ManageSmarter;

“Summer is a great season. Vacations, long days and warm nights inspire feelings of happiness and the subsequent memories sustain Northerners during the cold and dark winters. It is so tempting to turn off not only your Blackberry but your attention to marketing. Nobody does anything until after Labor Day anyway, right? Wrong.

While there is some benefit to turning off and tuning out, it can also put your online business on the fast track to a disappointing holiday season. Here are a few things to keep in mind while contemplating those—in the words of the great Nat King Cole—lazy, hazy, crazy days of summer:

• In the retail sector, nearly 20 percent of all sales take place during the holiday season, according to the National Retail Federation (NRF). This year the season runs from November 23 through December 26.

• Online spending is increasing at an accelerated pace every year. During the first 56 days of the 2006 holiday season, total online retail spending reached $23.11 billion, marking a 26 percent increase, versus the corresponding days in 2005 according to ComScore.

• Observations of online sales shows that these customers are driven by discounts and savings with “saving time” and “free shipping” coming in a close second and third.

If you haven’t made any significant plans to market your product or services for the upcoming holiday season, here are several things you can do to be ready for action:

1) Re-evaluate your prospect lists.
Your online business is constantly facing new challenges and changes in the marketplace that you must manage. It’s unlikely that every top prospect from even a year or two ago will remain a top prospect. New prospects should emerge and older less likely ones will be downgraded in your priority list.

2) Review your website marketing material and marketing messaging.
Are they up-to-date and easy to understand and distribute? Do they say what your company really does and can do for your prospects and customers?

3) Clean up your direct mail and email marketing lists.
Postage went up May 14 and is expected to increase again in 2008. So it makes sense to consider who is getting your physical mailings. The bottom ten percent of your customer database holds that distinction for good reason! Mail them less frequently, send them email instead or cut some of them altogether. Take your postal savings and invest it in the top ten percent of your customer database.

4) Think about how you can use new media to promote your website.
Ask yourself how a variety of new marketing channels—mobile marketing (cell-phone/PDA) or social marketing (Facebook.com and MySpace.com) and blogging, product or business placement in places like Secondlife.com—can help your internet based business reach new customers.

If you do even some of the things noted above, your business will be in a much better position for the holidays and beyond and there will still be plenty of time to dig your toes in the sand, read the latest John Grisham and bask in the sunshine.