Selling Christmas in August

Santa Claus is coming to town. About five months early.

Harrods, the legendary department store in London, has already unveiled it’s Christmas display, hoping to stimulate shoppers’ Christmas purchases. And many other retailers, both in Britain and America, have begun sending out Christmas catalogs and running Christmas promotions on their web sites.

Promoting a product or service off-season can be a powerful sales strategy. By getting your potential customers to think about you during a time of year they normally wouldn’t, you create buying opportunities that wouldn’t exist otherwise. And you can increase sales during your slow time, enabling you to better plan and use your labor and production resources.

Is your product or service seasonal? Is there an opportunity for you to promote what you sell during a time of year that all your competitors have written off? If so, seize it! You may find that Christmas comes early for you as well.