A common question I get this time of year is: Should I even be marketing during the holidays?
The answer is of course: “Yes”.
At the same time, you need to understand the purpose and the intended results.
Most motivated sellers will postpone dealing with their problems and trying to sell their house until the new year.
So why even attempt to market to during the holiday period? Wouldn’t it just be better to wait until January?
The first thing to realize is that anyone who actually does respond to your marketing during this holiday period is extremely motivated. They are so desperate to find a solution, that despite all of the holiday festivities, they are still willing to call.
These leads are most likely going to turn into deals. It’s like a self-qualifying process. Only the truly motivated sellers – the ones that you most want to talk to – will contact you during the holidays.
I wish I had that kind of call screening all year. Imagine only the truly motivated sellers called you and you never wasted time again with a tire kicker.
The bigger reason that you market during this holiday period is to set up January. You see, most motivated sellers have made a decision that they will “just deal with it after the holidays”. Their problem is still there. They know that they need to do something, but they figure they can just wait until after the holidays.
They’re still on the look-out for solutions. So when your marketing arrives, they tuck it away “to call in January”. They won’t deal with it now, but they know who they are going to call after the first of the year.
If you don’t market to them during the holidays, you will not be on their radar as a possible solution and they’ll find it elsewhere.
The first year that I had been marketing and been very successful, I decided to take off from just before Thanksgiving until after the New Year. Once January rolled around I started thinking about my marketing and got it going by mid-January.
Essentially I had lost 2 months worth of marketing!
By this point my pipeline of deals was dry. My funnel of leads was dry. And I had no new leads coming in. It took me a couple to three months to get it all going again. My 6-week planned hiatus turned into a 5 month desert storm.
Here’s the valuable lesson I learned and never forgot:
Never ever stop marketing unless you are ready to retire from the business.
Marketing is the life blood of your business and to cut off the supply is to cut off its life – even during the holidays…especially during the holidays.
So my answer to this marketing FAQ is an absolute YES! Definitely market during this time of year.
Expect abundance,
Lou Castillo
