Why you should plan your Christmas Marketing early this year

The holiday season will see a big boost for businesses. Retailers will expect to see an increase in sales in the run-up to Christmas with new products and promotions aimed at gift buyers. And the seasonal weather also means potentially big demand for heating engineers, plumbers and other related services. Which is why you should plan your Christmas Marketing early this year.

But with everyone competing for sales in the season of goodwill, you need to start planning early to make the most of the opportunity.

Think it's too early to worry about Christmas in September? Think again! Large companies will have been planning their Christmas campaigns since the first moment the Easter Eggs came off the shelves - in the hope they'll win the annual television ad campaign battle and get a massive sales increase.

But customers are also getting their inspiration and plans in place. Not only will anyone looking to get away be planning their breaks, but Pinterest has released some statistics on how their users are already in the Christmas spirit.

Apparently 38 million people have already saved holiday-related pins on Pinterest, which include 170 million examples for home decor, 50 million for fashion, 42 million for food, and a whopping 3 million pictures of ugly sweaters. And 92 million pins have already been added specifically for holiday gifts.

In general around 39% of shoppers start buying their Christmas presents and supplies before the end of November. But it's 47% for Pinterest users, meaning half of them will probably have bought almost everything they need before December will even start.

Even if you're not actively using Pinterest yet, there are reasons to get your Xmas act into gear.

Many companies will be planning holiday time, and will need to make sure clients and customers are aware of their availability in December. And office party season may be a great time for maintenance and renovation along with cleaning services and possibly hangover cures.

So you need to ensure that your details are updated on your website, and on all relevant social media profiles and listings.

If you're banking on an increase in search traffic to your website, then you'll also want to be planning ahead - it takes a little time for search engines like Google to visit and crawl your site, so the earlier you get your Christmas-related information up, the more chance you have of getting it found, indexed, and shown in search results.

Finally, there's one very important reason to get your Christmas Marketing plans in place nice and early. It means you can relax and focus on enjoying yourself during the holiday season!