Running an Online Business: What Thanksgiving Dinner Can Teach You

While Canada’s Thanksgiving is almost a month past, the U.S. is within days of celebration. It’s the annual test of whether our kitchens, our lists, and our guests are all in sync. Of wondering whether the turkey will look and taste like it’s supposed to, or if you have to have a last-minute improv. What does that have to do with running an online business, selling products or services, launching social media campaigns, and building loyal customers during the holiday season? Quite a lot, actually!

For example, you’ll get better results with your dinner (and your marketing campaigns!) if you prepare ahead. Can you imagine figuring that all out the day of? Madness!

Also, if you know who you’re serving and what they like to eat, you’ll have happier guests. Sounds a lot like buyer intent and personalization, doesn’t it?

Let’s pull aside the roasting pan and see how dinner-day wisdom can map to your website, your content, your campaigns, and your team.

Start with a plan, or you’ll forget the cranberry sauce.

Before you even preheat the oven, you need a plan: what time the turkey goes in, when the sides get underway, who’s bringing what, and who’s setting the table. In online business, that’s your roadmap:

• Build your content calendar.
• Set your campaign timeline.
• Define roles for social media marketing.
• Create your email marketing.
• Optimize your website for long-term growth.

If you launch a website update, start a new ad campaign, or roll out a big SEO push without a clear sequence, things inevitably go sideways. You’ll have a last-minute scramble, half-baked copy, or missing analytics tags, none of which lead to a strong return, even if you have a strong marketing strategy.

Look, we all know the biggest season of the year is upon us. Black Friday. Cyber Monday. Super Saturday. All the days between them and Christmas. If you didn’t start early, do better next year! Set clear goals, set a timeline, build a content calendar. Most importantly, plan for an early start, beginning with pre-prep.

If you don’t prep ahead, everything burns at once.

It’s one thing to plan; it’s another to prep. In the kitchen, you’re chopping vegetables early. Maybe you brined the bird overnight and lined pans ahead of time. If you wait until the last minute, you’ll be rushing gravy and boiling sides while the smoke alarm sings.

When you’re running and online business, prepping means scheduling content and batching tasks. It takes making sure to update landing pages ahead of promo launches, checking site speed, and making sure your tracking is in place.

Executing an early holiday campaign without prepping your email list, your site performance, or your offers is like starting everything the day of and hoping you’ll be done on time. For example, if you have your Thanksgiving marketing assets already prepared, you can have them scheduled out in advance. That way you aren’t scrambling when the promotion hits.

Your customers are like Thanksgiving guests: everyone likes something different.

At the Thanksgiving table, you have the turkey-lovers, the veggie-only folks, the picky eaters, the dessert-first crew, and the guest who just wants rolls. Turkey-lovers talk about not being rabbits and glare at their vegetables. Everybody complains about the roll guy taking all of the bread. If you served everyone the exact same plate regardless of preference, it’d probably be chaos.

The same applies to your online business: your target audience has different intents, different expectations, and different behaviors. They all might need your services, but not necessarily for the same reasons, and they’re looking for you on multiple social media channels.

User-experience experts say designing only for yourself (or your internal team) often leads to a site that fails for real visitors. You need to think about the various personas coming to your site: the curious browser, the returning client, the deal-chaser, the referral. When you allow multiple paths to purchase and ways to absorb information, you cater to the visitor rather than the visitor having to cater to your website.

Check your home page.

Read your homepage aloud as if you were explaining it to the cousin who only shows up for dessert. Ask: “If I knew nothing about my business, would I understand who you are, what you do, and what you want me to do?” If the answer is no, revise one paragraph of copy or one sub-navigation item accordingly.

Don’t argue with the turkey; check the temperature.

No matter how confident you are in the recipe, you don’t argue with the turkey. You insert a thermometer and verify the internal temperature.

In business, you don’t argue with your gut guess either. You prove it with data. You look at the metrics and let them tell you what’s really happening.

One of my favorite business quotes is by Peter Drucker, known as the “father of modern management.” He said, “You can’t improve what you don’t measure.”

You might love how your blog looks, or how your funnel feels, but if conversions are down, or the bounce rate is high, then you need to find out why. “Going with your gut” is not the best way to grow a business. Why? Because analytics differentiate what’s actually working from what’s a case of bad indigestion.

Pick one key metric.

For example: demo-requests, newsletter signups, or add-to-cart rate. Review its trend over the past 30 days. Then ask: Did that metric move when I launched my last change? If yes, why? If not, what might be blocking it? Write a short note of one hypothesis and one test you’ll run.

Make leftovers part of your strategy.

After dinner, there’s joy in the fridge: turkey sandwiches, soup, casseroles. You’re not starting fresh every single day; you’re creatively reusing what already exists.

Good online businesses do the same with content and assets. Re-use the blog post, turn it into a video, make social snippets, update it for new keywords. Push a post with boosted engagement to drive sales during the holiday shopping rush. The sky is the limit

(One of our oldie-but-goodie articles from back in the day, “The Publisher’s Guide to Repurposing Content,” talks about how this is done.)

Why recreate when you can reuse? And while originality still matters, you’ll get better ROI from what you already did well than constantly chasing shiny new content that may underperform.

Identify one piece of existing content that performed well.

Visit our guide to content repurposing and look at the 12 Ways to Repurpose Content at the bottom of the post. Now, I know it talks about PowerPoint (we’ll do an update one of these days and dust it off for more modern versions), but I want you to see how a piece of content can be rewritten, sliced, diced and Julieann-fried to feel like fresh, new offerings.  

Decide on two “leftover” pieces you can extract from your one piece of high-performing content. For example, if you have a blog post that has done well, what can you turn into a social carousel, email digest, and shorter blog update? Develop those two pieces and post them to the proper platforms.

Remember: nobody gets Thanksgiving perfect.

At least not at my house. Sometimes the turkey is too dry. Sometimes the mashed potatoes are too salty or the guest that was supposed to bring the dessert couldn’t make it. That’s okay. A Thanksgiving dinner might not have every dish exactly right, but if everyone feels fed, connected, and looked after, it was a success.

Running an online business is the same way. Websites hardly ever launch flawlessly. Your campaigns will never go exactly as planned, and yes, someone will burn something. But perfection isn’t the point; consistency, intention, and adaptability are.

So rather than chasing perfection, aim for better understanding: your plan, your audience, your metrics, your assets. Make sure the next Thanksgiving-themed campaign, content pillar, and launch is quieter, smoother, and more human.