Using Events and Theme-Driven Marketing

By Yanik Silver

Since this is the start of a new profitable year together -
let's work on your marketing calendar for the whole year.
You see, nearly an event/holiday/celebration/milestone is
an excuse for a promotion. And if you're not doing that
you're missing the boat. So let's fix that...

First things first is I suggest getting a quick calendar
together of what kind of promotions you'd like to run
throughout the year. This doesn't need to be anything fancy
- but take a look at holidays and "milestone" events
throughout the year.

Here are just a few ideas:

Jan: New Year's - Ideas:
- "New Years - New You/New Start"
- "Get rid of Last year's inventory"

Feb: Valentine's Day - Ideas:
- "Give yourself the ____ you'll love"
- "We love you and want to do something special for you"

March: St. Patrick's Day - Idea:
- "Make Your Friends Green With Envy with ______"
- "Your lucky day"

April: April Fools Day - Idea:
- "These discounts are so low my accountant thought
this was an April's fools day joke"

May: Mother's Day - Idea:
- "Mother always said you should _________"

April: Tax Day - Idea:
"I need your help to pay for my taxes" (Don't laugh this
was a true promotion my friend, Jeff Walker, used very
successfully!)

June: Father's Day/Graduation - Idea:
- "Graduate to a new _____"

July: 4th of July - Ideas:
- "Watch Fireworks explode when you ______"
- "Celebrate your independence from _________"

October: Halloween - Idea:
- "Give yourself a treat this month" (Side note: Halloween
is a HUGE holiday and one of the best ones to run a
promotion for.)

November: Election Day - Idea:
-"Elect a new _____"

November: Thanksgiving - Idea:
- "Thank you to our best customers"

Dec: Holidays - Idea:
- "Happy holidays - winter sale"
- "Ho ho ho - Can't beat the fat man so we're having a
sale"

But even better than these regular holidays are creating
"anytime" promotions. As Dan Kennedy says the #1 sin in
marketing is being boring. Online it's harder than ever to
try and breakthrough the clutter.

And one way to do this is to take an event and really make
it fun and entertaining for your customers/prospects.

The "Any-Reason-Is-Good-Reason-For-a-Sale" Sale

Using reason-why copy (like I just mentioned) is the
perfect way to create an event for yourself anytime things
are slow, you've hit a milestone in your business (or
personal life) or because you need to get rid of inventory,
etc. There are tons of ways of doing this that I've seen
successfully applied.

A couple off the top of my head are:

"Scratch & Dent" sale...
"Fire/Flood sale"...
"Need to pay my taxes sales"...
"Birthday or Anniversary sale"...
"My server crashed" sale...
"It's raining out"...
(I'm serious there's a local Taco place I love
that will send out an email anytime it rains, since
their foot traffic goes down, offering free chips and
queso. Smart!)
"Boss is away sale", etc. etc...

I've very successfully done a "scratch and dent" sale just
like Robert Collier mentioned in his "Robert Collier Letter
Book" - but then last year I decided to do something a
little different since others were going a 'scratch &
dent' sale too. It was the "Save Yanik's Marriage Sale"
with the whole premise being Missy, my wife, was really
annoyed at me for the basement being so overloaded with
boxes. Truthfully, she WAS really mad and made a big stink
about it - but I embellished the story a bit.

After that sale did its job Missy really got into the
excitement of clearing out the basement and she suggested
another sale for our Wedding anniversary (Sept 16th). This
one only did about ¼ of the results from the previous one
but it was money created out of thin air. I think it was
just too soon for another sale so closely on the heels of
the previous one. The scratch & dent sale is a pretty
simple model to use and if you incorporate a real reason
why it'll work today just like it did 50+ years ago for
Robert Collier (and before that).

Another sale I've had a lot of success with is a milestone
type sale.

I just did one when my first child, Zak, being born. That
promotion nearly tripled my expectations for what it would
bring in (it made $4.60+ for every visitor who came). And
more importantly people connected with me as a real person
- you should have seen the dozens and dozens of
congratulations notes. It was really cool.

There are a couple big points I really want to make sure
you get from this:

#1 - Make your marketing fun and have people wonder what is
this guy/gal up to next? Fact is, most of your prospects
and customers probably lead fairly normal and mundane
lives. If you can give them something to get excited about
or even live a little bit through what you do - you'll have
'hooked' them in.

#2 - This is critical! Don't make your theme or "fun" idea
take away from the sales message. Big advertisers do this
all the time and waste all their money. They try to use
humor or something clever in their advertising but have no
salesmanship. The fun or theme aspect of your promotion
cannot stand on its own without the fundamentals of direct
response (i.e. compelling offer, deadline, headlines,
benefits, etc). Bottom line - don't confuse this with being
cute or clever and not actually selling. There is a big,
BIG difference.

#3 - "Reason Why" copy works perfectly for most of the
events or themes you create. As you know most retailers
will use some sort of event (i.e. Presidents Day) for a
sale. Well that's a pretty weak reason why but most people
will accept just about any excuse for a special deal.
However, when you combine it with real meaningful reason
why copy it works even better even if the reason is a bit
contrived. Telling people the reason why you are doing
something is one of the most powerful influencers of human
behavior.

I hope this gives you some ammo to start thinking up your
own promotions for the year and breaking out of the 'ho-
hum' mold of other marketers.

Copyright Yanik Silver

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Just 33-years old, Yanik Silver is recognized as the
leading expert on creating automatic, moneymaking web
sites...and he still doesn't know how to put up his own
website.

He is the author, co-author or publisher of several best-
selling online marketing books and tools, which can be
found at www.SurefireMarketing.com
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