Use a made-up holiday to drive sales
Every day. Every day I’m like, “I need to come up with some stuff to write about.” And every day I stare at a blank page wishing I had a skill, like doctoring or lumberjacking.
If you suffer from the same affliction as I — no content in your content marketing — here’s a suggestion: Check out the National Day Calendar.
Every Day a Made-Up Occasion
You know what I’m talking about. You see it all the time. “Today is National Nachos Day.” “Today is National Retail Workers Day.”
Every day is a National something Day. But what does this have to do with you?
Surely you can find something related to your business on this calendar. And then you can write about it. You can even drive sales.
[caption id=”attachment_4666” align=”aligncenter” width=”960”] via BostInno[/caption]
FOMO is Your Friend
Like me, you need to create content every day in order to keep your business on the minds of customers, either on your blog or on Facebook or Twitter or Instagram. So look at the calendar, see what National Days you can tie to your business, and start planning content.
Look, we all know these national days aren’t really important, but we make them important. Take National Donut Day. I don’t even eat donuts, but this year, on that day, I went to the store and bought two dozen donuts for my co-workers because I felt like if I didn’t, I’d be missing out on something.
That’s what you want to do: Make an occasion out of something that is actually nothing, and let FOMO come into play. Make sure people know if they don’t participate, they will be missing out (FOMO = Fear Of Missing Out).
Create Sales Out of Thin Air
An example of how you can use this to drive sales: According to this calendar, December 4 is Wear Brown Shoes Day.
Seriously.
So, what can you do with that? Lots, believe it or not. And you don’t even have to be in the shoe selling business.
You can run a Wear Brown Shoes Sale. Weeks, even months, in advance, you create the event: Come in on December 4 wearing brown shoes and get 10% off your purchase.
You write about the Wear Brown Shoes Event on your blog, on Facebook, on Twitter. You write that if customers come into your store or business on December 4 and mention your blog post, or Facebook post or whatever, and are wearing brown shoes, they’ll get the discount.
You run a contest on Instagram. You ask people to submit photos of their favorite brown shoes, and then randomly choose a winner to receive a special discount or gift card or prize of some sort.
And you promote, promote, promote. Social media, email newsletter, blog: don’t stop talking about the Wear Brown Shoes Event.
Why It Works
The beauty of the totally-made-up event I just created is that EVERYONE HAS BROWN SHOES. Anyone can participate in this, and at very little effort.
And it gives you something to promote, something to write about on social media, and a reason for people to come into your business and buy.
All this from a made-up, BS holiday. Not bad, right?
The National Day calendar gives you at least 365 opportunities to create content. And hey, if worse comes to worse, you can always make up your very own day. No one will ever know.