Q4 Marketing Planning: Why Your Holiday Campaigns Need to Start in Summer

This week on Marketing Sucks, Amanda and Phil are talking about why thinking about Christmas in the summer might suck, but scrambling through Q4 sucks even more. In this episode, they break down why July and August are the perfect time to start planning your holiday campaigns, Black Friday promotions, Cyber Monday offers, year-end campaigns, new year launches, corporate budget pushes, events, and annual recaps. Amanda explains why Q4 is not just “holiday content,” it is often one of the biggest revenue windows of the year, and why waiting until the fall can cost you money, sanity, and team capacity. From reviewing last year’s campaign data and mapping your promotional calendar to planning photo shoots, landing pages, email flows, inventory, ad budgets, and team resources, this episode is your reminder that a profitable Q4 does not happen by accident. If you want your year-end marketing to feel strategic instead of chaotic, this is your sign to start now.

What You’ll Learn
✔ Why Q4 marketing planning should start in the summer
✔ Why “Christmas in July” is not just a cute phrase, it is a smart business move
✔ What actually happens in Q4 beyond holiday shopping
✔ Why Black Friday, Cyber Monday, year-end campaigns, new year campaigns, events, and corporate budgets all need a real plan
✔ What product-based businesses need to prepare before Q4, including inventory, shoots, packaging, shipping, landing pages, and email campaigns
✔ What service-based businesses need to think about, including discovery calls, lead generation, fall programs, cohorts, warm leads, and capacity
✔ Why reviewing last year’s campaign data should come before building this year’s plan
✔ How to map your promotional calendar so you can see the real workload behind every launch
✔ Why too many overlapping offers can confuse your audience and exhaust your team
✔ How poor planning can lead to rush fees, missed sales, burnout, and messy execution
✔ Why summer is the best time to create strategy, set direction, and protect your future self
✔ What to do now if you have not started planning your Q4 campaigns yet

—

📱 Looking for content creation & social strategies that drive REAL results? Visit grindsocialmedia.com.

🤝 Book your free discovery call: calendly.com/grindsocial/discoverycall 

Get social

Instagram: @grindsocialmedia 

Facebook: facebook.com/GRINDSOCIALMEDIA 

📢 I’d love it if you’d share this episode and tag me!

Podcasting support

Production: theultimatecreative.com

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:12

Welcome back to Marketing Sucks. I'm your host, Amanda Casinian.

SPEAKER_01 0:15

And I'm your co-host, Phil Ginther.

SPEAKER_00 0:17

And what sucks this week, Mr. Ginther?

SPEAKER_01 0:19

Thinking about Christmas during summer.

unknown 0:22

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 0:23

Yeah. Yeah, your mic's on. Don't worry.

SPEAKER_00 0:25

Yeah, I'm just making sure. I literally have like PTSD from the last time.

SPEAKER_01 0:28

That's not enough everything.

SPEAKER_00 0:31

Thinking about Christmas in the summer. Yeah, it's yeah, it does suck, but we have to because Q4 is where most businesses make typically, I think, a lot of their revenue. It's not just holidays. Like I'm about to list you everything that's happening in Q4. And summer is not the time to slow down. So I think a lot of people they think like, oh, summer holidays, I'm just gonna like go on my vacations or whatever. I mean, we live in fucking Portugal in the summer. I think a lot of people think we slow down, which we technically do, but there's still a lot going on for everybody.

unknown 1:06

Yes.

SPEAKER_01 1:06

Yeah, I think it's just like it's summertime. Everyone deserves that time. So like I'm not we're not saying don't go enjoy it, but September comes fast. And you know what sucks more than thinking about Christmas in the summer? What? Thinking about Christmas the week before Christmas.

SPEAKER_00 1:20

Yeah. Yeah. So I said like Q4 is not actually just for holidays. So I'm gonna give you a list of everything that actually happens in Q4, so which is insane. And this is across most or if not all industries. So obviously you have Black Friday, you have Cyber Monday, or you have the entire week. There's like the Amazon Prime sale that happens as well that you have to clean up.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

Month-long campaigns.

SPEAKER_00 1:44

It's like it really is. So there's that, there's holiday shopping, there's year-end campaigns, there's new year campaigns. Oh, yeah, Jamie. That have to be well, because think about it. Like if you're new, if you have new year campaigns, you're not working on those like in December. Like they should be set in December for yeah, anyways. And then you have corporate budgets that are happening too, right? So people that want to spend their money. We gotta spend it or we won't get it next year. And if you're a service-based person, like that's a great time for like cash flow, an event season. And then there's events, right? It's all where a lot of events happen. There's a lot of like awards, there's a lot of like holiday events, there's you know, all the brand PR events, like all that stuff. And then you have like annual recaps and like looking at the year past, you have your audits. So, like there is a lot. That's one quarter. That's what's happening. And it is the time where businesses will either do one of two things, they will be very well planned out, and it'll be still stressful because nothing is whoops, nothing is like perfect, perfect. Like there's still moments, there's gonna be tech fuck-ups, there's gonna be so many things that actually happen. So that's one side where everything's actually planned, everything is like pretty good on schedule. There's still gonna be some disasters along the way, you figure it out, or there's gonna be the second half where it's like, well, we waited too long and now there's nothing we can really do about it. And then you sit around and complain about like how everything's more expensive because there's rush fees, or there's not time, or there's everybody's like at their last, like their wits' end about things. So those are the two camps. Let's not be in the second camp.

SPEAKER_01 3:24

Yeah. So so Christmas in July it is yeah.

SPEAKER_00 3:27

So some of the things that, you know, this one's you know, the the the kicker that people don't really think about. So if you're like there's product businesses and service businesses, we work with both. So there are a couple of things that product and service businesses need to keep in mind when it comes time to Q4 planning, especially around holiday sales, holiday campaigns. If you're a product business, you need to start thinking now in the dead of summer, like I believe this episode is airing in July. It is inventory, photo shoots, photoshop, like all the editing that has to get done, the packaging, because usually a Christmas for product-based businesses, like you'll have different packaging that you might need to look into or source. Shipping, what's shipping gonna look like? Obviously, shipping, especially in Canada, is a pain in the ass. So that's something that you need to plan for. Promotional calendars, like, are we having things overlap, like really mapping it out? And then like email, website landing pages, advertisements, like copy, all that stuff. If you are thinking about that at the end of September, you you've missed you've missed the boat. You've missed the boat and and most agencies are not gonna take on that kind of work when you do need the help, or it's gonna have to be like it's gonna cost you three times as much. It is. And then when you have services, right? Service-based businesses, we're looking at like getting discovery call bookings. So like lead generation, we're looking at, you know, filling fall programs, filling cohorts, whatever it is that you're launching. Your year-end offers is usually typically when you're doing a lot of your sales, right? You're re-engaging warm leads. And then on top of that, there's still the same thing as the product-based businesses, promotional calendars, email flows, website landing pages, like maybe it is inventory. Like, how many spots can I fill? Do I need to hire more people during this time? Like, am I gonna sell out? Like all these things you have to think about.

SPEAKER_01 5:26

Love, like, you're almost creating that like panic now because it is that intense, right?

SPEAKER_00 5:33

This is how my brain is between like April and Christmas. And there's like this like three-week window at the end of March where I don't freak out in the year, and every other time I'm just thinking about campaigns. So, yes, yeah, I'm creating panic because you should be panicked if you haven't thought about this yet.

SPEAKER_01 5:51

Yeah, but I think like summer, summer is like a good time for for strategy, right? Because it's like you have to set the the high-level focus before you can get into those specific needs. So even basic things like what are we selling? What are we promoting? You know, what budget's gonna be required to do that? Do we have assets for this? Do we need to be booking shoots to make the assets for this? And I think like starting there is great because then you can you can literally just you're at your cottage, you're on the dock, wherever you are, wherever you spend the summer, you can literally just pull up a calendar and then just start blocking at a high level.

SPEAKER_00 6:29

Yeah, so I'm gonna get a little bit more detailed than that for you because it's it's yeah, of of course it's summer is for strat. Yeah, S is for strategy. I feel like our like YouTube client that's like sings everything. So summers for S is for summer and S is for strategy. So what we what I usually do before we're even pulling out a calendar really is actually looking at all of the previous year's campaigns. And if you didn't do a campaign in Q4, then pick one that's closest to the closest type of campaign that you've ran in the past. And what were those numbers? And then I also look at okay, how far out did you plan that one? Like, is that maybe why it didn't go so well? Maybe you didn't have the numbers you needed because you needed a longer runway to warm up your audience. So, really, number one is review last year's campaigns and numbers, like the data. Then you can start mapping your calendar because you might realize that, like, oh, I actually had too long of a runway.

SPEAKER_01 7:25

Yeah, too early or I was too late.

SPEAKER_00 7:27

Or it didn't run long enough. So that's number one. And then I would clarify your offers. There are too many people out there running too many offers at the same time. So just like block it. And the best way to do this is get a calendar. Like, don't do this on a computer, like, in my opinion. Get like a whiteboard or get a calendar or print out a couple of calendars and lay them out physically, like in like a quadrant.

SPEAKER_01 7:52

So like so you can see each yeah, right?

SPEAKER_00 7:54

Like, so like one calendar on top of the other in order, obviously. And then start marking out everything on the calendar. But on that calendar can't just be like the launch date and the close date or whatever that is. It actually has to be all the work before that as well. You need to see the work leading up to those campaigns to see exactly like what kind of resources you're gonna need, whether it's your internal team or hiring out, or is it yourself? Do you even have capacity? I think a lot of people don't realize, like in service-based businesses specifically, they're like, oh, okay, yeah, I'll just do this and this and this. But then they're also actually like like delivering the service themselves. So, like, how are you gonna do all of that? Like, that's just that's a recipe for disaster. So on that calendar is also gonna be like your shoot dates and then editing time. I don't know, you have to update your website, you have to do the landing pages, you want all that going. You have to, I don't know, get promo codes in order. You have to get your ad set up, you got to set up Meta, you got to set up Google, you gotta do all the things, and then you've got to clean up your email list and make sure those are segmented out. Like, so there's all that work. And then there's also prepping your team, right? So if you're in service-based business and you're doing like lead gen campaigns, like are is your sales team able to take on that volume? Like, where is where are all the bottlenecks? So, like using summer to strategize all of this is the perfect place because or perfect time because you're you are in usually like a slower head space, so you really can typically think it through and like make proper decisions. In my opinion, all this should be done before June so that you have the summer to actually see through the strategy. But if you're listening this for the first time, being like, oh shit, I'm already two months behind, that's okay. You can now start making a list of everything. So, what happens when we don't prep?

SPEAKER_01 9:56

Okay, well, the panic sets in, everything goes wrong. And I think we forget that like taking action now is like protecting your future self so that you don't end up in that place. And I I've had actually it happened every year. Every year someone would come in like super late in Q3 and be like, we have this great promo we want to run for Christmas. I'm like, that's amazing. Like, do you have any assets? Do you have any media? Like, do you have a budget for any of this? And they'd always be no, no, no. And it's like, okay, well, what do you want me to do about that? I literally can't action this because you have no resources to make it happen. And then it's just a failed plan and it's wasted time and it's entirely preventable.

SPEAKER_00 10:39

Yeah, it is. Just get your ducks in a row. Like, there's gonna be the rogue ducky.

SPEAKER_01 10:45

Oh man, you're what's keeping it on theme preschool. D is for ducky.

SPEAKER_00 10:50

D is for ducky. But literally what ends up happening is if we don't get ahead of it, it then becomes a really big problem that ends up costing you more. It costs you in the sales for sure, and it costs you in your sanity, and it will cost people on your team. People do not like to work like that. Your agency doesn't like to work like that. And if it continuously happens, I would not be surprised if people are leaving because of it. So we want organization. It doesn't need to be perfect, but we need direction and then allow the team to take over and give you the feedback to say, like, okay, actually, you know what? Like this just happened to us, actually. So we had had a conversation back in February with a client just about like the next, you know, two quarters, and everything was great. And then what ended up happening was one of their other departments started putting things on the calendar of like additional things that they wanted to run. And so obviously, not a problem, of course. Like that's great. Love, love this. Like it's this is really good for the company. However, when I mapped it out, because that's my job and like project managing everything, I mapped it out on the calendar and I started to look at what that overlap was actually gonna look like. So I had to bring it to the team and say, guys, we need to sit down immediately. When we look at these dates, like, what problem do you see? And they were like, Oh, yeah, that's actually a lot. And I'm like, exactly. And then it's what it's gonna do is it's gonna confuse the customer. It's definitely gonna overwork all of you. I don't even think you guys have the capacity for this. So what we ended up doing was just selecting the two top revenue generating events to launch and to do over the next couple of quarters. So then that way there was a good runway. We could use our shoots properly, we could use the resources, we didn't have to increase the budgets because there's also ad spend that go behind those. Because it was also the conversation of are you ready to pay like triple the amount in ad spend to run all these campaigns? Right? Like that's a lot. And nobody really thought about that. Everybody was just like, oh, and then we, oh, look, this week is empty, so we could do this. And like, oh, two weeks later, like that's usually a slow time. Let's do this. And so sometimes we do have to like reel it in and be like, okay, you know what? Actually, how can we do this to be even more profitable without having to do everything? Because it's just gonna confuse people.

SPEAKER_01 13:10

Yeah, less is less is more typically in this situation, right? And and this goes back to like you saying physically, just lay out the calendar. Because sometimes you when you see it, just a like 10,000 foot view, you're like, oh, this makes no sense whatsoever. Yeah. And then you save yourself a bunch of headaches down the road.

SPEAKER_00 13:27

So what can you do if you haven't started? So what to do now? Work on the strategy. Okay. So look at last year, look at your data points. If you don't have those data points, just start with your like launch date, work backwards and see like, okay, what can I do from here? And at the end of the day, at this point, just be very realistic about your timeline and your budget and know that in order to run a successful campaign, it is going to take time and it is going to have some, there's gonna be cost somewhere, whether it's your own time, whether it's hiring out, maybe your team's time, maybe reallocating projects on your team so that way you can get this stuff done without having to externally hire somebody. But you're gonna have to remember that there is a timeline, there is a budget, and you need to start working like that in order to see Q4 be your most profitable yet.

SPEAKER_01 14:19

Building a buffer.

SPEAKER_00 14:20

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 14:21

Like something something, like something always happens.

SPEAKER_00 14:23

Yeah, and also allow like at least at least three weeks of something that's gonna like oh man, I'm like six. I'm being generous here. So that's where we're gonna go from now. In a couple of weeks, we're gonna actually do a full breakdown of Q4 planning so that way you guys have like a step-by-step plan and like kind of best practices in order to make it a good quarter. Obviously, you can use that for any quarter, but we're gonna talk specifically to Q4. And that is it for today. Thanks for tuning in, whether you're watching or listening, and we will see you next week. Bye.

SPEAKER_01 14:57

Bye bye.