How to Flourish Despite Economic Uncertainty

Despite uncertain economic times, businesses still need to promote heavily to prosper. Here are six holiday marketing tips to help your enterprise thrive.

1. Set targets for each week for the holiday season that are higher than last year's weekly revenue.

2. Figure out what kinds of specials or offers you want to promote—and make them better than ever. Look for a loss leader you can use to get people in the door. Office Depot does this with copy paper. They lose money on that item, knowing they'll make it up with other purchases. Have a brainstorming meeting with your sales people and come up with a long list of ideas.

3. Mark on your calendar when you want your last piece of promotion to hit your customers' mailboxes.

4. Mark on your calendar one week earlier as your drop-dead mail date.

5. Do the same thing for each mailing moving backward in time.

6. Once you have your schedule, get your order in as soon as possible. This is time of the year when printers get busy and everyone has a deadline to hit. Keep your attention on handling the customers stampeding your establishment instead of on whether or not your promotion will be ready on time.

People are going to spend less this year, but they will still spend. Where they spend depends on who markets and who markets the most.

Joy Gendusa is founder of direct marketing firm PostcardMania.