August is a transitional time of year – schools are back in session, Congress is out of session, and you might be one of those businesses experiencing the late summer lag. No better time than now to start mapping your web marketing strategy for the holiday season. While consumers typically grumble every year about how early the holiday merchandise starts pushing its way to the front of the store, they still readily take advantage of the best deals when they see them. So push your message to the front of the in-box and update those web banners. Here are a few ideas for sprucing up your holiday offerings:

• Offer your holiday discount special in August for services that will be rendered in holiday months. For example, if you are a housekeeping service, “Book your Holiday Sprucing Up service in August and get a 10% discount!”

• Preview holiday merchandise with “Order now for the best selection” or “Limited edition for 2009” messages. For example, if you are a florist, offer a limited number of special edition centerpieces at an attractive price so that clients will be inclined to reserve theirs early.

• Praise your customers for being smart shoppers. Build a little pat on the back into your e-blasts that says, “We know you are a savvy consumer and we’re tailoring our business to serve you better.” Follow it with a sampling of buy-early-and-save items that are compulsory buys, like stocking stuffers and teacher gifts.

• Follow up with a thank you and an additional offer. Once you’ve got them buying early, keep them in the queue with an offering made only to them. If you’re the florist, after the purchase of a Thanksgiving centerpiece, offer them a discounted pine bough wreath for Christmas – if they order now, of course.

And finally, just as a matter of housekeeping, take advantage of the slower season to get your web marketing ads, e-blasts and messages ready to go. Hang the lights and light the candles!

A colleague came to me today asking for a logo for her department. She wanted something to print on chotchkes and t-shirts. “We need to attract some attention!” She declared. “We want to brand ourselves!”  She showed me concepts she’d created with input from her co-workers. Each was full of emblematic – and problematic – ideas. Clutter, in other words, created by trying to represent multiple ideas in one picture.

Branding isn’t something you do by creating a piece of art to represent ideas. A logo is not a brand. What my colleague didn’t understand is that her department is already part of a branded product. Her department is  a piece of an organization that has a strong reputation, uses marketing messages that recall key themes, and follows a strategic marketing plan. By jumping off the ship and waving their own flag, the department in question would be diverting from the well-laid strategy that was guiding the fleet.

“But we are the stepchild, and we’ve got so much to offer,” she argued. “Look at Nike. Everyone recognizes that brand.” Yes, indeed. We all recognize the swoosh. But if Nike let each division of their corporation create its own logo, what value would the swoosh have?

As a compromise to my colleague’s request, I pointed out that our brand identity standards allowed for a tagline – a key phrase that could be used to represent their unique identity in marketing materials and giveaways.  In the end, she went away satisfied, having a fistful of control over the message.

While a logo can be an essential component of marketing, it’s not the jumping off point. It’s important as part of your overall strategy to create and enforce brand identity guidelines, and hold firm when renegades want to go their own direction.

Been There, Haven’t Done That

Marketing your small business, service, product, whatever it is that you offer, is never the same from day to day. It may appear the same. But the fact is, every marketing plan and ploy is in constant revision. It happens on the scale from “tweaked ever so slightly” to “completely thrown out the window.”  Particularly in web marketing and web site design, the ability to react and reset is critical, and the opportunities are frequent because the environment changes so quickly.

For example, are you on the lookout for the emergence of new customer types? Just because you developed your product or service for X, doesn’t mean that you don’t have appeal to Y and Z who suddenly discover you due to a great web marketing campaign. They may be subsets of your target market, but they look at you differently than even YOU do. Glean their insight to develop your outreach.

Also important is to measure outcomes. If your business is seasonal, you should know at the end of this fall season what you want to do differently next fall. Did you meet your goals? Great! Now, how are you going to push it even further next time? Did you come up short? Find out why. If it has happened before, figure out what you did that was the same. And try something different next time around.

There is something to be said for “sticking with what works,” but only if you know WHY it works and only if the definition of working is “increasing sales and profits.”

5 Mistakes Made By Marketing Do-it-yourself-ers

Want to save a few bucks and a lot of time? Hire a professional. Mistakes in marketing can impact your brand, your message and your results. Don’t skimp on the important basics. Here are five areas where home-grown marketing efforts can fall flat.

• Poor writing: The fewer words the better. Think of it as pepper. Just a little is perfect. Too much and you’ve ruined the soup. You want to leave people wanting more, and wondering about you.

• Ignoring established brand recognition: If you have a logo that you’ve used forever, don’t change it! Not without the input of a professional designer, preferably one with branding knowledge. You may despise your logo, or tagline, or your commercial jingle, but during a budget crisis is not the time to make such a big decision. Work it – your customers recognize it, and you can save the ta-da! redo for a big new product roll-out.

• Not updating your web site: This is the easiest virtually free marketing you can get. An out-of-date site just says you don’t pay attention. Don’t let news, product reviews, special offers or holiday ads sit past their usefulness – and on the web, that’s a very short shelf-life.

• Don’t track results: These days it is so easy to track the results of marketing campaigns. Establishing a landing page and url, an auto-responder e-mail, clicks on a banner ad—there are so many ways to glean insight into your customers’ reactions to your marketing efforts.

• Miss a big opportunity: What’s a big opportunity? What ISN’T a big opportunity is the question. It is what you make it. Holidays, overstocks, back-to-school, your business launch date anniversary, your dog’s birthday all can be transformed into marketing opportunities. Make a calendar so that you can plan ahead and get creative! Soon you’ll have customers waiting to see what you will do next!