It’s beginning to look a lot like … No, not yet!

    Please don’t hate me for the topic of this post: Christmas.

I know, I know … TOO SOON! We haven’t even made it through Halloween. (I’m a purist. Don’t even mention Christmas until after the Thanksgiving turkey’s bones have been picked clean.)

But here’s the truly scary thing. Yuletide decorations are already being spotted in some stores, and the marketing fever to attract holiday shoppers, well, that’s practically become a year-round pursuit.

Take, for instance, Christmas.com. Not only is the site teeming with gift ideas for every human being based on personality type and interest (and wallet size), but it also includes options for charitable giving. When I visit this site — trust me, for research purposes only — I can’t help but wonder if some enterprising person snatched up this url when it first became available and held it for ransom to the highest bidder. Merry Christmas, suckers!

Are we in the spirit yet?

Marketing Christmas used to be simple in a brick-and-mortar world. Drape some tinsel on the display cases, pass out the Santa hats to staff, turn on the Nat King Cole, and fling open the doors on Black Friday. Today, the process is much more complicated, and a little delicate. Smart business owners must pay attention to their SEO presence and decide on a social media strategy to make sure that folks are led to their wares. Macy’s department store, the granddaddy of holiday shopping, shows remarkable restraint on its home page, but plug “Christmas” into their search engine and you’re instantly traveling their “Holiday Lane” site.

Those who, like me, don’t want to think about Christmas until December probably don’t own a retail business. It’s easy to be a Grinch when your livelihood doesn’t rely on making the majority of your sales in one relatively compressed span of time between the fourth Thursday in November and December 25^th.

 

If I was a retailer who wasn’t social media savvy, I’d start with the basics by sending my preferred customers season’s greetings through a social media platform like Twitter and advertise my best deals. Yes, there’s still nothing like receiving a paper greeting card through the mail, but the practice is declining (the trees thank you) and much to the U.S. Postal Service’s chagrin people eventually will veer to online-only correspondence.

Today, even Santa Claus is receiving advice from social media experts. And, apparently, he's getting pretty adept at it.

 

Old-timers like me have to reconcile our distaste for “early Christmas” with the reality that it’s a necessary evil for retailers. Social media actually makes the process a little more palatable. It’s so much easier to click away from an online site than it is to avoid a shopping mall with “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” playing on an endless loop for a month or more.

Like it or not (and I suspect you don't), Christmastime is here.