As I write this, It’s nearly that time of year…

Here in the UK, we’ve had Christmas splattered everywhere for a while now – displays of big tubs of chocolate and boxes of biscuits, seasonal items from mince pies to Serrana ham, the music in the shops.

The US is doubtless being bombarded with Thanksgiving messages.

And as soon as the last piece of Thanksgiving turkey has been swallowed it will be Black Friday.

That’s an event that was unheard of here a few years ago (2013 apparently) but is now our biggest shopping day.

If you’re an affiliate for anything, there’s a good chance they’ve got a Black Friday deal that you can promote to your list.

And despite the fact that you’ll be joining what seems like half the world promoting on that day, it’s probably still worth doing.

Much like Christmas, Black Friday has spread out from being a one day event – it’s nearer two weeks if you’re Amazon and I doubt that particular genie will be put back in the lamp, so expect the event to sprawl in the same way as other “one day” events expand to take up the available space.

Regardless of your view about these kind of promotions, they exist and they’re not going to disappear just because you think they’re too commercial or any other reason. A friend here is just coming to terms with Halloween now that he’s got two children who are excited about it. Now his youngest daughter is already singing Jingle Bells (albeit with the words muddled as she’s only 3).

All that means you can do one of two things:

• Try to be like King Canute and command the tides to turn back – about as likely as parting a phone from a teenager in modern society
• Go with the flow and run your own seasonal promotions – it’s an easy way of coming up with reasons for people to justify buying

That second point is the real secret: it’s said that we buy with our emotions but justify them with logic.

If your messages give people both of those, you’ve tipped the odds in your favour. Which is really all you can hope to do when it comes to marketing – it’s a numbers game and the more you can stack the odds in favour of the house (you making a sale), the better so long as you’re being honest with your market.

Often that means taking a step back from the almost random clutter that happens in our lives whenever a big event is approaching.

Decide on a hook or angle – Black Friday is low prices, Halloween is sweets and costumes, back to school covers all sorts of things likewise Christmas has expanded to be as many things to as many people as possible.

Then use that to reach out to your audience.

If you get it right, you’ll ride the tide and get more sales than you’d otherwise have expected.

If you try to be Canute and ignore it, you’ll get drowned out by all the other people who are promoting whichever seasonal event is happening next.

Your choice – you can still take a not-too-pushy approach and make sales. Some of your list will appreciate that. So you don’t have to sell out completely to benefit from the boost that each of these seasonal events offers.