Episode 27: Are national days just a marketing ploy or can they actually help you plan content in your small business?
Have you ever heard or celebrated national days like the National Lipstick Day or even gotten a free doughnut during National Doughnut Day? While others may think it’s a gimmick, a lot of small business owners use occasions like these to boost their sales and convert potential customers into loyal fans of their businesses. In this short tip episode, Fiona shares how national days can be a fun way for business owners to market their products and eventually create good conversions. Which one do you think will you be celebrating with your business soon?
Topics discussed in this episode:
Introduction [0:55]
Passion. Purpose. Profit. [1:10]
National Days [2:43]
How National Days Help Businesses [6:21]
For content ideas [6:52]
Potential collaborations [7:42]
Generate Conversation [8:54]
National Lipstick Day [9:21]
National Doughnut Day [11:15]
Small Business Saturday [12:29]
Different National Days for Anything [13:24]
Conclusion [15:14]
Contest [15:53]
Resources mentioned in this episode:
Episode transcript:
Hello and welcome to episode 27 of the My Daily Business Coach podcast. I am Fiona Killackey, I’m your host and I’m SUPER excited to have you join me today. I’m recording this in the same week my book - Passion. Purpose. Profit. launched all over the world and I am SO thrilled to see so many of you buying it and sharing pictures and messages with me over on Instagram and via email and in my free FB group and text! Thank you SOOO SOOO much!
If you are following me over on IG - I’m just at @mydailybusinesscoach - or in my Good Business Group on Facebook, you may have seen that I’m still in lockdown.
So I am based in Melbourne, Australia, and we can't go anywhere right now. So, you know, we have a curfew. You can't leave your house more than an hour. You have to stay within a five kilometre radius. And there are no bookshops near me that are open and there's no bookshops really, even if they were open, there isn't a bookshop in that 5k radius zone. So I would love, love, love, love, love, if you have bought the book and you're not in lockdown, if you can share it with me or send a picture or even if you're not buying it, if you just walk past a bookshop and you see it, I would just love a photo because, you know, I can't go out and see that. And it really sucks when you're putting out your first book to not be able to see that. And, you know, I know first world problems, but I wish I could see it in a physical store. So if you can share it, I would absolutely love that. You can just make sure if you're sharing it on social @mydailybusinesscoach so I can actually see it or you can send me an email or you can just DM it or whatever way they can get it. I would just be so appreciative.
So onto today's podcast. Today is a tip episode. So that's where I talk through a quick tip, tool or tactic. And today is a tactic that I'm going to be discussing now. This tactic can appear sometimes like a bit of a gimmick, but it can also really be a great starting point for brainstorming content ideas for collaborations and even much larger partnerships or something like an annual campaign that you do each year as a small business. So what am I talking about today? Let's find out.
So today, I am talking about national days or sometimes called international days. So let's take this podcast. Obviously, I like a podcast. I love podcasts, I should say. I listen to them all the time. And I used to work at Audible way back in the day in the UK and at that time, I mean, it seems laughable now, but it was really like, how do we get people to listen to things instead of always, you know, reading or on the Kindle or anything like that? And from that point on, I think there was like 2012 around about then I started to listen to everything on audio.
So I listened to audio books. I already listened to them a bit, but I got really into them while working at Audible and music, obviously I love music. And of course, podcasts. So flash forward to, like last year, around 2019, around the end of September. This time really around this time last year, I began seeing all of these posts on social media about podcasts like people naming their top 10 podcasts and sharing which podcasts they're listening to or sharing their own podcast or, you know, pushing a call out for, like guests to come on their podcast or podcast reviews. And it was just podcast, podcasts, podcasts, a bit more than normal. Like, a lot more than normal. [00:04:30] And what I discovered is that September 30th, which is coming up kind of soon, if you're listening to this in real time. Although if you're in lockdown, everything feels like a week. Every day feels like a week or a month. Anyway, I digress. But September 30th is coming up kind of soon. And it's actually drumroll International Podcast Day. Yes, this is the thing now. September 30th is International Podcast Day. [00:04:57][26.6
So today, I am talking about national days or sometimes called international days. So let's take this podcast. Obviously, I like a podcast. I love podcasts, I should say. I listen to them all the time. And I used to work at Audible way back in the day in the UK and at that time, I mean, it seems laughable now, but it was really like, how do we get people to listen to things instead of always, you know, reading or on the Kindle or anything like that? And from that point on, I think there was like 2012 around about then I started to listen to everything on audio.
So I listened to audio books. I already listened to them a bit, but I got really into them while working at Audible and music, obviously I love music. And of course, podcasts. So flash forward to, like last year, around 2019, around the end of September. This time really around this time last year, I began seeing all of these posts on social media about podcasts like people naming their top 10 podcasts and sharing which podcasts they're listening to or sharing their own podcast or, you know, pushing a call out for, like guests to come on their podcast or podcast reviews. And it was just podcast, podcasts, podcasts, a bit more than normal. Like, a lot more than normal.
And what I discovered is that September 30th, which is coming up kind of soon, if you're listening to this in real time. Although if you're in lockdown, everything feels like a week. Every day feels like a week or a month. Anyway, I digress. But September 30th is coming up kind of soon. And it's actually drumroll International Podcast Day. Yes, this is the thing now. September 30th is International Podcast Day.
And I remember when I found that out and thinking, well, who made that up and who decided that September 30th rather than September 18 or September 10 or even April 14th should be the day that we all take up our earphones or airports or whatever you listen to your podcast with and rejoice in another podcast recommendation or another podcast launching. I mean, who gets to make that up? And I know that these national days, obviously, they're not a new thing. And I've worked in marketing for a long time and I've seen this sort of stuff for many, many years. But I remember last year specifically, obviously, because I probably was concerned with podcast because I wanted to launch this podcast. And I remember just being like, well, how did that come about? And I think these national days, these kind of national days have become a little bit of a marketing ploy, like there's National Doughnut Day, which is the 5th of June. There's National Walk Around the Things Day, April 4th. There's National Buy Nothing Day, which is weirdly November 23, which is kind of right in peak buying season for like gifting and Christmas and Hanukkah and all that stuff. So it sort of seems weird that you'd have that. But anyway, National Dress Up Your Pet Day, which is January 14th. National Get Over It day, March 9th and even National Pizza with the works except anchovies, which is November the 12th.
So I was thinking about this and it's like apart from being a bit of a novelty and maybe making you laugh or making you like, roll your eyes, either of those. Do these days actually help business in any kind of real way? Are they simply a marketing trigger for generating social media content, or can they actually help you build a connection with your audience and increase sales?
Well, as this is a tip episode, I think they do actually help to a point for three reasons.
One, they can help you come up with content ideas when you're running low. And, you know, sometimes we just have no idea what to say, what to talk about. Obviously, not that I'm going to dive into it today, but there is a bigger picture. There should be a bigger picture with your content so that you're not just randomly coming up with stuff, but sometimes you need to have that kind of staying connected, being relevant content. And this is where these things can help. I'm not saying this is like your content strategy at all, but they can help you come up with content ideas. You can literally Google National Day calendar and you can find hundreds of ideas straight away for content or even if you don't buy into that day, just the concept and you're like, oh, okay, we should do something around that or even that theme or that topic might spark an idea. So that's the first reason.
The second, they can also be a massively great starting point for collaborations. Say anything around mental health. It might influence you as a small business owner to reach out to a charity or a health group or even like a mindfulness or meditation group and do something with them to align with that or anything around kind of women or female empowerment might help you come up with a collaboration idea. I mean, you only need to look at March 8, which is International Women's Day, to see how that has completely blown up, and rightly so. Women need all the support that they can get, we are still. Oh, my God. I'm going to go on a rant. No, no, I'll stop myself. But that has blown up definitely in the last five years. I've worked in marketing, like I've said, for almost 20 years. And International Women's Day was definitely not on the marketing calendars and a lot of the places that I worked at. And it has just blown up into huge events at a huge kind of point on the calendar for a lot of companies in terms of their marketing and their creation of campaigns and collaborations.. So that's a second point - great ideas for collaborations can come from looking at national days.
And the third way, I think, is that they help to generate conversation. And if they're done well and not too gimmicky - conversion, which is, you know, sales.
So, yes, I do think that sometimes if they're done in the right way, these national days can help with your bottom line. So if you're a little sceptical on that last point, I wanted to share quickly three examples of businesses who've utilised a national day to get people talking and spending.
So the first is National Lipstick Day. So makeup giant MAC has been giving away a free lipstick every National Lipstick Day for the last few years. And the trick, I guess, is that it's a gift with purchase. So if you've worked in retail, you may know that GWP are "gift with purchase". So meaning that people have to pay. In some cases, twenty five dollars or more to be eligible. So, yes, we're giving it away. But you also need to buy something in order to get that. So in addition to massive media take up because of this sort of national lipstick day and all the things that people can do around that, like, you know, who doesn't want to cheque on some crazy lipstick as a fun thing. The brand has also enjoyed high volumes of social conversation about the free lipstick on Lipstick Day and also crowds of Make-Up lovers flocking to their stores, which is like "cha-ching $$$".
I remember years ago when I studied book publishing, you would often hear about the concept of the discount department store selling books for, you know, literally what they'd pay to the cost price. They were both basically making nothing on the books. But the whole idea, the concept was that you would go in to say, buy Harry Potter or one of the big books from a discount department store. And while you were there, it's more than likely you would buy something else. So it's almost like they're happy to take that loss or that, you know, no kind of profit in order to get you to buy something else while you're there. So this kind of lipstick day. From what I've had a look at and, you know, let's hope MAC doesn't call me and say we don't do that. But what I had a look at that seems to be the way that it works. Now, I don't work at MAC, so, you know, forgive me, I should have a disclaimer that I don't work there and I've never done any kind of marketing for them. But that is one example of how cottoning on to a national day has really helped that business.
So second one is National Doughnut Day. So this was initially started surprise, surprise by Dunkin Doughnuts and Krispy Kreme in the US. But now National Doughnut Day has literally become this fixture for all doughnut shops around the world, with a large majority of them offering a free doughnut with any hot beverage purchase. So, again, it's the gift with purchase idea. So it's not I'm giving you a doughnut just for nothing. You could just turn up with a hot beverage. So this has had such great takeup that you can literally find more than a million results for the search term where to get free doughnuts on National Doughnut Day. So really easy tactic to get people to bypass their standard cafe in favour of your doughnut shop or your cafe that also serves doughnuts. So that can also, you know, be a great tool to get people to even be more aware that your cafe or your doughnut shop exists because maybe they always get their coffee from one particular place or their chai if you're like me, I don't drink coffee. But, you know, just coming to you for a day might just open up, "oh, wow. Okay. Didn't realise that you were even here. And this is actually a great place or it's closer to my house" or anything else like that.
The third one is Small Business Saturday. So I'm sure I'm not the only person who's ever used the hashtag Small Business Saturday. Very popular hashtag on social media. But it might come as a surprise because it surprised me that the actual National Day, the Small Business Saturday, which is officially the first Saturday following Thanksgiving in the US, is actually the brainchild of American Express, who even trademarked it. So given many small business owners in the US and elsewhere utilise American Express for their point of sale, their kind of point of sale system within retail, the brand decided to create a national day way back in 2010. So good 10 years ago to help "small business owners" in the lead up to gifting season. And no doubt you profit. A truckload as a result. So that's the third example of how it can be used.
So national days can be a source of content, ideas and sales campaigns for many small business owners. As long as they actually reflect what you offer and the interests of your business. So if you're keen to look at what kind of days might be useful for your business, you can simply Google your industry and national days. So, for example, national days for makeup brands, which will result in a whole bunch of lists coming available to you. And there's one over it at Firebelly. And I'm going to link to that in the show notes in case you are in that beauty industry, because they literally list out every single national day in the year. And you can then look at a calendar and see what other things you could do around that or even, you know, make that part of a bigger campaign that you're doing. And likewise, you can find national days for the design industry. You can find national days related to food. You can literally find national dates related to anything that you want these days.
And you can also find generic lists on many of the social media platform tools such as Later, SproutSocial and Hootsuite. And again, I'll make sure that we link to those in the show notes. So they might sound like a bit of a gimmick, but national days can be a great place to start when you're brainstorming content, when you're looking for collaboration ideas or even, you know, launching a brand new product or a collection because you might be able to tie it into something that's already happening and kind of leveraged that come what they call it. They can't like the break wind or something. You know, like if a car goes in front of you and they break the wind faster, I can't remember what it's called. It's probably not the term, but you can leverage kind of go on the coattails of the things that are already happening. So who knows? You know, you might do this and you might actually end up with so much engagement and chatter that you create a national day for your own small business or a new one for your industry.
And on that note, if you're listening to this tip episode in the like, I would love more content ideas. I find it really hard to come up with content. Like I said, the content should be part of a bigger marketing strategy. But if you're looking for quick content ideas, I do have a 90 day content calendar, which I have discounted throughout the year because of COVID. And that's just available at mydailybusinesscoach.com/ shop. And that features more than 100 tips and content ideas to connect you with your audience. So it's an absolute ticket out of content struggle town. It's also been created to be used at any time of year and across any connection channel.
So that is it for today's podcast episode. As always, you'll find all the show notes over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcasts/27 as in episode 27. And if you're listening in real time and you listen to last week's episode, which was an interview with me and my friend Natasha Ace, you may be aware that I'm running a competition at the moment where you can win one of five signed copies of my new book, Passion, Purpose, Profit, and you can also win, going to the chance to win one completely free one on one coaching session with me where we can dive into your small business challenges and I can help you.
So all you have to do to enter is tell us what you think of this podcast. And you can do that by leaving a review on iTunes. You can share it on the gram and you can tag @mydailybusinesscoach. You can even just send us an email hello@mydailybusinesscoach.com.
Winners will be announced the 29 of September 2020 and entries close Tuesday, the 22nd of September 2020. So get your entries in and you and I could be chatting one on one about your business. Thanks so much for listening. See you next time. Bye.
Thanks for listening to My Daily Business Coach podcast. If you want to get in touch, you can do that at mydailybusinesscoach.com or hit me up on Instagram at @mydailybusinesscoach.
If you're looking for quick content ideas, I do have a 90 day content calendar, which I have discounted throughout the year because of COVID.
As always, you'll find all the show notes over at mydailybusinesscoach.com/podcasts/27 as in episode 27.
So all you have to do to enter is tell us what you think of this podcast. And you can do that by leaving a review on iTunes. You can share it on the gram and you can tag @mydailybusinesscoach. You can even just send us an email hello@mydailybusinesscoach.com.
