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I must start by paying homage to one of the greatest Celebration Marketing Days that we have. St. Patrick’s Day, a day where we get out the green garb, raise a pint of food colored beer and chat about how great it would be to Irish.

The great thing is that until the 1970′s St. Patrick’s Day was a minor religious holiday where the priest would acknowledge the feast day and families would have a larger meal but that was about it.

The St. Patrick’s Day that we know and love is prety much “Made in America”.On any given day 5.5 million pints of Guiness are consumed around the world. On St. Patties Day that jumps to 13 million. So I salute my Irish American Brothers for giving this Canadian one more reason to drink beer.

But today I wanted to get into April ideas because with April promotions bring May Profits! I am going to start out with a few of the monthly theme ideas.

April is National Poetry Month. It would be a great time to dust off those old Roses are Red, Violets are Blue poems and use them in your communications. Remember that the main focus here is creating and icebreaker to have a discussion with your customer without it being awkward.

April also has lots for the music crowd. It is both Jazz Appreciation Month and Guitar Month. This would be a great time to have some live music in your restaurant or store and to make an event out of it. There is something truly special about a smoky jazz club sipping on a nice drink.

For Guitar Month you could focus on having a tounament style promotion where customers can interact and either vote down until you get to the best guitarist of all time or you could go local and see if you can get local musicians to participate in your tournament. I know that a lot of clubs jumped on the “idol” bandwagon and had there own “idol” style competition. It is a great way to create a buzz and everyone loves to have the ability to voice and opinion and vote.

I am going to do a little plug for a friend in Kansas City. Paul Clark of Serious Vanity Music, part of the team that created the intro for this show that I have to say is awesome, has opened “Paul’s Guitar Show” where he does custom repairs to those forgotten guitars or the really well used ones. You can find him in Kansas City or online at http://www.paulsguitarshop.com.

And finally I wanted to talk about International Customer Loyalty Month. With this I want to encourage al of you to try to connect with customers both new and old. It really does not matter how long it has been since you last talked to a customer the face is you have a relationship with them. Send them a nice handwritten card.Try putting something in it to encourage them to come in or give you a call. Don’t make it salesy, just be genuine.

The simple fact is it is easier to connect with an old client then it is to acquire a new one but that is where most of us spend our time.

I am currently in the midst of reading Gary Vaynerchuk’s new book The Thank You Economy where he talks about how in his mind with the use of social media we are really heading back to where we relied on the opinions of the community much in the same way as our grandparents would have relied on the opinion of friends at the local cafe. We are just now doing it on a larger scale, which can make the interactions that much more significant then ever before.

Now get out there and make something happen!