There are many marketing channels, platforms, and activities. Choosing which marketing channels, platforms, and activities you should use for your business can be complex. Until one style of marketing comes along that is so efficient, it is a no-brainer.
This is how we feel about occasion-based advertising. Occasion-based Marketing, also known as holiday marketing or seasonal market, is when you promote your brand, product, or services around a particular occasion like Back to School Week, Black, Friday, Cyber Monday, New Year’s Eve, Halloween, Thanksgiving, or (inter)national awareness days and holidays.
Occasion-based campaigns offer customers discounts to encourage them to purchase holiday-related merchandise. But this is just the beginning of your opportunity-based marketing options. This umbrella covers all content specifically related to or mentions a specific occasion. It’s an essential instrument in social media content marketing.
You can use current events, holidays, and awareness weeks as inspiration for video, image, and written content to ensure that you never run out of ideas. This will also help your business in many other ways.
Continue reading to learn more about occasion-based marketing and its importance. You’ll be eager to start filling your content calendar with event-themed content ideas by the end of this article, if you haven’t done so already.
Occasion-Based Marketing: The Benefits
So why is occasion-based advertising so worthwhile? Let’s see some of its benefits:
Higher Expenditure
Customers have the opportunity to purchase things that they don’t usually buy on holidays. You can think of Valentine’s Day gifts and graduation presents.
- In 2020, Americans spent around $650 on Christmas gifts, according to NRF.
- 80% of Americans spend less than $200 on New Year’s Eve, according to WalletHub.
- US consumers spent around $5.7 billion on food and $3.2 billion on clothing during the Easter of 2020, according to NRF.
- The total Halloween spending was $8.05 billion in 2020, according to NRF.
- According to Adobe, online Thanksgiving sales broke the $5 billion threshold for the first time in 2020.
- The average amount shoppers spent on celebrating Father’s Day 2019 was a record-high $138.97 according to NRF.
Real Connections
The internet can seem disconnected and alienating. Brands that can break down the digital barriers and create genuine, personal, and emotional connections with their customers will be able to stand out. This will help them gain customer loyalty.
Holidays and special occasions are great for building relationships. Customers can bond over topics such as how excited they are to see Spring or how much they love their grandparents. It’s vital to pick relevant occasions for your brand, products, or services. You can connect with your customers by choosing the proper social media holiday.
This is how occasion-based marketing can help you meet your audience’s expectations and connect with them through emotions and personality. It also allows you to humanize your brand to build trust and relationships.
Urgency
Two compelling marketing strategies are also used in occasion-based marketing: FOMO and urgency.
Your customers are told by urgency marketing that stock is low, and the sale is over soon. Now is the time to make a purchase. Because they are temporary, these occasions allow you to offer products or sales that last only until the holiday ends, creating urgency among potential customers.
An example CTA for urgency-based marketing might look like this: “Click Here to Shop Our St. Patrick’s Day Sale – Only Through Thursday!”
FOMO marketing is similar. It uses the human fear of missing out to encourage customers to buy. Your goal is to appeal to the audience’s natural desire to seize an opportunity rather than let it slip by them. Holidays are a great way to start that FOMO.
An example FOMO marketing CTA could read: “Don’t Miss Our Limited-Time Mardi Gras Offer!”
Raising Awareness
These occasions are more critical and spark deeper cultural conversations. People from all walks of the social media world discuss the latest holiday or celebration. Participating in these conversations with the right hashtags will allow you to increase awareness and gain new customers.
Marketing Tips and Best Practices for Occasions
Let’s now discuss how occasion-based marketing can help your business.
Select Occasions that are relevant to your industry and audience
You can’t make content for every occasion since there are many daily. You wouldn’t want it. You will get the best results if you are strategic with what occasions you post. The occasion-based content that you post should be:
- Relevant to your industry. Returning to school, for example, is a massive opportunity for educational institutions and school gear. The Super Bowl is an excellent opportunity for sportswear content. Note that sometimes the relevance might be much more obscure though.
- As specific as possible. This will make your content stand out in potential customers’ feeds, especially if you take advantage of less popular occasions and events.
- Relevant to your target audience. Make sure your content matches your targetted audiences based on demographics like age, location, gender, and interests.
Plan Ahead
Planning ahead is key to success with occasion-based advertising. These occasions have a short window of relevance, lasting between a few days and weeks. You’ll be lost if you blink. You’ll also lose the chance to engage in conversation with your audience if you don’t prepare your content correctly.
Content planners are a valuable tool for occasion-based marketing. They allow you to plan for the occasions for which you will create content and ensure you have all the steps in place to ensure the content is ready and posted on time.
Looking forward to a content calendar filled with unique and engaging ideas is fantastic.
Take into account the location
Consider your location when choosing holidays to market. You don’t want to alienate your audience by posting about holidays they don’t celebrate or know about. Understanding where your audience lives and whether an occasion is appropriate for them is essential.
However, sending holiday greetings can help your audience feel appreciated and recognized, especially if they celebrate a religious or national holiday.
It’s up to you to decide whether to focus on international or local events. It is crucial to think strategically and carefully about your choice.
Be creative
It’s not hard to see that occasion-based marketing can be highly effective. This is why big and small companies use it all the time. You can’t simply post “seasons greetings” messages and assume this is enough. Instead, try to create unique content and not the same type as everyone else.
You can try to think of a creative angle for the holidays. You might post a video of your employees doing their favorite exercise on Fridays of Move More Month (April). You might offer a 10% discount coupon to any customer who tags your selfie taken in the store on National Selfie Day (June 21, 2017). There are many possibilities. It’s all about thinking outside of the box.
Creativity isn’t always effortless. It is essential to plan. You will have more time to come up with original ideas. If you are stuck, our blog has creative ideas for major holidays, and our content planner provides you with ready-made templates that you can customize to suit your needs.
Emotionally Connecting with the Audience
Holidays are an excellent opportunity to leverage emotion-based marketing, as we have already mentioned. We mean power when we say it. As logical as we might think we are, many of our buying decisions are emotional. Ads with only emotional content perform slightly better ( 31% vs. 16% ).
Some ads are more suitable for emotional content than others. You can make videos that show how much it’s fun to get together with family for Thanksgiving or celebrate a local Black business in your sector during Black History Month. These are all great ideas. It is essential to be authentic and genuine here. It’s not your goal to make people cry or take advantage of their emotions. The goal should be to build genuine connections.
Identify Cause Prospects
You can use many occasions to market, but not all revolve around holidays. Many occasions offer opportunities to participate in deeper cultural conversations and highlight fundamental causes. These occasions are powerful and can help show your audience that your company has a purpose and is committed to something greater than yourself. It’s a great idea to donate to causes.
This can have a significant impact on how people view your brand. 62% of global consumers desire companies to stand on emotional issues. 64% think brands that communicate their purpose more effectively are more appealing. You can champion causes you believe in. Make sure to do it authentically and that you walk the talk.
These are just a few purposeful occasions you might consider writing content about.
- Black History Month
- Women’s History Month
- Pride Month
- National Sanctity of Human Life Day
- International Parity at Work Day
- Earth Month
- National Black HIV/AIDS Awareness Day
- Self-Love Month
- National Donor Day
- Hispanic Heritage Month
- National Cancer Awareness Day
- Breast Cancer Awareness Month
- National Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month
- World AIDS Day
- Lung Cancer Awareness Month
- National Pet Cancer Awareness Month
- Pet Appreciation Week
Rely on User-Generated-Content and Interactions with your Audience
- Giveaways – Audience members who interact with you via comments, shares, and the like can win an item or a discount.
-  Contests – Give your audience a task, such as taking the funniest selfie they can with their father in honor of Father’s Day. You will give something to the winners.Â
-  User-generated Content – Invite your audience to create content in videos, images, and reviews that they will post on your social media accounts. This is an excellent way for them to feel acknowledged and keep their feeds stocked with fresh content. This is what we call a win/win situation.Â
Make sure you have a CTA
Last tip:Â In all occasion-based content you create, include a CTA (call-to-action) inviting your audience to take action that will benefit you.
- Like your post
- Follow your account
- Buy a specific product.
- Use a coupon code
- Visit your website
- Subscribe to your email list
- You can use CTAs to encourage users to take any action they want.
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