How awareness days can grow your business
By Vicky Clapham
Whether it’s a day, week or month, it seems most things nowadays seem to have a secured a spot in the calendar dedicated to them. From Random Act of Kindness Day to National Curry Week – there is something for every business or interest area, but how can these help to grow your business?
One of our clients, Sporting Heritage CIC were the instigators of their very own day when they launched National Sporting Heritage Day seven years ago. It has carved out a dedicated spot in the calendar on the 30th September to celebrate sporting heritage and educate and inspire our communities with your stories, collections and memories. This year the campaign was trending on Twitter (at one point ahead of #NoTimeToDie which was the new Bond film just released!), enjoyed huge engagement across social media, and was mentioned in 100s of pieces of press coverage on the day and in the lead up to the event. It was a huge success in growing brand awareness and engagement both online and off for the National day but also for Sporting Heritage CIC.
So how can you incorporate an Awareness Day/Week/Month to help develop your business?
Before you decide to use an awareness day as part of your communications and marketing strategy make sure you do a bit of research and think about the relevance and opportunities:
When/what/why/who? The key questions to ask around the day/week itself: Who set it up, why would it be relevant, what does it usually involve and when does it take place
What is the aim? If you decide it is relevant for your business and audiences, what would be the aim of using the event? Would it be for brand awareness, media engagement, employee engagement, customer engagement or online reach
What could the campaign involve? You can get creative in ways to utilize the awareness day and as part of that campaign planning, think about what social media content could be created, which media would you target and any partners that could be involved.
Work out resources – from initial thoughts to creating content, promoting the event/campaign and the day itself will involve time, people power and budget.
How well did it do? Once the campaign is over, it’s always worth looking at what worked well, what didn’t, results and what lessons to take forward if you repeat again next year.
3 Ways you can use Awareness Days to Develop your business
PR:
The awareness days provide a great hook to link your product, service or values with, which can form a really interesting story for the media. From holding a competition or fundraiser, mini-campaign or event around a particular awareness day is a brilliant way of raising awareness of your brand.
One of our clients, RJC Plant Services chose to develop their CSR activity for Random Act of Kindness Day and donated 50 afternoon teas to elderly people in their local village. This was picked up by local press and radio, as well as proving a huge hit on social media.
Creating connections and partnerships:
Using awareness days can help as a catalyst to engage with your community, businesses or individuals that are aligned with your brand. It can create conversations with your consumers on topics and issues that are of value to them. Centring a campaign around a hashtag for a particular awareness day is a great way to encourage your followers to share their stories/images and inspire them and others to feel part of your brand.
National Work Life Week has proven a great opportunity for our client, Ros Jones Business Growth Coach who has used the occasion to introduce wellbeing to business owners and has connected with a number of co-working spaces to host workshops for their members.
Aligning with your values and playing your part in bigger conversations:
Participating in awareness days such as Dyslexia Awareness Week or Mental Health Awareness Day, can draw attention and instigate conversions around important topics that mean something personally to you, your staff or consumers. This can be a really effective way to progress HR policies and CSR initiatives that align with your values as a business.
It’s important that there is real substance for your involvement, and it doesn’t simply look like jumping on a bandwagon you have no place being on. When using awareness days as part of your strategy, make sure they’re relevant to your brand to avoid being seen as simply a publicity stunt with no value.
Where to find awareness days:
As awareness days are set days of the year it does make it easy to plan and prepare campaigns in advance. But how do you find them? There are a number of awareness day calendars available but our favourite ones are:
Awareness days are a great way to engage with your audience and grow your business. If you are interested in how you can incorporate awareness days into your marketing and PR strategy we’d love to chat.
Get in touch by emailing hello@bevic.co.uk or fill in the contact form online.