Holiday Planning Tips for Service-Based Businesses

The holiday season often feels like a retail battleground and service-based businesses may feel like an afterthought. While you won’t be running holiday sales or bundles, service-based businesses, like consultants, coaches, agencies, wellness providers, etc. should be offering meaningful value, building relationships, and capturing clients who have year-end planning on their minds.

While each service-based business has its own seasonality, this guide lets you know the framework for holiday planning to aid in a successful start of the new year. 

Start Early + Build Momentum

Ideally, your outreach should already be underway, but we know that this can be tough for small businesses without an entire marketing department at their disposal. With that in mind, you already know that decisions in service businesses often take days or weeks, so the earlier you seed ideas and awareness, the higher your chance of closing projects before the year’s end.

Tailor Offerings to Seasonal Mindsets

Before you plan out your end-of-the-year marketing strategy, you need to know what you are going to be offering. People often use the holidays to reflect and plan for the coming year. Your services can tap into that. Here are some ideas that can work for service-based businesses:

  • Limited-time “New Year Kickoff” Packages — Combine consultations + follow-up training sessions

  • Holiday Audit or Checkup Offers — Give clients a mini evaluation of their current state, showing potential upside as an entry-level offer

  • Giftable Services — Depending on your industry, you can leverage your services as gifts (ex. a coaching session, audit, brand consult, or a wellness retreat) that clients can give to colleagues or friends

  • Bundles + Retainers with Incentives — Wrap existing services into packages that carry into the next year with a holiday bonus or discounted rate.

Grow Your Audience with Content + Visibility

Plan your content as soon as possible and begin promotions 4–6 weeks before peak season. Leading up to your promotional push, you can be planting the seeds via valuable content that will serve in gaining search discoverability. Increase your visibility by tailoring content to be seasonally relevant. Some ideas to get you started: 

  • Create content optimized for season + service keywords (such as “end of the year brand refresh” or “new year wellness program”)

  • Host learning webinars and repurpose that content into downloadable guides on your website

  • Share year-in-review stories and client success stories that tie into your offerings

After you have planned out your content, make sure you have a solid distribution strategy:

  • Publish blog posts, guides, or short videos around holiday topics aligned with your niche

  • Share digestible snippets on social media to extend your reach

  • Cross-post on partners’ blogs, industry sites, or guest platforms to reach new audiences

  • Encourage social sharing of your holiday content and audit offers

As you wait for your content to gain traction, work on the flow that will nurture your leads. We recommend warming your list up with value-first email content (actionable tips, guides, and resources) and avoiding overt sales messages too early. 

Nurture Leads Via a Solid Email Strategy

We all know that service offerings require nurturing, so once you have a list, you need to ensure that the messaging and content is appropriate for them. 

Begin by segmenting your list and ensure the content is relevant to each group.

Current Clients - Current clients already trust you and know about your services, but they may not know about your new offerings. Current clients should receive messaging tied directly to your offer with timely reminders that match any deadlines.

Warm Prospects - There may be some prospects that have downloaded a resource or maybe they have even subscribed to your newsletter; regardless, they need to have a better understanding of your services and trust your expertise. Share actionable tips based on the content in which they have already expressed interest. From there, highlight your successes with other clients and then weave in your offer with timely reminders.

Cold Leads -  These leads likely just have a passing recognition of your services, so they will need the most nurturing. Provide general helpful content so you can gauge what piques their interest most. Once you have an idea of the content that compels them, share actionable tips based on what matters most and introduce them to the successes you were able to achieve for your clients. Introduce your offer and share deadlines.

Refine your email copy based on what makes most sense for your industry and offer, and be sure to pay attention to metrics like open rates and CTRs to measure the effectiveness of your copy and offer.

Support Your Operations

Now that you have your marketing strategy squared away, you need to make sure operations can deliver. Determine how many service spots you will be able to accept during the holidays so you don’t overbook. This will help you to craft language for your timely reminders and any spot limitations. Remember to factor in time for administrative tasks like proposals, onboarding, and execution, as well as any anticipated holiday time-off that may slow down the process.

Once a client has been onboarded, communicate your deadlines and milestones early and often so expectations are set. Ensure that your client knows when feedback is needed to keep the project on track, and clearly communicate any time off you and your team will be taking for the season.

Post project, collect feedback from your client and keep them in the loop on any new offerings that may be of interest to them.

Reflection for the Coming Year

Once the hectic nature of the season has passed, you can reflect on your end-of-the-year and holiday promotions to assess which strategies worked and which ones may not have. Ask yourself the following questions: 

  • Did the content drive interest? 

  • Which channels support the content best?

  • Did the emails perform well?

  • At which touch point did leads convert?

  • What was sticky?

  • Was anything missing?

All marketing efforts should be measured and iterated upon, which will give you a jumpstart on the next holiday season. And as an added bonus, to kickoff your pipeline for the near year, you can re-engage with any leads that showed interest but didn’t commit!

TL;DR

For service-based businesses, the holiday season is less about deep discounts and more about strategic positioning, relationship building, and planning ahead. When you layer insight-driven content, timely offers, human messaging, and operational preparedness, you set the stage for a strong year ahead.

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