The elections have come and gone. If you are like a lot of businesses, the election season was hard on your sales. There are a couple of reasons for this. Some people were too distracted by the ever-present ads for candidates to pay attention to your marketing. Also, many decision-makers were waiting to see what happened in the elections before they decided to move forward with plans for next year. With the elections behind us now, what’s next with your marketing?

There are moments for marketing that come around every so often. Every four years there is an opportunity for marketing that happens right after the election is over. There are roughly eight weeks between the election and the end of the year. For businesses that have budgets to spend at year’s end, that time frame is perfect to push your brand with incentives to buy before December 31. The looming deadline to make a deal is a great marketing gimmick that drives consumers past the wait-and-see phase to make a decision about buying your brand.

If you are going to take advantage of this year-end time period, you have to make sure you are marketing for a sale, not just awareness. What do I mean? Awareness marketing is the first phase of brand marketing. Consumers have to know what you are selling and why it is an advantage for them before they will consider buying from you. A lot of what we do in marketing is to make people aware of the brand and to make it a household name. But marketing that just makes you aware and does not get around to enticing the consumer to buy the brand is falling short. The shift in marketing from awareness to marketing for a sale should be seamless for the consumer, but it is very different for marketers. First-time sales marketing is all about getting the consumer to the point of making a buying decision quickly. It knocks down all barriers that could turn into reasons not to make the purchase. It gets to the crucial question that good marketing is asking of consumers: are you going to buy or not? This is where an ad campaign that gives an incentive to buy now works. These eight weeks start a clock ticking in the heads of consumers. There is a deadline when your incentive ends. Let that work in your favor.

What if your products and services are not something you can deliver by the end of the year? Promote signing a deal by the end of the year to get the incentivized price. That might mean getting a contract or a purchase order – whatever it takes to secure the business.

There are moments for marketing that come around every so often. With the elections over, it is time to insert your marketing and give consumers a reason to buy your brand. Make sure you are taking advantage of this time – it only comes around every four years.