Making Use of Holidays as an Effective Marketing Technique
Who doesn't love holidays? Why is that important? Well, because if you see yourself as the primary marketer for your firm, holidays are the perfect time to communicate with both existing and new customers.
When marketing online (or using traditional marketing techniques), you want to have a “reason” to reach out to your target market. For an effective marketing strategy to bring in measurable results, you need to appear as a welcomed guest instead of an uninvited pest. A holiday accomplishes this goal.
Second, if you wish to market to your business online (or offline), you want to enter the mind of your target audience. The goal is to create a message that aligns with the conversation that’s already going on inside their head. Holidays garner a LOT of attention from our mainstream media, social media platforms, and peer communication. Often holidays carry with them emotions that marketers can tap into. Therefore, you want to have a welcome conversation about a topic your target market is already thinking about.
You can even use bizarre or wacky holidays for marketing purposes. Think of them as an excuse to reach out to your potential customers. While this likely will not align with the conversation they are having about the said holiday (because they likely didn’t know it existed), it does give you an excuse to proceed with messaging them, be it through direct mail or digital channels. Forgiveness is often granted because you have a worthy “because.”
US Law Firm Management and Thinking Outside the Box
Let's take, for example, a law firm that handles driving violations. To make the most out of your marketing budget, you have to be creative. On National Public Sleeping Day, February 28th, you could send a mini blanket in an envelope and use this quickly and the poorly written headline:
“Warning: Don’t Sleep While Driving! Happy Public Sleeping Day!
We at the Law Firm of ______ want to take a moment to wish you a Happy Public Sleeping Day and to remind you to never sleep while you’re at the wheel. Not only is it dangerous for you and everyone around you, but you’re liable to get a citation. If you do happen to get a citation…”
End with a call to action for free a book or some other free lead magnet. (If you want a list of obscure holidays, go to www.HolidayInsights.com). I came up with this in just under 60 seconds, so don’t be too critical of this particular marketing campaign. The point is, how can YOU use a holiday to have a reason to communicate with your prospects?
Thoughts from a Legal Systems Expert
When planning print and online marketing campaigns, my challenge is never to sleep to find a holiday that works for you and will enable you to communicate with your prospects. This, after all, is what can help you reach your business goals.
While “outrageous” marketing and advertising are sure to get attention, you’ll likely obtain both positive and negative attention. Here's the question: What is the goal of this marketing campaign? Is it to get “likes,” “shares,” viral comments, and eventually applications (which, depending on how you manage them, can be considered leads).
But how exactly will likes help you reach specific marketing objectives? Will you be using a FB analytics capture system to create a new target audience on your social media platforms? Without a carefully planned social media marketing strategy on managing likes, trying to get more of them might get in the way of conversion.
How will sharing on digital channels help? How will comments be managed? Will you reply to the words? What if the number of comments becomes too large for you to handle? Could you create an application to be filled out within FB on an FB form? I’m sure you could do this, as we use FB forms to capture leads currently. This way, they wouldn’t have to leave FB to apply, thus increasing conversion.
Questions to Ask When Working on Your Marketing Plan
For individuals writing marketing plans, it helps to ask the following questions:
- What is your plan to offset any “Bad Press” that may come your way?
- What will your message be?
- What is your “Why”?
- Can you overcome objections before or as they happen?
- If Free Press is what you’re looking for, what other mediums can be used?
- Can you put a full-page ad in the local rag?
- Can you submit press releases to all the TV/radio/newspapers in town?
- Can you and should you run billboard campaigns?
- How can you convert a higher percentage of traffic to actual leads for your firm?
- Will your marketing website highlight offers?
These are just some of the questions I would be asking, and each answer would likely have several sub-questions. But, and this is a big BUT, if a marketing tactic is something you’re committed to doing, get as much done as you can and run with it. It doesn’t have to be perfect, and the good news is, there’s always the next holiday to try.
In both traditional and internet marketing, t must be willing to repel the many to attract the few. Good marketing strategies should be able to attract the “few” you desire to serve. For all of your offline and web marketing activities, test it to see what response was like. If it works, no reason you couldn’t do it again the following year.
Making the Most Out of US Law Firm Management
For your firm to be more profitable, you should take the following marketing goals into account:
- List building (adding to my prospect list I could communicate with via my newsletter, direct mail, and phone campaigns);
- Searching for actual prospects who need my legal services (attempting to generate a Return on Investment or ROI – but I would take a break-even as I believe the press I’d gain would have a long, unable to be measured, tail);
- Achieving free Public Relations (Free Press) to generate inbound website traffic;
- Ensuring that my message about “why” I was doing this was all about the client and not about me, then using it as an opportunity to educate, would be all over my website, FB page, and all my marketing tools and materials;
- Building a custom FB targeted audience (I would need to hire a digital marketing agency who can do this for me)
Talk to an Experienced Legal Management Consultant
This is such a robust topic, and I feel I showed you just the tip of the iceberg. To market effectively, it is essential to think outside the box and take advantage of holidays to communicate with your new and existing customers alike.
This isn’t hard to do folks, all it takes is a little imagination, and you can include holiday campaigns into your marketing efforts. This can target existing clients, past clients, clients who owe you money, referral partners, and even unconverted leads. Don’t tackle it all at once. Test it a little, one small campaign at a time. I’ll bet you find, not only does it work, but it’s a lot more fun than legal work!
Contact our legal management consultant Richard James or schedule a 1-on-1 consulting today if you want to have your best month ever.
