Is your marketing plan ready for 2017?

As we all settle down again and look forward to the coming year it’s time to plan. You did plan your marketing for 2017 right? Like last weekend the Golden Globes were on and you had all your content ready to go out on Sunday and Monday and you were able to ride the hashtags with all the aftermath from the speeches… right? OK, so you missed that one… but you’re ready for the next big trending day? That’s it Friday 13th this week #Friday13th will be trending from Thursday to Saturday. What?… You didn’t think it had anything to do with your business?

Here’s a perfect example of how to ride a hashtag that has “nothing to do with my business”

Read about hounds @DT_Evesham hoping #Friday13th will be the lucky day they find homes in @Brom_Advertiser https://t.co/bQH6UbFaP7

— Dogs Trust PR (@DogsTrustPR) January 10, 2017

The Dogs Trust Evesham are able to take the day Friday 13th and the hashtag #friday13th and use them to promote their cause. So alright depending on when you’re reading this you probably don’t have time to plan for this Friday or you missed it so let’s look ahead.

If you take this month, January, as a planning month set out your goals and hit the ground running in February. Below is a short list of some dates to watch for this year and try to target the events online with whatever hashtags are trending (don’t try to be smart by making up your own). Some of the events are American but they all generate a huge amount of content online making it beneficial to target these and use the built up interest to advertise your business, services or products. My own full calendar and list of dates can be downloaded here.

February 5th – Super Bowl Sunday

Not an obvious one for businesses outside of America. The Super Bowl is one of the most watched sporting events globally each year but it’s not the actual game that we’re interested in for marketing. The online media soak up and churn out content in the lead up to and aftermath of the Super Bowl and it’s worthwhile to see if you can link your business in any way to what’s going on. A large proportion of the online talk in the weeks before will be about the ads and as companies announce their ad it’s an easy way to ride the wave by sharing and commenting on the videos. The following Monday will see an increase in search activity for the Super Bowl halftime show and if something out of the ordinary happened so again be online to share the videos and comment.

February 14th – Valentine’s Day

Link your business with love and happiness. If you can make your website red, a simple way of doing this without changing the design is to change the photos to ones that contain red or if you display products on your homepage change them to all red items.

February 28th – Shrove Tuesday (Pancake Tuesday)

Generally here you’re obliged to post content about pancakes but you could post photos of staff member eating pancakes and how the generous boss went out and got them or even better made some themselves. Instagram is the place to be posting on this day.

March 17th – St. Patrick’s Day

Like Valentine’s Day if you can change the colour of your website, to green this time. This day and the week that surrounds it is all about celebrating any and every connection to Ireland your business has.

April 1st – April Fool’s Day

This is a tricky one as many websites go with the fake news angle but unless you get it just right it can backfire plus with all the backlash about clickbait and fake news sites it’ll be interesting to see how April Fool’s Day plays out online this year. For your own business why not try a simple video of an office prank or a stupid product you wish you sold.

May 1st – May Day

May Day was/is traditionally a day for celebrating Spring with singing and dancing. In recent years most people will associate it with International Workers’ Day a day for celebrating workers and the working classes. Either way there’s plenty of angles to go with for producing content around the date.

May 29th – Memorial Day

Memorial Day is an American holiday where they honour and remember those that died serving their country. You might think this is an odd date to include for businesses outside of America but as with all things American they bleed through to all countries and although we may not be remembering those that served our country it will be a day where people online remember those they’ve lost and if fitting a business could post something about a member of staff or a customer that they lost during the year.

July 4th – Independence Day

Like St. Partick’s Day this day is all about celebrating any and every link your business has to America. If you can fit in the Red, White and Blue colour scheme on our website do it but do remember the time difference on this day. Keep any posts from going live until after noon.

September 10th – Grandparents Day

Did you know this day existed? Well it’s celebrated in several countries around the world including UK, America, Canada and Australia. Put a spin on the content you used for Mother’s Day and Father’s Day.

November 11th – Singles Day

So there’s a Valentine’s Day for the couples there has to be a Singles Day right? This started in China as a day where they celebrated being single and bought themselves nice gifts. The Alibaba website pushed the day and has since grown it to into a festival and globally the biggest online shopping day of the year. In 2016 the day started to appear in Western Europe and America so expect to see it in 2017 and be ready for it.

November 24th – Black Friday

The American “shopping holiday” has become a global event now and is used by many retailers to kickstart their Christmas sales period. The day is still mainly focused on physical stores but it’s all about the deals and price cuts so no clever marketing will work here if the prices aren’t there to back it up.

November 27th – Cyber Monday

Cyber Monday grew from people returning to work after Thanksgiving and talking about the amazing deals they got on Black Friday. When people heard about the deals the first thing they did was to go online and try to find the same deal. Now online retailers are prepared for this and launch their sales and price cuts to attract these shoppers. Cyber Monday is an important day for online retailers since depending on where you are and what you sell there might not be many more days that orders can be shipped before Christmas so use this day wisely to attract new customers and build on your sales for the first week in December.

The standard days that everyone should have covered aren’t mentioned here but are listed on the calendar downloadable from here. There’s many more dates I just didn’t add but if you follow me online I’ll give a heads up as they come along. For your own business there will be local dates of note and events associated with your business or customers that you’ll want to target, add those to the calendar and give yourself a clearer picture of the marketing plan for the year.

As always if there’s anything here you would like to discuss or you would like help with your own marketing plan please contact me.