This has to be the least productive week of the year. We are living between Christmas and New Year’s Day – two holidays a week apart at the end of the year. We are days away from calling an end to 2023, but in so many ways, the end has already arrived, yet the new year has not begun. It feels like a full-term pregnancy, but no baby quite yet.

There was a time when hospitals required all family members to stay in a waiting room while a mother was giving birth. Only hospital personnel were allowed in the labor and delivery areas. If you are working this week, what can you do but shuffle a few files around and get ready for what comes next, but has yet to arrive? What does one do in the waiting room besides… wait?

From a marketing perspective, here are some practical and productive things you can do during this waiting room week.

Get a good look at the bigger picture of the past year

Right now is a good time to pull back and take a broad look at your ability to draw consumers closer to your brand this past year. How did you do that? For one, open your analytics and get both annual and monthly engagement numbers. Compare those numbers to your sales numbers. They should correlate. For instance, if you noticed in July you had very high engagement numbers with a marketing campaign and in September you had record sales, you should make note of that and see if there are similar patterns that can be drawn from marketing to sales. Was there a two-month lag between high engagement and high sales across the year? If so, you can use that information to roll out new campaigns in the upcoming year. However, if the July campaign and the September sales were the only time this happened, then evaluate why customers bought from you during this period of the summer. This evaluation will teach you how to be a much more effective marketer in the coming year.

Compare the upcoming year to the past year

Every year has its similarities and differences when compared to the past year. How are things the same when you compare 2023 to 2024? Are you changing the way you do business? How will things be different? We don’t always know what will be different until it happens, but there are some things that are clearly different. For one, the upcoming year is a leap year. Adding February 29 to the calendar shifts the exact-time holidays (those celebrated on a specific date) two days from where they were in 2023. It is also an election year, which means that you can expect a political battle to divide consumers and the contentious nature of politics to be at the forefront of their minds. It will impact the marketplace. How will you adapt your marketing to keep your brand in the eye of the consumer in the upcoming year?

Prepare to stand out in a good way

Marketing helps your brand stand out in the minds of your target market. Blending in with your competition is a very bad marketing move. How do you do this? Evaluate what your competition is offering compared to what you are offering. Where are you better than them? Where are they better than you? Now, how does each compare when you look at what your target market needs from you? How do you solve their problems? What do you offer them to solve these problems that is better than your competition? Promote this to differentiate yourself, but don’t stop there. Name your solution. Make it part of your brand.

These waiting days of 2023 are a good time to take a look at the way you are marketing and then adjust for the upcoming year. Take advantage of this lull in the business calendar to make plans for the new year, because when you get back into the office next week, the new year will be born!