National Holidays can be your brand’s best-friend or it’s worst enemy.

Of course, fun and light-hearted holidays such as Pancake Day, Love Your Pet Day and National Pizza Day (yes- that is a thing), are perfectly harmless to use in your marketing strategy. They generate fun and engaging content that can be very useful when connecting with customers and entertaining your audiences.

2020 has seen more brands raise awareness and show support for more impactful holidays. According to Sprout Social’s #BrandsGetReal report, it was revealed that “the  majority of consumers (70%) believe it’s important for brands to take a public stand on social and political issues”.  The world is demanding change and your brand should not be left behind.

However, the same report found that “More than half of consumers (53%) believe brands only take a stand for public relations or marketing purposes”.

For your brand’s credibility and to respect the importance and sensitivity surrounding certain national holidays, your video content should mirror your true feelings whilst aiming to selflessly help the cause.

Below are tips on how and  why you should endeavour to incorporate National Holidays into your brand’s video content.

1. To Establish Your Personality

National Holidays are a great way to show off your brand’s personality. With a range of dates celebrating so many versatile occasions, you are able to establish your brand’s essence.

If you are a quirky company, weird and wonderful dates such as Cheese Lovers Day (Jan 20th) or Look-alike Day (April 20th) are a great way to connect with your audience through humour and  light hearted content.

If you’re a brand keen to establish yourselves as leaders in your field, dates such as Podcast Day (September 30th) or Authors Days (November 1st) are great opportunities to educate your audience.

Make sure you tailor the holiday to your brand’s need:
1.  Why are you generating content around this holiday?
2.  What is the intended outcome?
3.  How can it help you connect or make a change?

No matter the holiday, your marketing video should be planned. If you need help with creating your video marketing strategy, check out our blog, “How To Create a Video Marketing Strategy: 5 Steps To Success”.

2. To Take a Stand

Last year marked the importance of awareness days and the imperative need for change. Taking a stand on subjects you truly believe in is an admirable way to gain loyalty and respect, whilst highlighting your company values.

It is important to dive into your cause whole-heartedly. Do your research, conduct interviews and plan your content. Tip-toeing across a National Holidays which are valued by so many is more dangerous than not covering them at all.

Make sure you truly believe in your cause. Your support should not only help your customers understand your brand’s identity and beliefs, but should help out and generate a positive outcome for your chosen cause or political  opinion.

Top Tip – Interview content is incredibly useful. By conducting interviews with campaigners and lead personalities for your chosen cause, you can create highly informative content whilst learning more about the issue yourself.

3. To Showcase Your Niche

Perhaps you run a pirate themed crazy golf course… days such as Talk Like A Pirate Day (19th of September) are perfect for showcasing your niche and generating fun content.

Chances are, you don’t run a pirate themed crazy golf course – however the sentiment still remains. With hundreds of strangely specific National Holidays out there, you have the chance to create videos unique to your brand, which really encapsulate your purpose.

Things  To Remember:

– Post  In Advance

Don’t wait until the day of the event to share your video. Make sure to share your thoughts and share clips of your video prior to the day, in order to generate excitement and gain awareness of your chosen national holiday.

– Chose Wisely

You can’t cover every national holiday, and you don’t need to. Choose wisely and make sure it is appropriate.

– Use Hashtags

When sharing on social media make sure to use relevant and appropriate hashtags to generate shares.

– Have a Purpose

As mentioned it is important to have a reason why you’re creating a video centred around this holiday. Some will be more serious than others. Perhaps it’s a little light-hearted joke? Or perhaps it is a cause your brand is keen to raise awareness for? Whatever the reason – make sure you can justify it.

A List Of National Holidays

The wonderful team over at HubSpot have put together a Social Media Holiday Calendar which you can download and use for free!

You can also find the list below (again – courtesy of HubSpot) If you want to know more about how we can help you maximise your engagement through video, please get in touch with us on hello@foxfifth.com