Savvy brands and busi­ness­es need to start plan­ning their mar­ket­ing push­es as ear­ly in the fall as pos­si­ble in order to ensure the best sat­u­ra­tion of their hol­i­day mar­ket­ing cam­paign blasts. The key is to max­i­mize cov­er­age with­out over­sat­u­rat­ing or burn­ing out cus­tomers both exist­ing and poten­tial.

Think the “hol­i­day sea­son” means the time peri­od between Thanks­giv­ing and Christ­mas? You couldn’t be more wrong. You could find your sales suf­fer­ing if you project your hol­i­day win­dow so nar­row­ly.

The hol­i­day sea­son win­dow begins as far back as Hal­loween, and now extends even fur­ther past Christ­mas.

Shop­pers are always look­ing for the best deals, and they’re start­ing to look for them ear­li­er every year.

Do store shelves need to be stocked with meno­rahs and nativ­i­ty scenes as far back as Octo­ber 1? No. The prod­ucts you stock may not be as impor­tant as how you pre­pare your audi­ence to receive those prod­ucts.

Far from being months away, the hol­i­days actu­al­ly start now.

Start Planning Your Holiday Calendar Now

If you haven’t already laid out a cal­en­dar for how your hol­i­day should go, then you should start plan­ning one right away.

Know­ing what you plan to do and when will help take off the pres­sure as you get clos­er to key dates of the hol­i­day sea­son. Plus, it will help you answer ques­tions such as: “When should I launch my email cam­paigns?” “When do I want to start run­ning paid ads on the search engines?” “Is my hol­i­day gift guide ready for launch on my web­site?”

It doesn’t nec­es­sar­i­ly need to have gran­u­lar detail, though obvi­ous­ly more is bet­ter when it comes to plan­ning in advance. How­ev­er, even an over­ar­ch­ing frame­work of how you’d like your hol­i­day mar­ket­ing to go will give you a leg up over any­one who doesn’t even start their plan­ning until mid-Octo­ber.

Be sure to con­sid­er every aspect of your dig­i­tal mar­ket­ing, includ­ing email, social net­work­ing, organ­ic search rank­ings, and paid adver­tis­ing.

Holiday Shopping Really Starts Before Halloween

If the research is com­ing from Google, you know it’s legit­i­mate. A study released by a research branch of the search giant back in 2014 report­ed that more than a quar­ter of shop­pers start­ed before Hal­loween.

You can expect that more peo­ple will start their shop­ping ear­li­er this year, as hol­i­day fig­ures tend to go up each year except in the case of seri­ous reces­sion, which doesn’t look to be in the fore­cast for this fall. We could see upwards of 30 per­cent of shop­pers start­ing their hol­i­day gift-buy­ing before spooky skele­tons have even left store shelves.

Shop­pers won’t stop once Christ­mas is over, either. Savvy shop­pers know that retail­ers with excess inven­to­ry will be look­ing to keep sales going like­ly through New Year’s Day.

If you’re look­ing to lock in shop­pers who are look­ing for a deal, they’ll be hunt­ing for it after the Christ­mas rush, dur­ing this cru­cial week before Q4 clos­es out. Which means that you’re not done come Box­ing Day (Decem­ber 26 for any­one not famil­iar with this hol­i­day pri­mar­i­ly cel­e­brat­ed east of the pond) – you need to be ready for one last mar­ket­ing push that will last you through the first few days of Jan­u­ary.

The Highest Spending Dates Might Surprise You

What are the biggest spend­ing days of each hol­i­day sea­son? Black Fri­day and Cyber Mon­day, right?

Well, you’d be cor­rect at least about Cyber Mon­day, espe­cial­ly when it comes to shop­ping online. But Black Fri­day actu­al­ly isn’t one of the top three biggest online spend­ing days, and know­ing what those three are should be of prime impor­tance for any online busi­ness.

In 2014, Cyber Mon­day brought in over $2 bil­lion in sales on desk­top com­put­ers. The next two days were a lit­tle more obscure: the first Tues­day of Decem­ber (Decem­ber 2nd) came in sec­ond place with near­ly $1.8 bil­lion in desk­top sales, while “Green Mon­day,” Decem­ber 8th, came in third with $1.6 bil­lion in desk­top sales.

Oth­er dates of note were pep­pered through­out Decem­ber, such as the 12th, the 3rd, and the 16th. Not even “Free Ship­ping Day” on the 18th could com­pare to any of those days with its $926 mil­lion haul.

Of course, dates out­side of Decem­ber mat­ter, too. Thanks­giv­ing is anoth­er key shop­ping day online.

The take­away here is that know­ing your key dates is half the game, and those key dates are unlike­ly to be what you expect. Just going with your gut won’t be enough, nor will rely­ing entire­ly on expe­ri­ences of how shop­pers behave in-store. You’ll need to know how they behave online, and you’ll need to do your home­work and study on on when they’re like­li­est to spend big.

It’s A Marathon & Not A Race. You Can’t Afford To Burn Out.

Have you ever felt the burn out asso­ci­at­ed with get­ting bom­bard­ed with too many sales pitch­es, or sales pitch­es that were just too aggres­sive?

Around the hol­i­day sea­son, we all know the adver­tis­ing can get a lit­tle too aggres­sive. Even the most recep­tive amongst us can start tun­ing things out. That’s why you need to think of hol­i­day mar­ket­ing as a marathon, not a race.

Sprint­ing toward the end and push­ing every­thing you’ve got as hard as you can all the time will only burn you out and fatigue your cus­tomers, poten­tial­ly ruin­ing their good will. There’s no worse out­come than burn­ing bridges with the audi­ence you rely upon to not only buy your prod­ucts but to be your brand ambas­sadors and sup­port your ser­vices by word of mouth.

You don’t need to nec­es­sar­i­ly fol­low the “slow” part of the “slow and steady” idiom, but def­i­nite­ly focus on the steady. You want to dole out your con­tent at a mea­sured, reli­able pace, and focus on per­son­al­iza­tion and care­ful seg­men­ta­tion of that con­tent. The more tar­get­ed to your cus­tomers’ needs, the bet­ter.

Con­tent that’s time­ly and rel­e­vant will be appre­ci­at­ed, build­ing good will and rais­ing the prob­a­bil­i­ty of clicks and con­ver­sions. A steady drip of con­tent also means a much low­er risk of run­ning out of high qual­i­ty con­tent to spend over the course of this Q4.

Don’t scrape the bot­tom of the bar­rel. You real­ly want to focus on qual­i­ty, not quan­ti­ty, because it’s the qual­i­ty that peo­ple will remem­ber.

Be Ready For The Long Haul

“The hol­i­day sea­son” real­ly trans­lates as “your entire Q4,” if you’re play­ing your cards right. More than that, actu­al­ly, if you’re start­ing your plan­ning in Sep­tem­ber (which you should be).

As tir­ing as that might seem, you’ll be thank­ing your­self in Jan­u­ary when you’re reap­ing the rewards of an incred­i­bly suc­cess­ful hol­i­day sea­son. So get ready to bring on that Christ­mak­wan­za­kah cheer – the next 100 or so days, if you’re doing it right, you’re going to be busy.