This is the third day of a 30-day trial. Follow the link to Marketing Ideas En Masse to find out more.

I find it amazing how well cutting prices works to lure people into a store. The problem with the price cut war is eventually everyone gets in on it and those that don’t cut prices get cut out by the customers. This year retailers have cut prices quick and early to attract customers into their stores. I think overall this is a good thing because I don’t like paying $80 for shoes when I know they were made for about $5 somewhere outside of the USA. The next problem to the price cut war is convincing people they will still be getting a deal if they buy today and not tomorrow when the prices are even lower. I wonder what the door buster prizes will be this year at the major retail stores on Black Friday. This could potentially be a great year for deals. Here is what the Baltimore Sun has to say:

To lure shoppers, retailers are pushing holiday promotions earlier than ever; they’re already offering extended store hours and steep cuts on items such as toys. In recent years, holiday advertisements began to appear before the Halloween candy is sold out, but the big shopping season has crept even earlier this year as retailers grapple with the economic downturn.

Wal-Mart led the way for holiday bargains by slashing the price on toys well before Halloween. The world’s largest retailer also announced it will alert shoppers about holiday deals through text-messaging.

Other retailers have also launched sales and discounts traditionally pegged to the day after Thanksgiving, the typical start of the holiday season. Kmart began hosting “Black Friday Weekends” two weeks ago. Stores such as Kohl’s and JCPenney have extended hours to midnight on some days, another shopping tradition once reserved for after Thanksgiving.

Retailers also are appealing to consumers with marketing campaigns and other programs that promote ways to stretch a budget or save a few dollars.

That’s all we have to do! Convince the consumers that they can save money while spending it at our store and not the competitiors. Genius.

This is the first of a 30-day trial. Follow the link to Marketing Ideas En Masse to find out more.

Sometimes the turkey just isn’t ready. Now, instead of awkwardly looking at all your family and extended family members you can pass that time with a new Thanksgiving Game. The Thanksgiving Game is now up for sale at 100 different Kroger locations in Kentucky, Indiana, Illinois and Tennessee as well as all of the nearly 600 Cracker Barrel stores nationwide and at Amazon.com and many Christian bookstores across the country. The Thanksgiving game will retail between $14.99 and $19.99.

Stotz was doing what he could to hold off dinner until his wife’s parents arrived, but everyone was growing hungry and restless.

To pass the time, Stotz whipped out pencils and scraps of paper and declared, “We’re going to play a game.” He told all the players to write down what they were thankful for that year, and then afterward had them try to guess who wrote what. Players earned points for guessing correctly.

“I remember it like it was yesterday,” said Stotz, a retired entrepreneur and airline sales agent. “You just don’t start Thanksgiving without your mother-in-law.”

The game was such a hit, it became a family Thanksgiving tradition.

Now the family has professionally developed the game and hopes to share it with the rest of America.

Read more here.

The holidays are upon us and with that it is time to ramp up the marketing of retail businesses. For this post I used the assistance of HARO (help a reporter out) and got a good return of ideas. I will explain more about HARO and different ideas on how to use the free service a little later.

1. The first suggestion comes from Leah Dossey who is the owner, art director/ designer for Blue Leaf Creative. She suggests:

2. Next we have Karl Schmieder who is one of the founders of MessagingLab in New York. Karl suggests:

3. Erin Read Ruddick, the client services director at Creating Results, LLC – Strategic Marketing, suggested that I find a video clip from the show WKRP in Cincinnati “Turkeys Away.”
Here is the video, you might have to click here to view it.

also suggested by Erin:

We’ve done multiple fall promotions for clients, including creating a giant corn maze for a real estate developer that drove thousands of leads, but nothing specifically Thanksgiving.

4. Next Benjamin Christie suggested I take a look at his blog www.gourmetads.com.

“Taking advantage of targeted advertising next to online recipes for holiday favorites is a great way to get your brand at the top of every shopper’s grocery list this year. When a consumer goes online to look up recipes on how to roast their Thanksgiving turkey, will they be thinking Butterball, Norbest or Honeysuckle White? That all depends on whose ad is cleverly placed right beside the roast turkey recipe.

More and more consumers are turning to the Internet for their recipe needs; especially their holiday recipe needs and smart advertisers are taking advantage of this trend with their Thanksgiving advertising in order to create brand awareness during the critical holiday sales rush. Ideally, companies should get their products placed four weeks before the big holiday as many shoppers have already begun to stock their pantries in preparation for the big event.”

5. Lastly I figured I would throw out a suggestion of my own called the Turkey Hunt

I would aim for success by getting as much local publicity as possible, including local business sponsors. Then right on or around Thanksgiving Day I would dress 3-4 people up in big turkey costumes and have them run around in a big field. I would charge people a couple bucks for a bucket of water balloons (all proceeds go to a local charity). Next give them all water balloon launchers and let them rip. The first person to hit each turkey with a water balloon wins that turkey’s prize package from the local sponsors.

So we create a fun way to promote sponsoring businesses, free prizes and also donations to charities. Maybe even instead of charging for the water balloons we offer a swap of a balloon or two for a nonperishable food bank item.

Do you have any Thanksgiving marketing ideas for local businesses or charities? Have you ran a successful marketing campaign on Thanksgiving? Tell us your stories.