In some ways, February is a content marketer’s dream come true. Two months after the holidays, the pressure to rescue an entire year’s worth of ROI is off. You’ve got another whole month to get your first quarter results looking good. You may even have enough cockeyed optimism left over from your New Year’s resolutions to believe you can do it.
Best of all, February is chock-full of semi-legitimate, retail-friendly holidays. All of which are tailor-made vehicles for your marketing messages.
- Groundhog Day has natural tie-ins to themes like spring, renewal, not letting fear hold you back, and thanks to Bill Murray, repeating past mistakes.
- Presidents Day has been an excuse to sell everything from used cars to bedding for decades.
- Valentine’s Day is famous for being a “greeting card holiday,” manufactured mostly as a marketing ploy.
- Even Mardi Gras, ostensibly a religious holiday, has a reputation for conspicuous consumption.
In addition to the holidays, there’s the reliable chatter surrounding the Big-Game-We-Can’t-Mention-By-Name and the red carpet shenanigans of awards season. In short, the shortest month of the year has no shortage of timely, predictable topics for content marketers to build content around.
And that’s the problem.
Should you start with these cherished chestnuts as you begin building your content calendar? Sure. But if you stop there, you’ll run the risk of producing predictable (and forgettable) material.
When you’re planning content, don’t settle for the low-hanging fruit. That’s where most of the other pen monkeys will stop. Push your mind past the obvious, till you reach something remarkable.
It’s also important to exercise restraint. If you’re going to tie marketing content to a holiday or cultural event, don’t stretch too far to make the connection. The cognitive dissonance it creates will cause your audience to lose trust. Good content always strikes a strong balance between “outlandish enough to get your attention” and “believable enough to take action on.”
At OOHology, we have a collaborative process for developing fresh, engaging marketing content. If you’re skeptical, just peruse our portfolio to see the triple-digit increases in traffic and engagement we’ve achieved for our clients.