Clarence Fisher: Welcome back to local market monopoly. I am Clarence Fischer, your host. And today we're going to talk about your holiday marketing strategy. Yes, yes. Before the holidays, you know, last year I got caught off guard again, and I thought, you know what enough of this. We do the same thing, the same holidays every single year. What is our problem? So I vowed last Christmas, last holiday season that this season would be different and it has been. And I'm going to show you exactly how we're going to monopolize this Christmas so that you can be ready for not only this holiday season, but also the other holidays for 2021, including the 2021 holiday season. So hold on, we'll be right back.

: You're listening to local market monopoly with Clarence Fisher, uncovering the tools tactics and strategies. The most successful small businesses use in their local market and own the block.

Clarence Fisher: Alright. We are back. Thanks for sticking with me. Now, let's talk about this. I noticed in the intro, I said this Christmas and you know, for, I don't know how long it's been. There's just been this huge debate on whether or not to say Christmas, if you believe in Christmas or whatever, or people, other people should, all, all people should be saying, here's the thing. I really, I celebrate Christmas. My people, my typical client base celebrate Christmas. So the very first thing you want to do, and if you don't celebrate Christmas, I don't care. Whatever you celebrate, the very first thing that needs to happen here is you need to find out what holiday, what holidays mean the most for your clientele. I mean, and this goes throughout the entire year. I mean, there is a hotdog day that anytime that I see hotdog day come up and I get an email that says, Hey, it's national hotdog day, I guess where I'm at.

Clarence Fisher: Guess where I'm at? Nothing against Sonic, but I don't do Sonic anymore for the hotdog, I guess I just got over him, but I mean, we make our own, but anyway, see, there we go. I'm going way into hotdog day. Why would I be eating hotdogs on any other day, except for hotdog day? The problem is the day after that is cupcake day. And the problem is the day after that is pancake day. There is a day for anything and everything. So you can pick the holidays that you want to celebrate. The key point is to be, is to get into that swale, get into that buzz that's happening around that holiday, because if you're, if you're advertising during a holiday, especially a major national holiday and you're not saying anything about the holiday? You're not being paid attention to, you're going to be ignored.

Clarence Fisher: Okay. So that was my pre rant. Okay. You can say holiday season, you can say Christmas, or you can say what you want to say, and I'm going to say what I want to say. All right. So, let's move on. Can we move on to the teaching now, sir? Yes, we can. All right. So are you ready for this? Are you ready for the holiday season? I hope so. All right. So here's the deal, Christmas seems like a long way off I'm sure to a lot of people, it always does until it doesn't right until it's like right there in your face as it was for me last year, I wanted to do this 12 days of Christmas or 12 deals of Christmas thing. I think I got inspired by Amazon or another marketer or something else. Anyway, I thought, yes, 12 deals of Christmas.

Clarence Fisher: We can do that. But then I started thinking about, okay, well, what can we give a deal on? Don't want to give a deal on that. Don't want to give a deal on this is, this is kind of what you run into as a service business, right? Not really wanting to cut my prices like that. We do have some products that we can give a deal on, right? So some software, maybe some SAAS, a software that we sell, we can give discounts on that press releases. We tend to, we do that. We've got, kind of got a system on that, but you know, you really don't want to discount your consulting services, right? So how are we going to do 12 deals? I didn't get 12 deals. Maybe I could've gotten 12 deals. If we came up with them earlier, we'll have them this year.

Clarence Fisher: So if you'll just stay tuned, and this is part of what I'm going to share with you later, but stay tuned through our holiday schedule. You will see the deals that we came up with this year, but I just, I could not come up with them fast enough last year. So I told my team enough is enough. We do this every single year, and then I can't take the holidays off. Like I want to take the holidays off. It's a huge mess. So pull out the marketing calendar and we want to mark every single holiday that we are going to market for throughout the whole year. Okay. You should do the same. You should go month to month and figure out what holidays you can tie your business to. And I don't want to hear that you can't tie, your business is different.

Clarence Fisher: Yeah. Yes you can. I just told you there's a national hotdog day. You can pick something and tie your business into, okay. Now. All right. That is the mid rant rant. All right. So let's get back to the holiday season. You got opportunity. As long as you come to this with a decent strategy, right? Stop procrastinating. This is what you need to do. So number one, I already told you. You want to figure out what your people care about. If your people don't care about the hot, this particular holiday, you should not put a promotion about that, but do you want to do this every single month not even, not just as holiday season, that's coming up, find out what your audience cares about and decide. You're going to run a campaign and run a promotion about that. Okay? Now come up with an irresistible offer for them.

Clarence Fisher: Now, I just told you before that, if you're a service business, the first thing you're saying is clear time, not discounting my service. I feel you. I feel you, but what you can do. I've learned this from Frank Kern, who is an amazing marketer "Stack the Cool", I love it. That he calls "Stack the Cool". And so what this is is I'm not lowering my prices, but wait, there's more! You get this and you also get this, which will, I want to go ahead and tell them what what that this is going to do, what this is going to do. And you also get this, which will help you this, right? So think about your service. You know, if somebody takes you up for your service, then what else do they possibly need? Right? If, uh, you have a, if you're selling them email marketing software, they possibly need somebody to write emails, right?

Clarence Fisher: So maybe you get a, I don't know, an email series, right? You get a free five email series, a bonus. It's not really free. Well, I guess it is. It's a bonus. So you have your service figure out the three is a great number. If you can figure out three to three bonuses, then they get "Stack the Cool". So whether you have a product, if you have a product that you can reduce the price for Black Friday, Cyber Monday thing, yes, definitely do that. But if you have a service, you don't want to reduce the price "Stack the Cool". Either way you want to add urgency to this is a short term deal. It's only going to be for black Friday or Cyber Monday, right? And I'm just going to use this holiday, the, you know, the big holiday season, that's coming up as an example, but I want you to think and use these principles through all of your holiday promotions every single month.

Clarence Fisher: So let's take black Friday, Cyber Monday. If you really want to get jiggy, you can make those two different promotions. I typically go the lazy route and say, this is our Black Friday/Cyber Monday. And I run it all weekend long, but you want to have some urgency, okay? It's only available for this time "Stack the Cool" you get this, but wait, there's more, you get this so that you can, you get this, which will help you...You get this, so you no longer... but only until this specific time. Alright. So here's one way that you can also, I mean, you don't have to reinvent the wheel. What's a, we do this for a chiropractor client that we have. We just take what he's off. What's already working for him was, has been working all year and reframe it, and retheme it.

Clarence Fisher: We show a picture of him in a red Christmas suit. And we turn that same offer that everyone's been saying into the offer for Black Friday. So take it, take something that's already working and just reframe it. And then in turn your whole marketing scheme there, your whole theme into that holidays theme. Okay. It works. I remember when we first, I would never celebrate Halloween. We didn't celebrate. I was one of those crazy, I know I'm going to get all kind of hate mail and voicemails and all this stuff right now. But when my kids were growing up, I was that crazy parent that did not celebrate Halloween. Didn't let them celebrate Halloween. It was Nope. We're not doing it right. I know. I know. Hey, it is what it is. I mean, they're grown now. And I guess what their pay route is, right?

Clarence Fisher: So I'm sitting here, I'm thinking, I'm trying to, I need to take my own advice and we need to send out a promotion for Halloween. That's what the team said. We need to do Halloween. And I was like, uh, okay, well, since then, you know, when you get grandkids, they, all the stuff that you did raising your kids is kind of out the window. For whatever reason they can just pull. That's a whole nother story. You what you do for your grandkids. But anyway, I'm like, alright, we'll send out a Halloween promotion. It was about websites. And we said, Hey, is your website spooky? Or is it creepy or horrible or whatever. And I can't tell you how many websites, how many new website projects came in from that one promotion. So I thought from being on, all right, Halloween's on the calendar.

Clarence Fisher: Here's another thing too. If you send a promotion, you send a promotion and it works, put it on the calendar for next year because the same holidays are going to come up year after year after year. And if you make a promotional calendar and you keep that for a year or two pretty soon, you know what's going to happen. There are no surprises, you know, the revenue that's going to come in. You know, it's an awesome thing. And if you need a, if you need a swipe file on maybe some ideas, all of us are on someone's list. That is in our market. If you are floral shop, you are on the email list, newsletter of other floral shops or people who sell to floral shops, vendors, or vendor suppliers. Go through your email list and just type in like go to, if you use Gmail, go to the search and just type in a holiday, like type in labor day, and then watch all of the emails that come up that are the labor day sales.

Clarence Fisher: Maybe they were from last year. And they were just archived. That will give you ideas that you can build your offer from. Right? I heard a professional copywriter say once that amateur copywriters start from scratch, professionals steal, or borrow or model or whatever, that's why they keep swipe files. Right? So that's a quick way to get some ideas. Alrighty. So yeah. Make everything a holiday theme about that holiday. So when Halloween comes around and if you're going to promote anything about Halloween, everything should be Halloween theme. You know, some people get super crazy about Halloween just here in my neighborhood. A guy had a haunted house where people, I don't, I don't think my kids went through that, but people will go through that haunted house, but everything should be themed. We did the Halloween theme, email, all that. So for Thanksgiving, for Christmas, Oh, I want to give you a good closing out here.

Clarence Fisher: Okay. I think you got the, you got the point, find a holiday, create a, an irresistible offer 'Stack the Cool" if you're not going to give a deep discount, just keep your price the same and Stack the Cool.", add urgency, put the timer, and all that stuff, add urgency. It's only good for a certain time and turn, switch everything to the theme of that holiday. But I wanted to tell you something for Thanksgiving. And if you're a client of mine, you know that you get this very few, most businesses send out Christmas cards to their clients, to their customers. I would challenge you to send out Thanksgiving cards to your clients, to your customers. Number one, I mean, just being thankful for them thankful and send it to past clients. The clients that aren't, that maybe your relationship, your business relationship ended this year, include them.

Clarence Fisher: Be thankful for them. Tell them that I am so thankful that we did business together. I am so thankful that we are still doing business together. I am thankful. Just be grateful. I'm telling you just be grateful. I'm grateful that you're listening to this right now. And if we have done business together are doing business together or you're maybe even thinking about, I am extremely grateful and thankful to have your attention. Please believe that every single day. So I take the time every year to revisit everyone and send them a card on Thanksgiving. Now, if you want to get jiggy with that, you can put a time restricted offer there as well, nothing wrong with it, nothing wrong with it. Hey, you're a business owner. I'm still grateful, but then I'm going to give you this offer as well. Okay. So do that. And that's how you monopolize the market on the holiday. All right. So I'm going to let you go, thank you for spending time with me, and we will see you on the next episode until then! Go out and do what you have to do in order to own the block.

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