Hello to everyone within the Million Dollar community!  As always, I hope this message finds you all doing well and that business is booming!

We are quickly approaching the fall season.  Soon thereafter is the holiday season.  For this reason, I encourage you to start planning your holiday marketing campaigns now.

Thanksgiving and Christmas should be two of your biggest days of earning for you and your drivers - as in you should be making thousands!!

Many nursing home residents are desperate to go home for holiday dinners with friends and family.  Both Private-Pay and Medicaid clients are willing to pay holiday rates for such outings.

My advice is that you start planning you holiday campaigns now which should include the following considerations:

1. Your price point:  Holiday rates should always increase as should reimbursement to drivers - after all, they're limiting their holiday dinners with friends and family to work!  What are your adjusted holiday rates?

2. Target facilities:  Which facilities do you have the best relationships and will be most receptive to your holiday marketing?  Which facilities can you use enhanced holiday promotions to further ingratiate and introduce your services?

3. Promotional materials:  Most of you know I love rack cards for a variety of reasons to include price, convenience, and versatility.  But there are plenty of other forms of marketing.  What is the best marketing material to convey your holiday campaign to your clients?

4. Split testing.  If you're like most businesses, you have different relationships with each facility.  Therefore, your marketing campaign should not be one-size-fits-all.  How you market to each facility and each customer should be diverse.  How can you adjust and customize your marketing campaign to be more attractive to varying facilities and customers?    

Some other suggestions that I share with client-providers are as follows:

1. Your Thanksgiving and Christmas marketing campaigns should be a one-two-punch.  Many, not all, of your clients who go home for Thanksgiving dinner will be inclined to do the same for Christmas.  This is an instant target market that you want to leverage

2. You need to plan, draft, and create your holiday marketing now, throughout the month of September, so you can begin launching your Thanksgiving marketing in the beginning of October

3. Immediately following Thanksgiving, your Christmas marketing begins

4. In starting your Christmas marketing, all of those clients who traveled for Thanksgiving should receive a "Thank You" letter and a promotional discount for traveling with you on Christmas Eve or Christmas Day

5. Hopefully, you kept the contact information for those who traveled home with you last holiday season.  They are "ground-zero" for your marketing campaign.  Make sure they receive holiday greetings and marketing in the beginning of October and again in early to mid-November if they still have not made a reservation

I could go on and on about marketing strategies, but the most important take-away points are that (1) you plan early and timely, (2) you execute a diverse plan versus a one-size-fits-all plan, and (3) you incentivize your plan to encourage you drivers to want to participate and earn more money.  

Get to planning and remember, YOU are the CEO of your business.  No one else is responsible for building and growing your business!

See you at the Top!
Joel E. Davis
Founder, the United Medical Transportation Providers Group

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