You need to be thinking and planning ahead for the Christmas season NOW, so that you execute without stress and MAKE MORE MONEY! Erica Claus has four things for you to do NOW in order get on Santa’s business success list:

Review

Review last year: What did you do? What were the results? Then contemplate what worked well and what you don’t want to do again. Some things to review may include:

• Email Campaigns
• Social Media Posts
• Ads
• Events
• Sales
• Product Launches
• All the things!

Dream

Think about what you want to do this year. The sky’s the limit. You might already have planned events, or you might want to do a 25 minute Pomodoro method dream dump. Point is, write out all your big ideas on paper so you can actually execute some of them.

Plan

Now put the two things above together. Things that worked + things that you are dreaming of that are realistic for you to execute. Put that shiz on a calendar.

As you are mapping things out on your calendar, make sure you are scheduling in an email at least one time every month. More often is fine too, especially if you are already doing emails regularly. But, if not, that’s fine. Start with just one a month during the holiday season. One email in October, one in November, and one in December. PLEASE. Your email subscribers need to know what’s going on in your business if you want them to spend their money on you!

Action Steps

Now that the planning is done, make a short list of actions you can take ASAP, simple next logical step stuff, that will advance your progress on your OND calendar.

• Book a photographer.
• Put together a promotion plan for your new product.
• Build that landing page on your website. Keep it hidden until the time is right.
• Start writing down your favorite holiday recipes to share.

Doing these three things now will help you avoid the holiday-sneak-attack that typically happens for marketers and results in dream-crushing angst and avoidable stress.

If you want to go more in depth with planning your OND (October, November, December) you can also check out this other content from me: How to create your integrated marketing plan, Business marketing calendar creation, and Finalize your strategic marketing calendar.

If you want to get even more specifics on this topic, watch my Learnin’ Thursday about planning Christmas in July:

CHALLENGE

Do the work. It will take you two hours or less, I promise. Review last year. Plan this year. Make a list of actions to take. And start doing ’em!

Let me know in the comments that you’re going to work with me on this, okay!