Somewhere right now, a coach is looking at the holiday calendar and thinking, “I should probably run a promotion.”
Halloween? Black Friday? Cyber Monday? Christmas? New Year?
Ten minutes later, that reasonable thought has become a twelve-day sale, a new webinar, three bonuses, and a migraine headache.
Sound familiar? The holidays have a way of making everybody else’s marketing look like something you should be doing too.
Before you volunteer for all that extra work, find a promotion that makes sense for YOUR business. One your customers will get excited about. One you can deliver without spending Christmas dinner answering emails about a missing download.
Last week, we looked at giving your flagship offer another spin without wearing out your audience. A holiday can give that proven offer a fresh reason to buy.
But the best choice often becomes clear when you ask what happens AFTER somebody says yes.
Holiday Spirit Won’t Fix a Confusing Offer
Imagine you’re a leadership coach. Your clients manage small teams, and several have told you the same thing: “We need to get organized before January gets away from us.”
You could run a Black Friday discount on coaching. You could bundle recordings as a Christmas special. Or you could offer a focused year-end planning session with a worksheet they can use with their teams.
The third option starts with something customers already want. That gives you a much better conversation than, “It’s November, so apparently everything is twenty percent off.”
The occasion should make your offer feel timely. It doesn’t have to do all the selling.
Ask yourself what people are trying to finish, give, fix, or prepare for during this season. A book bundle might make a thoughtful gift. A planning session might help someone start the year with a clearer direction. A referral incentive might suit an audience that already loves sharing useful resources.
I’ve explored how to find that seasonal connection in this article about seasonal promotions if you’d like a few more ideas.
And if your own ideas feel a little stale, the Value Ladder Genie can suggest ways to package your experience for your ideal customer. Use it to explore possibilities, then choose the one that fits a real need.
You still get the final vote.
For our coach, that might mean pairing an existing planning process with a useful team worksheet and a live 90-minute training session rather than building an entirely new course.
Let’s face it: nobody wants to add a pile of work during the holidays. You’re trying to come up with a cool offer that makes sense for your customers and for you!
Would You Be Happy If This Actually Sold?
Picture ten customers buying your proposed offer tomorrow.
Are you pleased, or worried that unlimited feedback will swallow your week?
Your reaction is useful information.
I ask because I’ve sold stuff before that nearly gave me a panic attack when the orders started rolling in. That’s when I realized how much crap I’d signed myself up to do to fulfill them.
A gift certificate for live coaching looks wonderfully simple until you realize everybody wants to redeem it during the same week. A live workshop sounds manageable until you promise individual feedback to a room full of people. A ten-day promotion needs ten days of attention, even if the name looks terrific on a graphic. (Ten Days of Christmas, anyone?)
Walk through what the customer receives, when they receive it, and what you must do to make that happen. Include booking, access, support, and any technology they need.
A clear, useful promise gives people confidence. An oversized promise gives you a second job at a time of year when you just don’t need one.
This also helps you decide whether a discount belongs in the offer. If you genuinely need to clear physical books from storage, a clearance sale makes perfect sense. Tell people the real reason.
If you’re selling expertise, try adding something that helps buyers use it. A practical worksheet or focused follow-up session can be more relevant than another pile of recordings.
Your customer wanted help, not homework with a bow on it.
By the way, if you want to know how NOT to train people to wait for a sale instead of buying at your regular price, read this article. The point is to make a deliberate choice rather than reaching for a price cut because everybody else has.
The Calendar Won’t Write Your Emails
Once an offer sounds good, it’s tempting to circle a date and call that a plan.
Unfortunately, the calendar doesn’t write the invitation, create the checkout, or record the bonus.
Work backward from the DATE / DEADLINE and put the preparation into the hours you actually have. Writing, recording, editing, reviewing, and testing each need an appointment on your calendar.
The Product Launch Plan Genie can help draft a timeline around your offer, target dates, and available work hours. Review that timeline before you announce a date you’ll spend the next two weeks regretting (and losing sleep).
If the work won’t fit the time available, shrink the promotion.
Use a resource you already have. Offer one session instead of a series. Move from Black Friday to a year-end or New Year occasion if that gives you room to do it well.
You haven’t missed your only chance to sell because somebody else got their holiday graphics done first.
Our coach might discover that a short year-end session is realistic, while a new multiweek course isn’t. Wonderful. That decision just saved a lot of late nights.
Then look at who you can actually reach. Your existing subscribers, regular social audience, and an appropriate partner who agrees to participate are reasonable starting points.
A promotion that requires a huge new audience with a major ad spend may be the wrong fit for this month.
Build around people who expect to hear from you.
You Don’t Have to Join Every Parade
By now, our coach has a relevant occasion, a useful offer, and a manageable workload. There’s one more decision: what should people do next?
- Register for a free demo or webinar?
- Attend a session they already booked?
- Buy the paid workshop?
Take your two best promotion ideas and talk them through as if you were explaining them to a friend. For each one, ask:
- Who is it for?
- Why now?
- What do they get?
- Can you deliver it?
- What do you want them to do first?
- How do you want them to buy it?
Listen for the option you can explain without a long speech and deliver without turning your calendar upside down. Choose that option, then put the preparation actions on your calendar.
You don’t need to win the holiday marketing Olympics.
You need a sensible offer that helps the right people and leaves you able to keep your promise to them (and still have a life).
You already have the experience. Now let’s give your offer the words it deserves.
Inside CopyandContent.AI, the Genies help you turn your ideas into clearer offers, stronger sales copy, and content that sounds like you. Add practical wizards and live and recorded training, and you have help moving from “I could do something with this” to a promotion you’re excited to share.
Member Resources
Already a member? Put your next promotion to work with these tools:
Find fresh ways to package what you know for the people you serve, and give your holiday offer something more exciting than another price cut.
Get your promotion out of the someday pile with a launch timeline shaped around your offer, target dates, and the hours you actually have.
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Did You Miss The Latest Posts?
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