Listen Now:

You've heard of Black Friday or Cyber Monday deals. But what about National Squirrel Day and the other 362 days of the year?

Did you know there's a holiday every. single. day?! It's true. And while they're off the wall, kinda funky, and completely full of personality… they're also a HUGE way to drive attention and traffic into your business. For your social, your sales, your offers, your launches… you can tie anything into a holiday.

In this episode, Jennie & Alyson will break down exactly what steps you can take, brainstorm some ideas… and you'll even hear behind the scenes of #billglazer and how he used LEAP YEAR to drive sales in a brick & mortar store. PLUS Alyson makes a big promise that Jennie will make her keep…

BrownieLocks – the site looks old and put together by a high-school team in 1996, but the resources here are invaluable when planning your holiday promotions!

Awareness Days, Weeks, & Months – tying your campaign to a cause (that is authentic and that you believe in) is a great way to create a positive conversation with your prospects. This calendar will help.

Every Day's a Holiday Calendar – Alyson uses this calendar to keep holidays front-of-mind for social posting and other campaign planning. Bonus? The backs of the tear-off pages double as scratch paper! 🙂

Episode 27 – Your Year At a Glance Part 1 – How to assess the year you've had so you can learn from it
Episode 28 – Your Year At a Glance Part 2 – What do to (and when!) to have the best year ever

Alyson Lex 0:01
We have all heard of the Black Friday sales, or the Cyber Monday or the Giving Tuesday or the Small Business Saturday, or the New Year's or the Presidents Day furniture sales. And we have to think that maybe these industries are on to something that may be using holidays in our marketing is kind of a cool way to get some marketing done and get those conversion rates up. And so today, we're going to be talking about that, but we're not going to be talking about the normal holidays that you're used to. We're gonna be talking about the weird holidays, the National squirrel Appreciation Day. It's a real one. I don't remember exactly what it is, but that's a real day. Okay, so why should we use holidays or awareness days in your marketing and when I say awareness days, I mean things like, you know, National Cancer month, Alzheimer Awareness Day, those kinds of things. Okay. But why should we use them in our marketing?

Jennie Wright 1:14
I don't know else in Washington, we use them No kidding. I this is a really interesting topic that we're going to talk about simply because this is not something I've really used in my marketing. But I think it's interesting. And before we started today's recording, I went and looked up all the weird, crazy holidays. And just as an example, in Canada, February 2 is National tatertot. Day. National tatertot. Day, February 11. Is national Don't cry over spilled milk day. Right? Peanut Butter lover day, Teflon day,

Jennie Wright 1:46
no housework day,

Jennie Wright 1:47
I'm on for that one. paranormal day, nurses day, selfie day, onion rings day, all or nothing day, whatever that is National drive thru day avocado day. I mean, these are some of these things I can get on board with these. These are some cool thing. Like there's some cool stuff. So go look it up. But the reason that we use these things, and I get why we do that is it's kind of a standout opportunity, right? So it's an opportunity to stand out online, it's an opportunity to be relevant and nation a little bit to, to show what you can talk about how relevant you can be be time relevant, because some of these people are going to talk about this stuff in their, in their, you know, the way they the way they market online. I mean, this is more of a fun thing. And some of its not so fun. Some of its like real stuff, right? So you know, like National Human Trafficking Awareness Day, like what can you say about that that would be pertinent, or what can you do in terms of, you know, bringing awareness to a very big and real problem. So and it adds personality, right. So it breaks that it breaks that monotonous. Here's the post of me on the beach, here's the post of me, you know, drinking water in the park, here's the post of me doing this, the Lalalalala. Right. And I think I think that's a really good thing.

Alyson Lex 3:02
Well, and we've talked about before, where you want to make that personal connection with your people, especially on places like social media, because we're being social, right? So if I can say, hey, Happy National Black Cat day, which I do have a black cat, then it just allows someone to see more inside.

Alyson Lex 3:35
If I can say Happy National Black Cat day, it'll, because I have a black cat. It allows someone to see a little bit more inside my life. And if I say, hey, my black cat is eight years old today. So I'm going to be offering this formerly $47 resource for $8. Today only to celebrate my eight year old black cat. That's a really fun way to use it. It creates a conversation, it creates something a little more newsworthy. It taps into a conversation that your people already want to have. And it really all boils down to being a little different, a little fun. And giving them something new to think or talk about how many times do we get tired of the Cyber Monday sales like they're boring at this point, when Cyber Monday first started, it was exciting, because it was new. But now it's kind of old hat and we're just kind of over it

Jennie Wright 4:39
all over it. I'll all completely over it. I actually ignore my email a lot during the whole Black Friday Cyber Monday thing because it's just so much crap. Unless there's something I'm looking for, and then it's something I pay attention to, but for the most part, I don't tune in for that. So I need To tell me how we do this because I'm a, this is something I am not into as much as you. And as a copywriter. I totally get why you'd be into this as what I do, I just kind of look at it and go, Okay, I don't totally get it. So I need Allison to, like, get me on side with this. And so she's going to share how she does this and how she tells clients to do this to help, you know, do her thing like showing personality, etc. So I'll simply share how to do this. I have no idea.

Alyson Lex 5:29
Okay, so your first step is going to be to go to something called brownie, lox.com. Weird URL, I know. But they list all of the holidays. And they actually have people submit holidays, so they get even the weird ones that nobody else knows about. Or you can go on Amazon and buy one of those page Day holiday calendars that will say, hey, Today is August 14, and it's whatever day okay, but brownie locks calm is pretty much my go to resource. You can also Google like Awareness Month. So Ronnie locks will have like the weird holidays, but I think they probably also do the you know, the human trafficking day or cancer awareness month or Brett you know, breast cancer month or Alzheimer's awareness or leukemia and lymphoma and all of those.

Jennie Wright 6:24
You guys have to check this website out. It looks like I mean, it's hilarious to look at first of all, Oh, it's

Unknown Speaker 6:29
so old school.

Unknown Speaker 6:30
It was like it was built

Alyson Lex 6:32
on a 1995 geo cities.

Jennie Wright 6:34
It does. It really, really does. Like I think I had a website that looked like this. Back in I don't know 1996.

Alyson Lex 6:42
I'm saying but it is in. It's an invaluable resource, isn't it? It's amazing. Okay, so the first thing that we're going to do is go there and start looking, get inspired. Think about just make note of holidays that pertain to you in some way. You your clients or your business. For example. I have a client that helps women at different stages of their women, hormonal journey, purity, fertility, menopause, okay. Well, there are a bunch of awareness months, and awareness weeks and awareness days that have to do with that. Right, there is National infant loss day. Okay, and that's something they can use, because women in their fertility journey may have dealt with that. Okay. So think about how it pertains to your business, your customers, or you personally, National blackcap day. Okay. So you can create an offer or a campaign around that, or give back campaign built around the awareness. Alright, so I want to give you an example. And you mentioned the human trafficking thing a little earlier, which I think was very fortuitous, because I have an example about exactly that. I know, who would have thought it's almost like we prepared this.

Unknown Speaker 8:20
But we didn't.

Unknown Speaker 8:23
We actually didn't.

Alyson Lex 8:26
Okay, so I am hosting a summit in a couple of months in June. And one of the things that I want to do for the summit is have a giveback opportunity. And so I'm asking the speakers on the summit to vote. Because we're all in it together. I want it to be a really collaborative thing. And we're voting on the type of organization we want to get back to. And currently the poll in the lead is to combat human trafficking. And so I looked it up and the the awareness day isn't until the end of July, I think it's July 30. So I can't coordinate the two because my son is in early June and the day is at the end of July. But what if I did a three day only cart reopen of the summit recordings and gave 75% of the proceeds to the same charity that we supported originally with the summit. Okay, so now, I'm giving back more to something that my speakers and I are excited to give back to. But I'm also creating more awareness for my business. I'm leveraging an awareness campaign. to profit a little bit. If I give the majority of the money away, which is fine. I've really just be covering my costs. But to build the goodwill in my audience, to genuinely give back and to build some Some more people. So that's one example. Another way that I've seen it done so when I was at Glaser, Kennedy A number of years ago, one of the campaigns that we talked about a lot was Bill Glaser's Leap Year campaign. Yes. So Bill Glazer used to run a menswear store here in Baltimore called gauge gap, men's wear. And one year, he ran an a leap year campaign. He sent out a letter direct mail, which I have a thing for. And it basically said, Hey, I get a free day's worth of rent this year. And I've calculated it, and it's gonna save me this percent, blah, blah, blah. And so if you come in this week, I will give you that percent of your purchase. Okay, so if you want to get really technical know, the math doesn't add up. But it doesn't have to, it's just a reason. It's a reason to have a discount. It's a reason to have a sale. Because think about it. Do you ever see people that are like, Oh, yeah, no, this normally sells for 97. But I'm selling it for 47 just for funsies. And you're like, What? What are funsies? Like, there's no good reason it's a $47 product, you're sitting at 97 in order to give it a higher perceived value. And you're, you know, you're trying to help you're trying to trick me here, right? Like there, there are rumors that some stores when they're going out of business will raise their prices three weeks before so that when they slash their prices, that the regular prices, probably not rumors, but I have nobody that's confirmed it to me. So I'm going to call it a rumor here publicly, to rumor. But that is the same kind of feeling that people get if you don't have a good reason for why you're offering a price. But with with what Bill did is he came up with a plausible reason. It's enough of a reason for someone to do what's called called suspending their disbelief, which is when you allow yourself to just believe it's what we do at magic shows and movies. We just suspend that cynical part of us a little bit. Your people want an excuse to do that, by the way. They want an excuse to believe. And so by using the give back campaign or the holiday or something, work giving them that excuse. Like my cat Jamison turned eight so I'm giving you this for $8. But that's the silliest flimsiest little excuse and guess what if I did it, people would go crazy. Like I bet this year on my birthday, I'll be 37 which is a great number for selling stuff. I could probably do a workshop for $37. Well, now that I've said it out loud, Jenny's gonna make me do it.

Jennie Wright 13:05
Thank you. Thank you podcast, you are now. Good shot balancing. Okay,

Alyson Lex 13:11
so that will be on October 6 2021. But do you see how easy that was? I'm 37. My birthday is on the sixth of October. Let's have a workshop for $37. Like, it's a fun little thing. And it allows people to get to know me and get to understand me and get to feel a little bit more connected to me. Because now they're coming to my birthday party workshop.

Jennie Wright 13:41
It also makes things a little. Okay, so buttoned up. Jenny has trouble with this stuff. But I also see the value in being a little bit whimsical, a little bit less dressed down a little bit more chill, and things like that. Right. So my training and marketing was that this would be seen and I'm just being frank and open. This would be seen as incredibly fluffy. And not true and real sort of thing. But I also see the value having been in the online world now for the time that we're recording this 12 years. 1213 years. No, it's gotta be it's gonna be 13 years. And I'm seeing the value and just being a little bit whimsical, sometimes a little bit fun, right? So I love horses. Anybody who knows me knows that I used to ride horses and I think it's like in January they have like national was a national thoroughbred day. So I think I don't worry about kind of some cute stuff like that. That would be kind of fun. And just for you guys all to be aware that I've already added this paid workshop for $37 into Allison's calendar. So that's actually a happening thing. Now

Alyson Lex 14:47
you so much I really appreciate you helping me there.

Jennie Wright 14:50
That's my pleasure, my friend. I'm so happy to do that kind of stuff for you. You're the best.

Alyson Lex 14:55
I know. So the best. I want to just to quickly address the whole buttoned up feels fluffy thing. And I'm going to go back to Bill's Leap Year promotion. So gauge men's wear was not old, maybe it was not, you know, a low price type of thing. Most of his customers were media politicians he had they had money. And they were typically high powered businessmen he sold mostly business were not business casual type things. He had some that. But it goes back to it doesn't matter how sophisticated your audiences base, they're still people. Like, yeah, okay, you're gonna get some people that are going to be a little judgy and be like, What is Jennie doing? But

Jennie Wright 15:52
I'm a little less concerned about the judging as now as I go on. I really don't. It really doesn't matter to me as much as maybe it used to when I was, you know, a little bit worried about it. So I think I think just, you know, it's April Fool's Day, it's, it's one of those days where it's a holiday, because we haven't really a holiday, but it's one of those days that people do stuff. And it's all over social media. And it is one of those kind of interesting days. Right. So why not enjoy it? So if Here we are, right,

Alyson Lex 16:19
yeah, I think I think this comes out what on the second. So we kind of made it for April Fool's Day, because it's close enough. And now that you mentioned it, let's talk about that. We don't have to go through this whole elaborate like, reasoning. I'm getting a free day of rent. So I'm giving you X percent off. We don't have to go through all that. We could just be like, I'm giving you my best deal ever. And I'm not kidding.

Jennie Wright 16:48
By the way, this does come out right on April 1. It does look

Alyson Lex 16:51
at us go.

Jennie Wright 16:53
It's like oh, it's almost planned. Who knew

Alyson Lex 16:56
that we actually did our calendar ahead of time. shocker. A simple little copy tweak, right? I'm not kidding about this. This is my best deal ever. send that out on April Fool's Day.

Unknown Speaker 17:12
And

Alyson Lex 17:14
it now matches what's called the conversation that's already happening in their head. Right, they're gonna read that and be like, oh, haha, it's April Fool's Day. Cute.

Jennie Wright 17:25
And it just connects just, it just hits one extra little neuron in there a little bit of it's a little bit of brand. So I like I'm not looking for the right word for this. So if you think about it, on April Fool's Day, you'll see like a fake story from certain news networks, you'll see a fake sale or a fake product from certain brands. So I think it creates a little bit of brand fandom as well. Because people are like, haha, you know, Wendy's put out a tweet saying that they were going to do something, you know, really crazy for, and people believed it at first Haha, or you know, you see Taco Bell doing it. And then they have those like, those Twitter wars, which I think is kind of fun. So I think it creates that little bit more of that sort of that brand recognition and sort of the loyalty. That's what I wanted brand loyalty. When it's like, yeah, my brand is cool. The brand I like is cool. I think that's kind of neat.

Alyson Lex 18:20
100%, it gives, it just gives them a good feeling about you, even if they don't buy now. However, there are steps to take to make it work.

Jennie Wright 18:35
There are steps and I graciously asked, Alyson if I could take this part of the podcast because I love planning. And I love steps. So if we're going to talk about something that I previously thought was kind of funny, kind of light and fluffy, then I'm going to bring in the thing that makes it like, you know, feel nice and plant out, which is my thing. So I want you to plan ahead. If we're going to do this, then you're going to plan ahead and make it happen. It's not like uh oh, crap, tomorrow is such and such day or Oh, crap, I forgot to do this on such and such day. It's planning a little bit ahead with your social media understanding that you know which date which of these days are you going to look at. So go take a look at that really interesting brownie locks page, have a little ghafar over the look and feel of that entire website. And then go and check out the calendar and the dates because it's actually kind of cute. So plan this ahead. You don't want to throw this together, plan this ahead Book Three months, I think would be sufficient, so that you can get your campaigns set up any graphics that you want to do, and figure out if you're going to do something silly and fun on those days. Right? So the bill Glazer, the bill Glazer sale, right, that's something that he planned ahead. He didn't think of it the day before. So you have to plan that kind of stuff ahead. If this is part of a promo or an event, then know that it's coming up know that you're doing it so for for an example, everybody can look forward to the workshop on October 6 Allison's birthday for $37. And she'll plan that ahead or i will come after she will plan that ahead and she'll have everything ready so that it's something that she can promote for three or four weeks because she knows that's the you know true yep it totally is and i really it's going to help you think about the future so i'm doing something fun and cute like this it helps you moving forward for the future helps you think about what you need to be doing in future posts and future campaigns all those kinds of things and you can also help use this to help think about things in the future such as alison summit right so she has been working on this summit for months and i'm really proud of her by the way because she's been doing this and it's been phenomenal i i've seen allison go from being worried and freaked out this is going to happen to feeling more calm and actually enjoying the process and i met allison just after she did a song i was right after you did your summit and she was not a happy camper as a result of that and there was a lot of reasons why but the planning you know now that she's planning this out with with an elongated planning schedule and then adding in stuff like this it's really really good i want you guys to look at episodes 27 and 28 and System to THRIVE for more resources that are going to help you plan this out we've actually got some great resources that have our end of your planning and those are really great episodes to kind of look at and see how you can kind of play all this into your schedule and allison one of the things that we have to do and we do this as we kind of have to be kind of real about it and just don't just don't do it to do it right so how do we do that

Alyson Lex 21:38
well the first thing is when you're picking holidays that you're going to use especially if you're going to connect them to yourself personally make them i mean there are plenty you can find one that connects with you personally if you cannot find a single weird wacky holiday that connects to you personally i don't believe you i was gonna say i'll give you money but i just don't believe you right i mean i think there's a national french friday and i don't care what your take is on french fries you can connect to that in fact if you don't like french fries one who are you and two that's your stance it's national french friday and everybody's talking about ketchup or mayonnaise whoo and i'm over here thinking no french fries please what's your take like even if all you do is a quick little social post in a group or on your instagram or or on your facebook like connect to it and be real showcase your personality if you're going the awareness day week month route i want to just caution you not to just hop onto the bandwagon really mean it find something that has a personal connection to you okay full transparency when i put the pole together for my speakers human trafficking as a as a cause was not on there it was not on my radar yes i've read about it yes it's something i'm concerned about but it did not make the top list of things as i was putting it on there one of my speakers suggested it and it was very quickly clearly something that the speakers got excited about so i'm excited about it because i have a global summit this is a global issue and i want to honor the the experts that i'm having as well as my commitment to giving back to something global and so i am all in and i'm fine i'm fine saying that this was not originally on my radar but it is now and i've learned something and in doing my research to maybe choose an organization i'm learning more every day that's now part of my story when i do this i'm not just going to be like hey i've always been super passionate about this issue because that's not real the real story is probably more compelling because it's it's more authentic people believe it more and it's not what everybody else is saying and that's really the whole point here jenny and i didn't spend this time telling you to go to a black friday sale or presidents day sale or fourth of july sale if you're in the us or thanksgiving sale or what are you know christmas eve sale whatever sale i just realized i rattled off all the us holidays and maybe this is a thing like presidents day for the july us us

Unknown Speaker 24:45
us

Jennie Wright 24:46
yeah that's that's that's definitely us based but picked up in canada but it's mostly yeah

Unknown Speaker 24:52
yeah

Alyson Lex 24:52
right but we didn't tell you to do the big holidays we're telling you to do the stuff that people aren't doing, don't be afraid to be a little different. In order to connect in a real way, tell a real story. With my cat Jamison, my National Black Cat day cat, because I've won black cat out of all of them. I can tell the story of how when we we found him in my mom's yard, we thought he was a girl, his name was originally Zoey. And then the day before we went to go take him to the vet. Because it was, of course, everything happens in our house on a Friday. And so we always have to wait the weekend for things. Okay, everything happens on a Friday. And so the day before we were going to take into the vet, I looked, and I was like, Nope, not a girl. And so we had to come up. But that's part of the story. And it's just fun. And I know that you might think you're too buttoned up. And I'm not saying you have to go completely out of control with it. But let yourself have a minute of fun. Just a minute.

Jennie Wright 26:05
I like that, like a minute of fun. I think it's a I think this is a good idea to talk about because it, it's I don't think it's something that people realize that they can do in their business and still seem relevant. And that's fine. Some people do. And that's also fine. So why not take a look at something like this, I love that we talked about this. I like talking about different topics, you know, it's, it's fun to pull in some stuff. And I have a couple takeaways from today. And I know Alyson does as well, possibly for us to talk about this. One of them is the planning ahead, you guys know that you need to plan ahead when you're doing this stuff. If you're jumping on the bandwagon, the day of it's going to feel that way. So be careful. Plan ahead, look at those calendars, find the dates that you do want to use in your protion. Baby, don't do all of them, okay, maybe not all of them, maybe that would seem a little too much. So pick and choose the copywriter is shaking her head violently like do not do that. So pick the ones that you want. The represents something to you or fun to you or interesting to you that you can create some content around and enjoy that. The next one is get personal with it, enjoy it, have fun with it, and make it something relevant to who you are and what you do. Right. So Allison's cat, Black Cat day, you know, things like that. So taking a look and seeing where you can implement things that are actually going to make sense. And then consider your audience with these things as well. What's their reaction going to be? If you do this? How are they going to interact with you What is their perception going to be? Will it be good, will be positive will be negative. So think about that, before you do these as well to make sure that you're staying relevant with people and you're not following into some sort of a trap of the, you know, how they see you could decline or something like that, right. So make sure you're being very, very careful with that.

Alyson Lex 27:45
Never take away too. And that is this is something that is actually really easy to do on social media. You can start small with it, you can have fun with it and just see what the reaction is. And and go from there gauge from there. So it's kind of connected to your last takeaway there about considering your audience. If you're not sure tested on social, see what they you might find the engagement spikes, and then you know, hey, maybe I can leverage this in my business.

Jennie Wright 28:14
Quite possibly. And that makes that makes me think that this is something that people can go and check out. And no today was not an April Fool's based episode. We mean all this, although it's fun, and we just wanted to have a good time today, as you can tell him a little bit more things. So to that end, I just want to say thanks for listening to today's episode, I think it's been interesting to talk about how we can implement different opportunities in different days and different holidays and different awareness days into what we do. further out than just the normal stuff that Alyson was mentioning. If you haven't already, please do consider subscribing or following the podcast, and making sure that you have access to all of the episodes that we've done by going to System to thrive.com. And checking those out. Alex and I are here to help if you need some help figuring out a strategy on your business. If you need help with copywriting and or even some funnel building, check us out. Go to System to thrive.com and look at the work with us tab and see if that's something that would make sense in your business. We'd love to hear from you as well. So please leave us a review and let us know what you think of the podcast on a hole or a particular episode and what you would love to see in the future. Thanks so much for listening and we'll be back again soon answering another big question.