Halloween is around the corner, and so is year-end. Here’s what separates a marketing treat from a marketing trick this Q4:

1. Holiday E-Cards + CRM

Treat: A clean CRM list means your holiday e-card lands in front of every key client and referral source.

Trick: A stale list means it bounces, or worse, goes to someone who left the company two jobs ago.

2. Holiday Coverage

Treat: A marketing on-call rotation means a crisis, media inquiry, or urgent pitch still gets handled between Thanksgiving and New Year’s.

Trick: Radio silence for two weeks means a reporter deadline, an RFP window, or a client emergency slips right through.

3. Year-End RFP Surge

Treat: You know budgets reset in January, so you have proposal templates and pricing ready before the flood hits.

Trick: You’re scrambling to build a proposal from scratch on day one of a two-week deadline.

4. Awards & Rankings Deadlines

Treat: Chambers, Best Lawyers, and Legal 500 submissions are tracked on a calendar months out.

Trick: You discover the deadline passed while scrolling LinkedIn.

5. Content Calendar for Q1

Treat: Thought leadership pieces are drafted now, ready to launch the moment the new year starts.

Trick: January arrives and the content pipeline is empty.

6. Budget Planning

Treat: Next year’s marketing budget is approved before the holidays, so January work isn’t delayed.

Trick: You’re waiting on sign-off until February, losing a full quarter of momentum.

7. Website Audit

Treat: Attorney bios, practice pages, and results are updated before year-end traffic spikes. You are prepared to change newly named partners bios as soon as their title change takes place.

Trick: A prospective client finds a bio listing a partner who retired in 2023.

8. Client Feedback Outreach

Treat: You gather client feedback before year-end, while the relationship is top of mind.

Trick: You wait too long and miss the window to fix something before renewal season.

9. Social Proof Refresh

Treat: Testimonials, case results, and rankings are refreshed for use in January pitches.

Trick: Your BD team is pitching with outdated wins from three years ago.

10. Team Recognition

Treat: Marketing and BD wins get recognized before the year closes, boosting morale into Q1.

Trick: Nobody notices the work until something goes wrong.

Which one is already checked off your list, and which one still needs a treat before Halloween?