Strategies: Season of good tidings, great revenue here

• Some companies see half to two-thirds of revenue during the fourth quarter
• Customer contact information gathered during holidays can translate into sales for rest of year
• Get Rhonda Abrams' free, 20-page Small Business Holiday Success Guide at www.Visa.com/HolidaySuccess

The calendar says October, but for small businesses, the holidays already have arrived.

While every season is important, for many small companies the winter holidays can represent half their annual sales. So it's time to start planning.

And I've got a sack full of small-business holiday success strategies to share.

"We do 65% of our sales in the fourth quarter," says Lawson Nickol, co-owner of All American Clothing Co. of Arcanum, Ohio. All American produces jeans made entirely in the USA. Customers can trace the source of all steps of production from the cotton farm to the mill to the factory where the jeans are made.

Last year, All American Clothing Co. ran a 12 Days of Christmas holiday promotion.

"We did a different item every day over a 12-day span, starting around Cyber Monday," says BJ Nickol, Lawson Nickol's son and co-founder who runs its e-commerce business. "It kept people coming back. If you were part of our newsletter, you got a three-day advance look, so we got a bunch of new subscribers."

They also created search-engine ads especially for the holidays. Sales increased by 65%.

Other small businesses have come up with creative approaches to their holiday planning and marketing:

• Manage your customer's gift lists. Here's a way to keep customers coming back: Do their holiday work for them.

Anna's Gourmet Goodies of Raleigh, N.C., maintains its corporate customers' gift lists so all the customer has to do is review the list, update and pay.

"We save their gift lists every year and send it to them a couple of months in advance," co-founder Chris Duke says. "Small thing for us, big help for businesses during a busy time of the year."

• Remember holidays other than Christmas. Some customers celebrate holidays such as Hanukkah and Kwanzaa, and you stand out when you market for Halloween or Thanksgiving.

"We started our annual Howl-o-ween Costume Contest five years ago, and every year we've seen it become more popular," says Chief Executive Amy Nichols of Dogtopia, a doggy day-care franchise based in North Bethesda, Md. The picture-worthy contest — who can resist a pug in a clown outfit? — increased the company's Facebook following, so it captured customers to market to year-round.

• Partner with another small business. You'll reach more customers and share marketing costs.

One way: Create a gift bundle like Lynnae Schneller, founder of Lynnae's Gourmet Pickles.

Last year for the holidays, Schneller partnered with childhood friend Krista Hamberg, owner of FishWife Salmon. Now, pickles and salmon may not seem to be a good fit, but the two businesswomen created a Puget Sound Sampler, representing their Washington locale.

Their gift pack was so successful, they now offer it year-round.

• Target a niche. It's hard to cut through all the holiday clutter, but it's easier if you appeal to a specific market segment.

CasaQ, based in San Jose, Calif., makes Christmas ornaments aimed at the Hispanic market. Its Sancho Snowman is adorable!

• Go where the customers are.Sportula, a Warsaw, Ind.-based maker of barbecue spatulas emblazoned with the logos of professional and collegiate sports teams, leases kiosks in malls during the holidays.

Its business has skyrocketed.

"We have had incredible success, and in a single year we increased the number of malls from 40 to 300," says Marc Roth, national sales manager.

If you're brave, you can take a humorous approach to your holiday marketing. Last year, JoeShopping.com, an online shopping comparison site, ran a Last Christmas Ever promotion, playing on what some thought were Mayan predictions that the world would end in 2012.

What are your holiday ideas? Concerns? Share them with me and other small-business owners throughout the holidays. Just follow me on Twitter or on Facebook.

And let me be the first — but definitely not the last — to say "Happy Holidays!"

Rhonda Abrams is president of The Planning Shop and publisher of books for entrepreneurs. Her most recent book isEntrepreneurship: A Real-World Approach. Register for Rhonda's free newsletter atPlanningShop.com. See an index of Abrams' columns here. Twitter: @RhondaAbrams. Facebook: facebook.com/RhondaAbramsSmallBusiness.Copyright Rhonda Abrams 2012.