Awareness days: How to stand out in a crowded market

Awareness days – what are they and what can they do for your brand?

Designed to draw attention to a specific issue, cause or trend, awareness days are part of many brand communication strategies. From mainstream events, like Mental Health Awareness Week and Earth Day, to sector-specific ones, such as National Technology Day and Cybersecurity Awareness Month, there are countless awareness days to choose from.

When leveraged correctly, awareness days can be a great way to engage in topical conversations and position yourself as a thought leader. And it can be especially beneficial for startups looking to take on more established players in the technology space.

However, with so many days in the calendar, it’s essential brands take a considered and strategic approach to awareness days. You can’t be a leader on every topic and engaging with too many diverse topics can become confusing to your audience.

Choosing the most relevant day for your brand

Dedicating time to look at upcoming awareness days will allow you to plan a well-thought-out strategy that aligns with your brand. By researching opportunities over the course of the year that resonate with your values, proposition, and audience, you can get ahead of the crowd and map out where you have insights or opinions to contribute.

Here’s a checklist of some questions you should ask to narrow down your selection:

• How much traction has it had in the past? – Spend some time looking at the type of social media and press coverage the day has had over the last few years. This will help you rule out days that have barely any external presence and ensure your plans reflect the channels the awareness day is most popular on.

• What charities or brands are linked to the awareness day? – Some awareness days have organisations or charities linked to them – Time to Talk Day, for example, is sponsored by the Co-Op – so you should make sure your company’s values and goals align with these collaborators to maximise synergy and credibility. It also means you can rule out any competitor’s marketing days!

• Is it relevant to your audience? – It can be easy to jump on the bandwagon because everyone else is, but you need to make sure you are always coming back to your target audience and how relevant the day is for them.

Capitalising on the day

Once you’ve chosen your days, the next step is creating a strategy that will generate the biggest impact for your organisation and cut through the noise. The key here is to tailor your plan and use your research to create a multi-channel approach that will maximise reach and engagement.

Press coverage: If your company has an opinion on a topic being explored as part of the awareness day, creating an earned media plan can prove extremely impactful in reaching new audiences beyond your own channels and offers a chance for your company to be included in a wider discussion with other leaders in the industry. To maximise your chances of success, you need to make sure you have a strong view – comments that sit on the fence are less likely to be featured. Timing is also key. Take note of when coverage started to appear the previous year and use that to gauge when you should be speaking to journalists.

This approach helped us land coverage for several of our clients for International Women’s Day, as we prepared commentary in advance and offered it to journalists more than a week before the day itself, resulting in hits in Silicon UK, Intelligent CIO and IT Brief.

Social media: Awareness days can be a great tool for employee engagement and showcasing your values as a company. Use these channels to share real-life stories from your team and customers, using personal anecdotes to establish authentic links to the theme of the awareness day. This could be in the form of vox pops with the team, an interview with a team member or pictures from an internal event.

Owned Content: Blogs and newsletters are valuable ways of demonstrating expertise and educating your existing audience base. These platforms enable you to provide in-depth insights and incorporate clear calls to action that are less feasible in press materials. For example, to mark Cybersecurity Awareness Month, a cybersecurity company might highlight the challenge organisations are facing in overcoming a particular threat vector, using it as an opportunity to educate on their solution and offer a call to action at the end to sign-up for a demo to learn more. By optimising this content for search engines, you can also improve visibility and expand your audience.