This year, on Friday, November 1st, marks the beginning of Diwali, known around the world as the Hindu festival that celebrates the triumph of good over evil and light over darkness. Diwali is celebrated across the globe as a life-affirming cultural festival with some unforgettable traditions, ranging from lantern lighting and fireworks displays to gift-giving, cooking, and getting dressed up in our favourite saris and lehengas.
With all the festivities surrounding the season of Diwali, it’s also common for businesses that celebrate to run special offers for their customers and clients. So all you business owners looking to commemorate Diwali this year, ask yourself this question: during the many feasts and gatherings, will you take advantage of the visibility by implementing a new advertising campaign for your startup? Continue reading for tips on using this year’s Diwali festivities as a great opportunity for doing some community outreach and promoting your company within your wider neighbourhood and industry network.
Before we delve into how you can create personalised content for your start-up this Diwali, let’s first look at the historical context of the holiday. The Festival of Lights brings with it significant spiritual meaning for Hindus worldwide. The mythical tales document Lord Rama’s return to Ayodhya after defeating the demon King Ravana. We celebrate this homecoming through colourful decorations and lighting many oil lamps to signify righteousness, positivity, and prosperity.
Let's look at this celebration through a marketing lens. We can quickly formulate many ideas for using Diwali to bring success to our start-up efforts. Perhaps we can harness our artistic talents by creating a Diwali highlights cover for Instagram and then using those visual cues to develop campaigns on other platforms. The beauty inherent in our Hindu heritage's celebration gives us a canvas for presenting our talking points to the masses.
Naturally, Diwali is celebrated by a large global population, so it’s imperative that your ad and social media copy speaks directly to the demographics and interest groups that would be most likely to celebrate the holiday period. Use factors including age, regional locations, and buying behaviours to customise your Diwali messaging campaign, with more traditional messaging for older age groups that are based in India, and more contemporary or even nostalgia-inducing messaging for younger people who may associate the holiday with their family and loved ones.
Once you've outlined all your target audiences for each localised campaign, it’s now time to mark the occasion with year-specific graphics and all the vibrant colours that are associated with local festivities. Your ad messaging should effectively demonstrate the central tenets of joy and prosperity that always accompany Diwali, and align with your branding cues to show that your start-up fully embraces positive emotions. In other words, capture the essence of Diwali by combining the visual and written copy with a campaign unique to 2024's celebrations while speaking directly to your target demographics.
As we mentioned, offering discounts and giveaways related to Diwali celebrations is always a great way to generate positive responses to your holiday marketing materials. But what’s even better is developing offers that are exclusive to different marketing channels.
Using exclusive offers that followers can redeem doesn’t just foster new, organic reach, but also provides your target consumers ample incentive to engage with your company on a variety of digital platforms, helping you grow your following across the board and create a vibrant community of consumers that eagerly engage with your content.
Develop a series of relevant, branded hashtags and eye-catching visuals to increase your content's discoverability. And once you have this stellar content in place, build up anticipation by sharing sneak peeks of your new products with countdowns and teasers in the weeks leading to Diwali festivals. Invite your audience to share their user-generated content to demonstrate how they plan to celebrate with your organisation. Use interactive contests showcasing the "best Diwali decorations" and most creative festival recipes. Pro tip: looking at Google keyword trends can help you better determine what kind of content your consumers are most likely to find valuable as well.
Build a Diwali brand narrative by featuring stories highlighting customer testimonials and showcasing your team's festive spirit. These initiatives add a personal touch that fosters community and connection with your customers. Don't forget to express gratitude by liking and reposting content either!
For the duration of Diwali celebrations in 2024, it’s also well worth updating the graphic branding on your main website, social profiles, and marketing materials to reflect the season – just as millions of businesses are doing for Lunar New Year right now! Include elements of fireworks, rangoli patterns, diyas, and festive gold, red, and orange hues. Profile banners and background settings offer plenty of room for creativity and are easily customised. And once the festival concludes, moving everything back to the original settings is trivial.
For physical products, have unique wraps and luxury packaging created with decorative elements, festive visuals, and Diwali greetings tied to the specific year's celebration, offering a feeling of exclusivity. Customers often find collectible value in well-executed special occasion packaging, increasing visibility.
You also have room to embrace Diwali creativity in your written marketing materials. Transform weekly email newsletters into a central information hub detailing your festival promotions, discounts, and giveaway contests.
Drive more engagement and leverage the value of your email list by taking some of this content and repurposing it to your social media channels. Here, you can make themed, shortened versions of your newsletter showcasing consistent graphics material, transforming your entire channel into Diwali-related content for the festival's duration. Grow that email list even further by creating engaging social media polls and posts where customers can upload their own festival experience photos, with a convenient form for them to enter their email address.
And remember to leverage your company’s blog in these efforts as well. Include detailed posts, articles, and event schedules for those not yet signed up for the newsletter. Some informative content to share might include personal stories related to Diwali traditions or favourite family recipes. Anything to connect with your audience on a deeper level while remaining aligned with your brand's industry or niche.
Once the festival concludes, it's time for a reflection period where you analyse each part of the campaign for successes and failures. Look at your metrics: engagement, website traffic, and conversion rates. The critical question is, how do you sustain the momentum you generated with your marketing efforts?
Send personalised messages of gratitude for the support and interest in your start-up, welcome all the new subscribers, and perhaps extend the promotions/discounts for a limited period post-Diwali. Use this information to formulate plans for 2025 and incorporate the positive feedback to make next year’s efforts even better.
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