Each calendar month brings another opportunity to various holiday marketing strategies. Whether you’re starting your Christmas preparations early or searching for niche holidays to celebrate, there’s plenty to do every day of the year.
For the last few years, the online trend has been to celebrate seemingly random holidays, like National Pet Day or National Mimosa Day. While it might feel like every day is a holiday all of a sudden, this can be great for small businesses and artists.
Read on for our tips for finding holidays that will resonate with your audience and how to leverage these celebrations into holiday marketing strategies to promote your brand.
What Speaks to Your Audience?
Marketing for different niche holidays throughout the year can be helpful, as customers are less likely to feel bombarded. Whereas the end of year holiday season typically comes with every brand amping up their marketing, customers won’t be nearly as overwhelmed by other brands on National Coconut Day. This gives you a unique opportunity to capture their attention and hopefully win their business.
Sit down and map out which holidays you intend to market for. There may be some obvious ones such as Christmas, Valentine’s Day, or Mother’s Day that you’ll have on your list right away. If you want to tap into some lesser-known holidays, look for ones that are relevant to your brand and customers.
For example, you might be an artist selling a line of sustainable t-shirts with your designs. In this case, you could add Earth Day and World Art Day to your list of holidays to market for. This can even give you an opportunity to talk about your unique selling points, so you can promote the sustainable aspects of your brand when Earth Day rolls around.
Put yourself in the mind of your customer as well. What are some common trends within your audience? What interests do they share? If you can find a holiday that will speak to your brand and your customers at the same time, you’ve got a winner.
List of Holidays
To find out what lesser-known holidays are on the calendar, you can try looking at a National Day Calendar. Browse through and write down any that you think would interest your audience or relate to your brand. If your art has a niche, such as pet portraits for example, you can jot down all of the pet related holidays like National Dog Day and National Cat Day.
For artists and small businesses, here are some holidays that may speak to your brand:
- Get to Know Your Customer Day, 3rd Thursday of January, April, July and October
- International Colour Day, 21st March
- World Art Day, 15th April
- Nature Photography Day, 15th June
- World Photography Day, 19th August
- International Artist Day, 25th October
- Small Business Day, 30th October
Don’t Go Overboard
You won’t want to bombard your audience with a new celebration every week. A few celebrations throughout the year will do the trick perfectly. These are great to pepper in during the months that don’t have as many holidays, such as March or August.
Prepare in Advance
Time flies, especially when you look at the calendar and realize a major holiday is only a few weeks away and you haven’t even started planning for it. Avoid this panic entirely by having everything ready in advance.
A great way to keep organized is to create a marketing calendar. Plan out all the promotions you’ll be running throughout the year. Highlight specific days that you’ll be sending out emails, social media posts, and other forms of marketing. This will give you a clear plan moving forward, and you’ll know exactly which dates you need to be prepared for.
Promotions and Discounts
A simple way to celebrate holidays is to promote a sale on your website, offer a discount code, or discount a specific product. People are likely to expect discounts around major holidays, so this is a great way to get them to visit your website.
Tailor your discount to the holiday in question. Sticking with the pet portrait example, you could run a promotion on National Dog Day for any dog-themed items in your store.
Sharable Content
The beauty of holidays is that they’re an excuse to celebrate! If you’re using social media to promote your brand, create content that your customers can share with their friends and family. If your followers think your Instagram post is relatable, funny, or emotional, they might repost it on their own account. This functions as even more exposure for your brand.
Email Marketing
Chances are that your audience only has the bigger holidays on their radar. This means you have a golden opportunity to bring their attention to other events that your brand is celebrating. Use email marketing to let your customers know about upcoming celebrations.
In a marketing email, tell customers to keep an eye out for a special event coming next week, or that you’ll be running an exclusive promotion on picnic blankets for Picnic Day.
For a complete guide to email marketing, read our blog about how to email your way to more sales.
Contests and Giveaways
Contests are a great way to get your audience involved in celebrating. Ask your audience to make submissions for a chance to win a product, such as an art print.
At Christmas time, have people submit festive photos of something that relates to your brand. For example, if your brand focuses on home décor, followers could send in a photo of their Christmas tree for a chance to win a handmade ornament featuring your design. This gets people to actively engage with your brand, so you’re more likely to stick out in their mind.
Celebrate the Holidays with Contrado
Now that you’ve done the work promoting your brand with some holiday marketing strategies, let us help ease the burden when it comes to creating your products. Use your art and designs to create hundreds of unique, handmade items such as clothing, homeware, and accessories. We’ll take care of making the orders and shipping them to your customer. All you need to do is create your Contrado store to start selling.
