Measure Twice, Cut Once: How do you avoid marketing pitfalls?

[tranguyen]

Hey everyone 💖

Every important date on the calendar — like St Patrick's Day this weekend — is a great opportunity for businesses to connect with customers and market your products. 

However, not all customers may related to or look forward to these occasions, and businesses can (even with the best intentions) accidentally slip up. 

For that reason, we'd love to learn:

How do you avoid marketing pitfalls?

Share your go-to tactics you use to help make your messaging more inclussive — we look forward to reading all your replies!

[bicyclerepair]

I do not really market to specific holidays like st patricks day, valentines, etc. Seems to cliche and played out. I am more general and related to my industry. If there a specific event that will boost my industry then I will advertise to it. 

                  For example in my geographic location an event called the balloon fiesta increases people riding there bicycle to the event using a major bicycle trail. I advertise and market during that event.

                                                                  Francisco Soto

[DinaLRosenberg]

We simply try and make sure that our marketing messages stay within our brand voice of providing excellent customer service and a space for all where ever they are on their journey. That has worked for us so far.

[yalhar01]

For this exact reason, I tend to avoid marketing tactics that are catered to holidays and I try to stay within the realm of what I sell (vintage clothing). Finding inspiration can be a bit difficult but luckily our market is tied in with what trends in pop-culture, I also find inspiration in what is trending on social media as well. 

In the case of a marketing slip-up, which we've faced in minor ways, we make sure to take accountability and listen to our customers. 

We always stay positive and make sure to learn from our mistakes along the way. 

[wandascleanings]

normally if i advertise on holidays i will only either just do a 1 day special. because of the simple fact there is not a big margin in my industry anyways.

[urbanaxes]

As a social event orientated company we will often provide holiday themed discounts or public events aligned with a holiday for those that choose to embrace, but at the same time we will sometimes provide concurrent "anti-programming" i.e. an anti-valentines / singles event in parallel to a valentines event, etc.

[TheDenStJoe]

We take advantage of holidays as it pertains to our business (a bar) but try to make anything marketed as an opportunity to capture new clients. Our established customers already know what to expect. For us it's keeping top of mind at all times.  

[Ithaqua]

I grow Christmas Trees. I only have one Holiday to concern myself with. A proper seasonal business. For the rest of the year we are tree surgeons and the only thing we know to be true is that we will be called when it’s dark, wet and windy.

We began planting Christmas trees from our own seed stock in 2006 and did the usual Facebook stuff. We jumped on all social media band wagons as they came and went then in 2017 we killed our social media presence. In Dec 2022 we still had 14000 direct to plantation customers, no middle men, no real overheads, families come and cut their own trees. We have customers who came as children, bringing their own partners and children to do the same. Such a simple premise, walk in the woods, choose your tree, make a memory. No social media required, no 5 star reviews chased. Just a lot of faces we see year after year.

We are all retired military and are used to being task focussed. We have 2 work streams and all of us can do all aspects as well as each other. Not caring about social media or chasing 5 star reviews means you can say no to daft requests more readily. Yes, it’s OK to say no to a customer, they’ll rant in their own personal social media echo chamber and like minded individuals will join in but they weren’t customers and won’t be customers and that’s fine.

[Bronze_Palms]

We market specific to every federal holiday out there and ones that are more local holidays (like the Taylor Swift concert lol). Most of our audience will not be going to the Taylor Swift concert, but it is fun to share and keeps our emails lively.

It's all or nothing to me - we either share about all events & holidays or we would have to stop sharing about that stuff across the board. Personally, I think ignoring events offends just as many people as sharing about them. Sharing about our events keeps our messaging fun and less vanilla.