There are two types of people when national days such as Valentine’s Day approaches: those who embrace and those who loathe it.
No matter what the response, the value of national days from a marketing aspect should not be ignored. Recognisable events are a great way to engage any current or prospect clients you may have. Sure, it may require more creativity than usual to not be cheese-y and stay unique – but the results that these campaigns create can positively impact your brand. Whether celebrated or not, events related to these days are recognised by everyone, whether in B2C or B2B industries.
Standing out from the crowd
When considering whether to pursue a campaign, many businesses can be put off by the idea of doing the same as everyone else. Working to your businesses strengths and utilising your internal resources is vital to creating a campaign that is unique to your business. For example, at Hyped this Valentine’s Day we made the most of our superb inhouse design team by creating flyers. As our core business strength are our Kickstarter marketing package, we decided to emphasis this within our campaign, attaching sweet packages to the flyers.
This transcended across the general public and prospects clients. To spread brand awareness, we handed out small sweet packages and a flyer asking those commuting to London to tweet us through what love means to them and for our prospects, we hand delivered packages to businesses that had tubes of love heart sweets with each element of our marketing packages printed on the front – a sweet package of our marketing package.
Whilst this is a simple idea, it was affective in spreading brand awareness in a way that was relevant and personal. This notion can be applied to most campaigns that could be beneficial to your business.
Choosing your audience
Carefully selecting the audience you want your campaign to be directed too is essential. Of course, any business would want a campaign that applies to everyone but aiming at such a wide audience may lead your business to fall into the trap of delivering generic campaigns. Consider any audience that may be neglected in day-to-day marketing, whether these are clients or prospects. Once this decision has been made, catering a campaign to them will become immensely easier!
Next month, Easter will be taking consumers by storm. Starting to plan and action an Easter campaign now will provide you with enough time to specify campaign aspects as well as liaise with external support such as printers. Allowing time to be on your side will also mean you can ensure that the campaign is consistent across all channels!
As an SME you can also design campaigns to shout about the values your company holds. For example, Word Book Day, that encourages children to read and enjoy books. Whilst books may have absolutely no relevance to your product or service, showing your support for good cause is a great way to show diversity within your business.
This being said, considering what national days to use is also extremely important. You do not need to drown your audience in campaigns, as this will dilute their impact! Assessing when to do campaigns will enable you to create short-term plans of when you will be marketing yourself across the year.
It’s about balance
Understanding who, when and how for each campaign will mean that your business will appropriately and successfully market itself. Most importantly this information will allow for your team to plan ahead, so that even if the day is not related to your niche, you will be able to appropriately formulate strategies to deliver the campaign. Playing to your strengths and balancing your resources will allow your business to utilise national days and events.
