Are You Using the Holidays as an Excuse?

We often talk about how the holidays are an important time for retail-oriented companies to catch up on their profit margins. But many businesses aren’t sales-oriented, and they don’t see their numbers spike when people are purchasing gifts.

In fact, plenty of businesses see their sales decline during slow winter months. Worst of all, we often see companies contributing to their own losses as the year winds down. 

There are several reasons to slow down for the holidays: 

  • It’s a time when employees traditionally take time off to travel or spend time with their families, making it tough to keep up with the typical volume of production. 
  • Your budget might be dwindling until you get a new flush of cash at the top of the new year. 
  • You might be closed for several days or even weeks during the holidays, one right after another, including Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas, and New Year’s Eve.

But are these really your reasons—or are they excuses?

If your company habitually slows down from November through January, you’re losing at least six weeks of potential profit. That’s a hefty portion of annual proceeds.

In fact, you could be wasting up to 10% of your marketing budget by failing to apply it toward further revenue generation during these pivotal weeks. 

Think about it: Your projections were for the whole year; so unless you already accounted for over a month of potential losses in the first three quarters, then you might have set yourself up for failure. A lot of people look at projections based on the first few months of the year. They set expectations as if the numbers will remain fairly consistent; then, they’re surprised when they don’t quite reach their goals. 

We think it’s more accurate to look at numbers from the previous year, month to month. Then you’ll know if you’re constantly dropping profits in November and December. 

At Mad 4 Marketing, that’s what we like to call … an opportunity.

We love to uncover room for improvement; that’s so much better than having nowhere to go. But if you are failing to seize that opportunity, and simply accepting your losses, it’s not something you can blame on customers or seasonal slowdown. It’s your own mindset.

The truth is that you should be using this period to stay productive. You can do that even if your customers and clients aren’t as active. You can do that even if staff is taking a lot of time off. You can do that even if your doors are closed for several days in the coming weeks, making it hard to pull off consistent work schedules. 

You can even do that if your marketing budget has already been used up for 2020.

But for more insights on how to best embrace the opportunities available to you right now, check out our blog on that topic: There’s Still Plenty of 2020! Here’s How to Use It Wisely…

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