September 20, apparently, is National Pepperoni Pizza Day, so naturally, when I looked in my inbox and found an email—celebrating National Pepperoni Pizza Day—from my neighborhood pizza joint, I expected to find a coupon. After all, why else bring it up?
I didn’t.
In fact, I found very little other than one line about the size of the company’s pepperoni and my local store’s address and hours.
Hungry for pizza now but a little annoyed that the emailing pizza shop didn’t give me a reason to choose them, I went in search of a deal…from other pizza places.
Do you do this? Do you motivate customers to buy but fail to justify why they should buy from you?
Although tying your marketing to a particular holiday, community event, or celebration gives you a great excuse for contacting a customer, it doesn’t excuse you from making a real offer. This is particularly true when the “excuse” is widely used (back to school, spring break, Olympics, Black Friday, Christmas, etc.) or when the “reward” is widely available (like said pizza).
How can you make marketing a holiday or calendar event work?
If you can’t offer a great deal, make a big deal about your call to action. Make your product or service sound so great and the timing so right-now that your customers can’t help but respond.
You can also do more with your marketing. Instead of simply stating the obvious and leaving it there (“It’s National Pepperoni Pizza Day”), you can feature people incorporating your products or services into their celebrations. Better yet, you can show how the event affects your company or organization and its operations.
Case in point? Consider, as Brandwatch Content Writer Kit Smith did, Canadian airline West Jet’s commercial promoting its 24-hour project of performing random acts of kindness. Although the commercial provides some straightforward and normal facts about the airline’s flights, it also features employees engaging in the act of giving: you get the nudge of the holiday with the warm fuzzies of the action. And even if you weren’t thinking about booking a flight that week, chances are you’ll file this lovely experience in the back of your mind for future reference when you do.
The point? Every communication you send out to your customers has to have a point, and it has to direct your customers back to you. Anything else just doesn’t cut it.