News hook

Situational marketing is a brand’s response to any event relevant to a mass audience. Usually, those are social events, pop culture and sports sensations, holidays, etc. Such content easily becomes a trending topic on social media, which leads to the boost of all marketing statistics. It’s no wonder so many brands utilize any big news and events in their business promo campaigns. 

How to use evergreen content within Situational Marketing

For marketers, bloggers and social media influencers, the ‘holy grail’ is creating original content ideas that remain relevant, regardless of trends and paradigm shifts. It is something which creatives across the world and throughout all of the time have sought tirelessly to harness. In the context of marketing, it is known as ‘evergreen content.’ This kind of content does not come easily and can take in-depth research, constant testing, and tweaking and sometimes a big helping of luck. Often it comes from an intrinsic, timeless service or product that never ceases to be useful or a marketing idea that appeals across generations and cultures. Not all brands can utilize evergreen content forever. Products and services can become redundant as society moves forward.

However, even if your product does eventually get left behind, this kind of content can act as a kind of legacy of your brand. A good example of this is the boom in so-called ‘nostalgic branding’. These brands play on the personal desire to be transported to either one’s childhood, or a time long gone that seems somehow romantic.

Sudden trends

Hashtags, strange phrases, and crazy challenges pop up on users’ news feeds – this is the result of more and more people getting involved with the new trends online.

These trends are an opportunity for people to join in on the fun, but for others, it’s for the sake of profit. The latter refers to us. The tactic of using brand new information means:

It’s important to discover trends before they become too mainstream. Not too early, but not too late, when the trend is already getting annoying to everyone.

Express preparation of content – want to brief an agency? And approve of the creativity you’ve got with all the departments? Too late. While you are dealing with it, people will like, share, and forget. With virtual newsbreak, you don’t have to waste time looking for trends – a key success factor.

Distribution – a trend is identified over time with the content created about it. It’s good if you can have a community of a couple of hundreds of thousands of subscribers – you can post the results of your work and see how it spreads among the target audience. Don’t have any subscribers? No problem – go to the leaders of the trend and post your content there. It is very simple: the more time invested at the start, the more likely it is that your content will get picked up quickly and spread like wildfire on the web.

Predictable events

These newsbreaks can serve as a good foundation for building creativity. Most importantly – you can plan for them in advance which allows you to thoroughly prepare.

Next is a list of event categories that occur regularly and could be potentially interesting content for marketers:

Holidays & Events – the most predictable event category, but also the most boring. The global demand for holidays grows naturally, all you have to do is use your creativity to break through all the information noise and get to your audience before your competitors do.

International holidays (New Years, Valentine’s Day), or local (Fatherland Defender’s Day, Mardi Gras, Constitution Day) – an opportunity to focus marketing efforts on the preparation of the communication relevant for the upcoming holiday. It can be divided into several stages – pre, during, and post holiday. The most important is pre holiday and you should spend a few weeks promoting during this time. Once you get closer to the holiday, stimulate the interest of your audience with relevant information and entertaining content.

There are also less popular holidays, but they are no less useful for advertising purposes – International Hug Day, an International day without the Internet, the World Day of knitting in public – they are 80% ready, just add graphics and text, then publish.

Local events – the first snowfall? An organized city festival? Use this information for your purposes. From the basic message to a more detailed integration of the event – use your available resources and act! Such occasions are highly competitive, and reaching out to a specific audience is not easy.

To find events in this category, search city websites and local media. Plan a time to publish these notifications and events on a monthly content plan.

Show business – here there is a ton of material for newsbreaks: Leonardo DiCaprio once again did not win the “Oscar”, Marty McFly “arrives” in 2015 – many companies only take advantage of a small part of this kind of viral media. To be one of the first – find last year’s big events and trends so you don’t have to come up with content “on the fly”, you will just adapt your prepared draft once it gets closer to the event.

Days from history – well-known personalities who were born on this day, funny events of the past years, scientific and geographical discoveries – most of these events can be used as an everyday communication tool for your audience.

Sporting Event – the biggest event in this category is the «Super Bowl». This is very popular content among top marketers. One second of video broadcast during the Super Bowl costs 117,000 dollars. But if you aren’t one of the big power players, you can still use this event in your marketing by generating content and distributing it through your channels. Also, don’t forget about local sports events.

Using special calendar dates as part of your Situational Marketing Campaign

One issue that many marketers face is the ability to generate relevant content all year round. Many marketers resort to recycling blog posts, videos or pictures in an effort to stay at the top of news feeds. However, in an age where attention spans are limited to immediate relevancy, recycling content can result in brand fatigue. A simple and effective way of generating ideas is to use special calendar dates to draw inspiration from.

We already know the big ones: Christmas, Valentines, Easter.

But, as the Google Doodle shows us, there is an almost unlimited source of dates, anniversaries and festival days we could draw from. Of course, it’s important to ensure that the marking of these dates is built into a proactive strategy. This particular strain of situational marketing requires some forethought and particular attention to relevancy. There would be no reason, for instance, for a summer clothing brand to advertise their line of sandals during the winter season.

But with a little forethought, marking special dates can help to create some compelling marketing campaigns.

Track relevant news by:

• Using Google Trends to monitor trending stories.
• Using Google Alerts to monitor keywords
• Using tools like Sprout Social to monitor social channels
• Watching trending hashtags on Twitter
• Following journalists and bloggers who cover stories connected to your industry.

To-Do List

Once you have a strategy for tracking potential stories, you’ll need to act quickly. Some of the best things you can do include:

• Picking the right story: The breaking news you cover must be relevant to your brand and industry.
• Write quickly and accurately: Make sure that you write fast but double-check your facts to protect your reputation.
• Be different: Covering the same news as everyone else won’t get you noticed. Inject your own angle into the story based on what you know about your audience.
• Tread carefully: While it’s important to act quickly, you must also be careful. Some opinions and news topics may rub your audience the wrong way.
• Promote your post: Remember to generate attention for your story. Hold a virtual press release with Facebook Live. Contact journalists interested in what you have to share. Tweet about your content using a pre-established hashtag.
• Track engagement and responses using a social tool like Sprout Social: This will help you to plan future campaigns.

Benefits

• Place your brand into larger industry and social conversations.
• Puts you in front of new audiences and potential customers.
• Boosts social media engagement.
• Demonstrates the nature of your brand to audiences.
• Shows that you’re dialed into the needs of your customers and community.
• Generate New Leads
• Boost Sales
• Create Viral Content
• Improve Brand Awareness