Five New Year's Holiday Marketing Tips

New Year's holiday marketing can be especially difficult because - outside of party supplies - many people have spent their year-end fill on Christmas and other holidays. Yes, you should continue with your direct mail and other marketing campaigns, but the New Year's holiday also presents opportunities for you to reshape how you do business so you can establish a grander presence and land more sales down the road. In the spirit of the great New Year's resolution, here are five New Year's holiday marketing tips you can employ to boost business year-round:

Update your image

If you've been thinking about updating your image or re-branding your company, product or service entirely, New Year's is the time to do it. Print a new corporate identity package with your updated logo, tagline, brochure, business card, sales sheets, and new-image press clippings to send to customers and potential customers. Launch a postcard campaign announcing your New Year's resolution to be better or expand your services directed toward your target audience.

Revamp your website

Even if you're not undergoing a re-brand, you should take a long hard look at your website to see if it really fulfills your needs - and more importantly, if it meets your customers' expectations. If your website looks like it was pulled out of FrontPage back in 1999, you need to make a change. Explore dynamic databases and content management systems such as Joomla! and Drupal to help you streamline your website update processes. Change the look and feel of your website to offer simple solutions to your customers. Add interactive features, e-mail collection processes, and analytics tracking so you can better serve your customers and target your advertising campaigns. Learn about how you can use postcard direct-mail postcard marketing campaigns to drive business to your website, and how to leverage landing pages to persuade customers to click through to a lead collection form or a sale.

Consider creative marketing opportunities

Competition has always been fierce, but the online environment has made it even more so. Today, every Tom, Dick or Harry can set up a website to compete with you right from their mother's basement. That's why branding and customer targeting has become so important in recent years - if you have loyal customers, you will be profitable. While everyone else scrambles to define their direct-mail and online marketing campaigns during the next year, you can be planning creative poster and sticker placement that will increase brand awareness. Start your New Year marketing plan early, and tie in your direct-mail print marketing, online electronic marketing and creative poster and sticker marketing efforts in with one another. The perfect scenario: A potential customer sees your poster on a wall on her way home from work. She then passes a unique - and perhaps humorous - sticker placed on a utility pole. When she gets home, a postcard in her mailbox directs her to visit your website for a special offer. She visits your website and submits her name as a lead or makes a purchase. BONUS: She then calls her friends and tells them they should check out your product.

Join a group

You know you should be networking to grow your business. Perhaps you would also like to golf, get in shape, read more books, learn to play guitar, write a novel, etc. Join a group you're interested in and you'll have a blast while simultaneously networking!

Have a 'first' sale

Even though you're busy improving your business for future success, you still have to be marketing to your current customers. Many newspapers print stories about the first baby born in the New Year, and you could play on a similar theme with a "first" sale. If you're an auto dealer, you could have a prize for the first person to drive 1,000 miles in the New Year. If you're a real estate agent, you could have a prize for the first home sale of the New Year. If your "first" is interesting enough and your prize is worthy, you might also be able to drum up some free press.