Pros & Cons of National Awareness Days for Marketing.
Should you or shouldn’t you?
In this week’s blog, we’re looking at the pros and cons of using National Awareness Days as part of your social media marketing.
We’ll be honest about what most of our clients do, and we’ll be honest about what we do. Then we’ll lay out the pros and cons of both.
PROS OF NATIONAL AWARENESS DAYS FOR MARKETING
There’s a national awareness day for everything.
And, used well, they really can draw attention to your business.
There’s a big caveat to this, however: generally speaking, a business using more than one or two awareness days a year is probably adding more noise than value to people’s feeds.
At Altrincham HQ, we’ll occasionally use National Awareness Days as part of our community content to put a spotlight on local businesses.
The smart brands plan ahead and get in touch with us well in advance to see how we can work together on a campaign that makes their brand the only one being talked about in town.
Bigger & Bolder Marketing using National Awareness days
National Awareness Days are an annual way to make a big splash with bigger and bolder marketing.
Let’s just say you’re a pizza restaurant – talking about a margherita pizza really isn’t going to cut it. But imagine you have an offer for a 50″ pizza – that’s going to stand out.
Or imagine it’s World Vegan Day. Instead of doing 20% off all vegan dishes (like everyone else), you decide to create the town’s biggest vegan menu with 30 different vegan options that you’ll be keeping on the menu for the next year.
One of the biggest examples of an awareness day is Blue Monday.
It’s a total scam, but everyone talks about it.
Blue Monday is a PR invention.
The name originated in 2005 in a press release by Sky Travel and was designed to sell more holidays.
Great marketing – but ultimately a scam to control your emotions and sell you stuff.
Celebrate Your Special Day (with Social Media and Press Coverage)
One of our early clients was a fish & chip shop in the centre of Manchester.
Naturally, National Fish and Chip Day was an awareness day we jumped on with humorous content, competitions and giveaways.
The best thing about this, however, was that every single year without fail the Manchester Evening News listed them in the Top 5 Fish and Chip Shops in Greater Manchester.
They were already known as the “Twitter-famous chippy”, and this further boosted the brand.
Show Personality With National Awareness Days
So far we’ve mentioned B2C businesses – but does all of this relate to B2B as well?
It’s harder.
For example, there’s Social Media Day on 30th June. For us, every day is Social Media Day, and we remind people how much time they spend on social media each day. But it’s hard to show off our personality.
A better fit for us is National Fitness Day. Fitness is a big part of who I am – as well as working in marketing, I’m a qualified fitness instructor. Not everyone knows that about me, and it gives me a chance to shine.
CONS OF NATIONAL AWARENESS DAYS FOR MARKETING
Those who follow us on Instagram know that I’m generally against using National Awareness Days in content.
99% of the time, they’re used because people are lazy and poorly trained social media managers encourage the most random days ever.
We recently saw a social media manager encourage businesses to offer September 11th discounts.
It was even worse that the SMM was UK-based. I’m not sure how Carol’s Caff in Crumpsall would approach “11% off your coffee today to commemorate 9/11”.
On the comical side, there are random days like Kiss a Wrestler Day or Hug a Kevin Day.
If you’re expecting to increase sales or meaningful engagement through National Awareness Days, it’s unlikely to drive results.
Even the people who are for them will tell you that National Awareness Days make up less than 1% of their yearly content.
National Awareness Days Are Overused & Noisy
National Awareness Days are just a wall of pointless noise.
1st October was National Coffee Day.
Nothing is more irritating than every coffee shop in town posting about International Coffee Day with “Keep Calm and Drink Coffee”.
It’s bland, it’s boring – and ultimately nobody cares.
In a world where marketing is meant to make your brand stand out, National Awareness Days often make your content look duller than watching paint dry.
National Awareness Day Are Largely Irrelevant– Forcing a link between your brand and the day can feel fake or cringey
The worst examples of this are often cause-based awareness days.
Take International Women’s Day. The corporate firm with 300 staff and only one female employee will suddenly force that one employee onto social media to show their “diversity”.
Or businesses slapping a rainbow on their logo for Pride Month without taking any meaningful action on LGBTQ+ rights.
Or posting about Black History Month while not having a single Black employee.
That’s the serious stuff.
And then there are the random days like Kiss a Wrestler Day or Hug a Kevin Day.
Just don’t.
National Awareness Days Have A Short Shelf Life
All that effort for just one day.
It feels like a lot, doesn’t it?
Could you spend the time producing evergreen content that you can use time and time again instead?
Most of the content we produce (apart from time-sensitive updates) could have been posted in 2012 or 2025. That’s intentional, so the time we spend keeps delivering months and years after it’s published.
CONCLUSION ON NATIONAL AWARENESS DAYS FOR MARKETING
Just because a social media manager has posted a list of random days doesn’t mean your should use them.
Use your brain – 99% of the National Awareness days are bobbins.
Most people posting lists of awareness days are just copied and pasted from others with a change on Canva Templates.
If you’re going to use National Awareness Days for marketing … use them sparingly.
And on the ones you do use, be bigger and bolder than everyone else in the market.
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Please call Alex on 07806774279 or email alex@altrinchamhq.co.uk
