How to Use Holidays as a Marketing Strategy
Whether there are celebrations of a well- known occasion such as Memorial Day or more out of the ordinary like National Donut Day, marketers have plenty of holidays to playoff of and incorporate into their marketing efforts. Utilizing these holidays provides an opportunity to creatively market your company and generate sales, outside of traditional methods.
To start, it’s a great time to run promotions. Give clients a reason to celebrate through discounts and other deals for your company’s products and services. It’s typical to see large holiday campaigns such as Macy’s Memorial Day Sale or Cyber Monday, but these can even be as simple as a “summer sale” or pairing two items together for a discounted price on Valentines Day. Experimenting with holiday sales and promotions can boost the number of leads on what typically could be a “normal day” and ultimately increasing the number of customers that don’t all celebrate particular holidays.
An additional way to take advantage of random holidays is to use them to expand your audience and reach. Create social media posts associated with the holiday and add a hashtag with the holiday name. National holidays often become trending topics, meaning when others search for the trending occasion on social media platforms such as Twitter or Instagram, your content can appear within the results. Dunkin Donuts on the Fourth of July, for instance, posted an Instagram photo of someone holding their new donut fries with sparklers and red, white, and blue nails. The image was then captioned with the phrase: “Give me liberty and give me donut fries #happy4th!” The fast-food coffee joint took advantage of a trending holiday and used it to their benefit. They were able to not only promote a new product but also do it in a way that would effectively reach more people at that particular time.
Use this opportunity to get your brand out there and attract more attention to your organization. Generating strategies around out -of -the- blue holidays give you a reason to post and share information. Create a sense of reliability and trust by relating to your audience based off of the holidays chosen in a specific marketing strategy. Utilizing these occasions can display your company’s personality and let your “fun side” shine through. Your company will be memorable if you’re able to connect something like National Mac and Cheese Day to a relevant topic within your business.
This being said, there are also precautions you should take when it comes to marketing strategies tied with national holidays. First, don’t overdo it. No one wants to see a social media post, a blog, or sale for every single national holiday. Make sure to plan marketing efforts out in advance to know when is the best time to utilize this approach. Further, just because you may be creating social posts for a unique national holiday does not mean the content you share can be random. Any posts or offers associated with the event should have a purpose and be relevant. Make sure the tie between the holiday and your product isn’t too much of a reach, nothing should be forced. A good example, for instance, is instead of tying your company to a holiday by a specific phrase or advertisement an approach SurveyMonkey took for pride month was to change the profile image of their logo to the colors of the rainbow. They were able to make a statement and share their values without going overboard or being too cheesy.
Next time you’re having a difficult time finding ways to market your company, services, or product, take a look at the calendar of national holidays for inspiration. There may be a few relevant and clever holidays to link with your business.
