For many businesses owners, the mere mention of Christmas and marketing in the same sentence, especially in April, is enough to send them into a cold sweat. Surely, only 4 months into the year hospitality managers don’t need to start thinking about getting their festive house in order?
Actually, we suggest that they do! For corporate events and parties over Christmas, many businesses will typically start looking to book their events in late Spring / early Summer to ensure that they get the best deal at their preferred venue. If your venue is in high demand then you may find that some businesses will even start booking events soon after the New Year.
So, where should marketing managers and venue owners start when it comes to promoting Christmas? We often find that the first part of the marketing jigsaw is the design and print of the Christmas brochure. Our Christmas usually starts in March when we get our first lot of restaurant and hotel clients contact us with the draft content for the brochures. (Check out the 2018 Three Salmons Christmas brochure we created.)
Once they’ve been printed, we’ll work on updating website content that includes all of the relevant information plus downloadable pdfs of the brochure. You’ll find that many website visitors will want to print a copy of the brochure to share amongst friends, work colleagues etc before booking a venue so make sure a digital version of your brochure is readily available.
Once your website has been updated, it’s time to start preparing your content for social media. With the hospitality clients that we manage, we will start creating the events and listing them on their Facebook accounts. If your website has a booking form for Christmas we will often place the website link within the event listing so that visitors can find further info and register their interest in booking.
You may think that Christmas has only just passed / is an age away, but Spring is the perfect time to start planning your marketing strategy so that come Autumn time, there’s no pressure of low booking numbers or customers taking your by surprise by wanting more info!
