How to use Mothers’ Day to your advantage

As a guy I always felt that Mothers’ Day got way more press than Fathers’ Day.  Mothers’ Day is a day to pamper and give gifts to the woman in your life and to make women in general feel good, while Fathers’ Day was a day to give socks to your Dad and make men feel lousy because they didn’t measure up!
Now that I’m a Father I have done my best to down-play these “holidays” in our family and have trained my kids well (I now get some of that pampering on Fathers’ Day!!).   But as a business owner in a service-based business I used to feel that Mothers’ Day, and other holidays and public events, are of no value to me in my business.  Here are 3 reasons why using holidays and events in your marketing can boost your business, even if you’re not selling flowers for Mothers!

1. It gives you a REASON

We’ve all grown sick of those companies that are always having a sale.  We’ve learned to distrust them.  But when a company runs an occasional sales event it gets out attention. Holidays of any flavour can create a reason to have a sale, competition or event that can be used to grab attention from your prospects.  In fact, it has been said that the second most powerful word in marketing (after FREE) is “BECAUSE”!  We’re having a sale BECAUSE… it’s Mother’s Day…  it’s Christmas… it’s my birthday… schools out…  It also gives you a good reason to limit the duration of any offers (prompts people to act now rather than waiting).

2. It helps you connect to the PERSON

If your customers and prospects are businesses you should never forget that the buyer, like you, is a person first and a business second.  Holidays and special dates help us connect emotionally to people.  You’ll NEVER go wrong connecting emotionally with your customer. Connecting emotionally allows you to build a bridge and empathise with your customer – they begin to see you as a real person as well, and it is not merely about the sale.

3. It helps you start a CONVERSATION 

Following on from the last point, a holiday or seasonal event gives you something to talk about.  Whether you are writing a newsletter or a sales letter or meeting a customer face to face there is usually some way to connect the holiday or season in somehow.  Try this example of a possible Halloween connection for my accounting business:

This Halloween my kids demanded that they go “trick or treating”.  We don’t like them dressing up in horror costumes (they’re already horrible enough as it is), but some of the other kids looked really scary.  As I look at these kids, trying to wonder what their parents were thinking, I got to wondering what aspects of my business scare me the most?  The first thing that came to mind was CASH FLOW!  If I was to ask you that question for your business what would your answer be?   So this month we’re going to start our “Scary Conversations” webinar series.  Every Monday at 2pm there will be a one-hour webinar where we will discuss the scary questions that you (and other business owners just like you) have been too afraid to ask.  You can join this webinar for the whole month for only $49+GST (FREE for clients).  You can submit your scary questions and watch the recordings at any time for the next 3 months (at no extra charge).  Just click here to register…..
So you see that there are lots of ways to capitalise on holiday and seasonal events in your marketing programme.  A great idea is to sit down and look at the calendar and work out a marketing plan for the year to come.  Start with a list of the holidays and events that you could use.  You don’t have to use every one, but find those that you can creatively integrate into your message and plan and then take advantage of them.