Holiday Marketing

For those marketers who have products to sell, they love holidays and specifically the holidays that surround christmas time. Its a time when the whole world seems to be in a rush to spend money. More sales happen in the month of December for product based companies than any other time of year. However for those of us in the service based industry just the opposite seems to happen. Christmas time tends to have the opposite effect for those people who run service based industries. The reason of course is logical. Everyone is out shopping for friends, family, and children but very few shop for themselves. More often than not people say "I will wait til next month to buy this for myself". So us marketers have to use the magic of christmas to help drive customers to service based industries. What I have done at the cooperative is offer our affiliate free gifts on top of their usually commissions. Based on what level membership they sell during the holiday times, affiliates at the cooperative can earn flash drives, computer speakers, mp3 players, and tablet computers. Doing this encourages members to try harder to make sales - because they get free christmas gifts to give away. Also a lot of people see the word tablet and think "hmmm I can get a free tablet just for marketing". Its all about using Christmas gift giveaways to keep the sales coming in. So how are you utilizing the holidays to drive sales?