National Holiday? Does that call for a promotion
What better way to reconnect with your audience than with celebratory messages around a national holiday or a big key date? At our marketing agency we’re always creating fresh content ideas for our clients to inspire their customers with. But should every event, celebration and holiday be an opportunity for seasonal promotions?
Bull’s-eye or bull
Yesterday was St Patrick’s Day and the start of Holi, today is Red Nose Day, Sunday marks the start of Spring and soon it’s Easter. There are plenty of free national holidays and awareness days calendars online. A brand could celebrate each one with its customers, but that would be expensive, time-consuming and confusing! So to answer the question of which celebrations to celebrate, start by asking what matters to your customers? Use their location, faith, age, and core interests to draw up a shortlist of relevant events.
Use the same criteria to look at the people who work for your company. Now look at your brand values, its vision, and its heritage. Which key dates align to these? By now you will probably have a long shortlist!
Now look at the list objectively. Were you to put a communication out about any one of these events, will your audience just think “That’s bull, any excuse to sell to me!”. If yes, cross it off! If the event doesn’t feel like a genuine connection with your audience don’t do it. It will annoy them rather than engage them. It could potentially even damage your brand reputation.
Bull’s-eye opportunities
With your shortlist a little shorter, you can now start to prioritise the bull’s-eye events in-terms of potential opportunity for the brand. If your competitors haven’t spotted the chance yet, why not put some marketing budget behind it? For the creative marketer, there are endless possibilities for how your brand could market a seasonal promotion. Here are some thought starters:
- Simple social post of well wishes, like we did for Yorkshire Day 2022
- Turn the date into a team charity event like Snap Fitness. It’s great for team morale, increases brand awareness amongst new audiences, and boosts your CSR credentials
- Email or e-campaign filled with advice and tips about getting ready for the date, and perhaps a promotion. Recipients welcome the information and see your brand as helpful and inspiring. Child nutritionist Annabel Karmel often does this well
- Send vouchers – Why not entice customers in-store or online with themed vouchers? Email them, drop a leaflet through their door, send a DM pack, push on social. You can make the vouchers as exclusive as you wish
- Competition time – Customers, their friends, and yet-to-be-customers love competitions! No matter what the size of the prize, work with your legal team to create a competition. Share it on your social channels, in e-newsletters, in digital campaigns, your website, and PR… You can even make announcing the winner into a promotion too!
- Key campaign – of course seasonal and religious events like Easter, Holi, Diwali and Christmas can be all-channel campaigns with long run-ups and sub-promotions too. But there’s nothing to stop gardening companies having key campaigns in April to celebrate the last frost. Baking companies could celebrate 1st February when most New Year’s resolution diets are broken!
Whatever the reason to celebrate, if the national holiday, festival, or key date has a bull’s-eye (not bull) link to your audience, your team or your brand, then it’s probably a good excuse to reconnect with them.
If you’d like to connect with the team at ThinkOTB and get ideas for your seasonal promotions, just get in touch.
