Whatsup everybody, it’s Steve “The Hurricane” we’re gonna talk about importance of leveraging holidays with your marketing effort. So cheers!
So one of the best ways to get business and develop relationships with referral sources is to leverage all holidays. Not just Christmas, not just New Year’s, but every single holiday. As I’m filming this, Valentine’s day is coming up. Next month is National Social Work Month and St. Patrick’s Day. The month after that is Easter. The month after that is Memorial Day. Then you have Father’s Day and Mother’s Day, all right, don’t forget moms. Mother’s Day, Father’s Day. Then you have 4th of July. Then you go through August and then you have Labor Day. And there’s so many other little holidays in between.
Now, I have a great plan for this but I’m actually gonna turn it over to one of my top coaches, Jennifer Gasper. I’m gonna let her teach you how to holiday market the best, because, I used to be her coach, now she’s one of my coaches and she did it better than anybody else. So, take it away, Jennifer.
Hi, everybody. Thank you, Steve. I’m excited to be featured on today’s episode of A Drink With “The Hurricane.” I, along with my trusty sidekick, Boujee, AKA Toto for today, I’m gonna be talking about one of my favorite things to do while marketing and that’s holiday marketing.
First thing I’m gonna be talking about is costume marketing and then I’m gonna be talking about something in case I don’t convince you to go out and costume at any occasion that you can, of how you can celebrate other holidays throughout the year for marketing. So here’s my cheers to A Drink With “The Hurricane.”
Now, as you can tell, I never say no to an opportunity to dressing up. Here I am on a random Friday afternoon, dressed up in a Dorothy costume to make this video for you all about how you can use costume marketing through the major holidays throughout the calendar year or maybe even a random, no-holiday occasion at all, to gain some attention in your marketing efforts with your referral sources. Now, as my time as a marketer, I am dressed up as many things.
I have dressed up as Dorothy, Merida from Brave, a love bug ladybug, a referee. I even dressed up as a ginormous Easy Button and smashed my way into the elevator at the hospital and marched right up into the social worker’s office just to say hello. Now I know some of you are probably saying, ‘Urgh, costume marketing, it is not my thing. I do not want to do it.’ And that’s okay, but I just want you to hear me out for a minute on this. Dressing up in costume is an amazing way to get you remembered. There is no way if you show up in an account wearing a Dorothy costume or a Merida costume or whatever you wanna wear, that they are not going to remember you. And think about it, they’re probably gonna smile. They’re probably going to laugh and you might have an opportunity to make somebody’s day in a very unexpected way.
Even if they see you walking by on the street or waving at you from the window, you’re going to make an impact in that account. The other thing that you’re going to notice with this is people are going to come out and want to see what’s going on. I remember I walked into the hospital in my Dorothy costume. It was around Halloween. I had my dog with me at the time.
Now, technically I don’t think my dog was probably supposed to be in the hospital because she wasn’t a certified therapy dog. However, I had such a great relationship with the social workers that I took the back entrance in, took the elevator straight up to their office and I walked in, and I am telling you there were people coming out of the entire hallway, people I have never met before, the head of the Social Work Department, we scheduled a lunch and learn that day because I showed up and never would I have gotten the opportunity to meet all of those people at one time, if it wasn’t for being in costume, having my dog, bringing them out and congregating like that. I found that way in many other accounts too.
You show up and people start saying, ‘Oh my gosh, look at Jen. She’s here, she’s dressed as a leprechaun.’ And then people start peeking their heads out of the office and all those people in the account, the key contacts that you’re supposed to be talking with on a regular basis, to blanket the account, and to make sure, you know, if you’ve never met ’em before, it’s the perfect opportunity to do it.
Now, I know we’re in a very crazy time of year right now with COVID and everything but you can still have that same impact. Maybe those people are calling their key contacts outside to see you. And that’s how you get to meet them. It doesn’t need to be in the building, in their offices. They’re probably gonna run back in and say, ‘Oh my gosh, wait a minute. I have to get people, they have to come see you.’ The other thing that happens with this is people will want to take pictures with you. What happens when you take a picture? You could ask them, ‘is it okay if I post it to our Facebook page?’ When you post it to your Facebook page, you get to tag them and bring awareness not only to your agency, but also their community. So as their teammates are scrolling through, maybe the key contacts weren’t there when you showed up in costume, they are now seeing that their employees took a picture with you in costume. The families that follow this Facebook page, the name recognition, seeing that you are there working with that community.
If there is any time that they might need some supplemental wraparound services to what they’re already getting or maybe they’re getting discharged soon, and because you showed up in costume, the marketer, or the social worker makes the recommendation to you. They happen to see you on Facebook. It’s gonna be a win-win situation for everybody.
The other thing is if you start dressing up on a regular basis, people are gonna be start asking, ‘what are you doing for the next holiday?’ They remember you as the person who is always dressing up. That’s really what it’s about. Developing these relationships, talking about things that are not business-related all of the time and having people ask and be excited to see you when you come back the next time wearing your costume. The other thing you can just engage people in conversation a little bit easier.
I know there are people you’re working with right now who maybe you’re intimidated by but when you show up in costume, it’s gonna be a lot easier to start a question or to start a conversation with them. Maybe they’re gonna ask you questions that are all about your costume or no, ‘do you dress up during all of the holidays?’ And that is a little bit of an in that you’re gonna take and run with. Now, I promised this video was not going to be all about costume marketing. So if you give me just a minute, let me change into something a little bit more comfortable and I’ll be back to talk about how you can utilize other national holidays throughout the year to market.
Okay, I’m back and as promised, now, I’m gonna talk to you a little bit about some holiday marketing that you can do that has nothing to do with dressing up in costume. There is a website out there, called nationaldaycalendar.com. And on that website, you are going be able to find a random national day for 365 days during the year. So when you’re looking for a reason to drop by to accounts or something that’s going to be different than always going in there in a business-related manner, this is perfect for you.
How I would use it is I would take a look at the calendar probably at the end of a month and I would make some plans of days that I wanted to pick of holidays that I wanted to celebrate for the next couple of months. So I could make a plan for them. Now, some examples are National Popcorn Day, National Chocolate Covered Pretzel Day, National Paperclip Day, National Gum Day, National Pizza Day, I could go on and on and on. You can pick and choose different price points based on your relationships with your account.
For instance, if there is an account who sent me lots of referrals, maybe as a thank you, I’m gonna show up one day with six or seven pizzas to surprise them and their team. Or maybe it’s a referral source that I’m trying really, really hard to break into, and so I’m going to do the same thing. I’m willing to a little bit extra money to hopefully get a bigger game. The other things is sometimes your budget is a little bit smaller, and so I would choose something smaller like the Popcorn Day or the Paperclip Day where you can order things in bulk and then package them into individually packaged bags or boxes, or what have you. The reason why you wanna make sure that it’s individually packaged is that you want to have enough for every single key contact in that account.
The reason being is that’s spreading your brand awareness. So if they are not there, they’re still seeing that you were there thinking of them and dropping something off. And then as a follow-up, do an email or a phone call or a video message, saying that you were dropping things by to celebrate a national holiday, you hope that they received theirs. The other thing that I’m trying to do when I do these things is use it as an opportunity to engage people.
So in that video message, if I didn’t get an opportunity to meet with the activities director, but I wanted to work on a collaboration with them on some sort of activities for their residents, I might say in that message, ‘I’ve been meaning to schedule a time with you to talk about some ideas I had of things we can do together for your residents,’ and give him or her a couple of dates to choose from.
Maybe I go and do the drop-off, call ’em from the parking lot, or if I’m able to get into the building, I, I get the marketer and I’m able to say, ‘You know, I’ve been wanting to talk about working on a collaboration, maybe planning an activity, a virtual event, or a drive-by event, so that we can help bring awareness to your community. Let’s take a look at our schedules and see when we can do that together.’ And that’s what I would be doing as the, ‘Oh, by the way,’ when I’m standing there bringing the goodies.
Now, don’t forget to also have some sort of sticker or little tag taped to these items with your name, your logo, and your contact information. And I always like to take it a step further by National Popcorn Day, putting a little saying on there, “Just popping in to say hello” or National Paperclip Day, ‘If you have a referral, don’t worry, we’re here to help you keep it together.” National Chocolate Covered Pretzel Day, “Don’t worry, we’ve got you covered” or National Gum Day, “We choose you as our community partner.” So lots of fun that you can have with that. T
he biggest thing to understand is this is a very comfortable way for you to be able to get into your accounts, and it’s a reason for dropping in, driving by, and you are bringing them something nice. So you’re building that relationship with them, and you are also using it as an opportunity to book that next meeting from a meeting. So that’s why I love any sort of holiday marketing. And you can make any day a holiday. That’s all the information I have for you today. But, I would be amiss, if I didn’t give the proper farewell greeting. So, ♪ There’s no place like home. ♪ ♪ There’s no place like home. ♪ ♪ There’s no place like home. ♪
