to do a Black Friday sale. I don't think I'm going to be doing one this year.
[00:16:12]
It is very, very saturated. I didn't love doing it last year. It just didn't feel right for me. And so I don't think I'm going to do one this year because I want my sales and my promotions to feel good for me, but also feel good for my audience. So that's just my thoughts on the Black Friday holiday promotions.
[00:16:31]
Again, like I said, you need to do what feels right and what is best for your business and what is in line with you and your values, and there is no wrong answer. So I hope that these tips helped because I don't want any of you to slam the brakes on and then in March, still feel like I'm still paying for this. So again, if you can boil this episode down to anything, my number one tip for you is focus on providing value throughout the holiday season by batching your content now. So thank you. Thank you so much for listening.
[00:17:07]
I'll be back with another episode next Saturday in your ears, so stay tuned.
[00:17:16]
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