Want to attract shoppers to an ecommerce site in January 2024? Consider producing helpful, informational, or entertaining content around “national days,” promotional calendars, or product innovation.
Content marketing is creating or curating content, publishing it, and promoting it to bolster search engine optimization and email and social media marketing. It helps all sorts of ecommerce merchants — retail, direct-to-consumer, B2B — attract, engage, and retain customers.
Here are five content marketing topics your company can use in January 2024.
1. National Take the Stairs Day
Take the Stairs Day reminds folks to start a healthy habit.
National Take the Stairs Day on Jan. 10, 2024, encourages Americans to start a healthy habit. It is also an opportunity for businesses to create the habit of generating helpful content for potential customers.
Companies selling health and fitness products have the most content options, perhaps encouraging prospects not only to take the stairs but also commit to healthy living and purchasing relevant products.
But other businesses can connect their products to healthy habits, too.
Here are a few ideas.
- Luggage brand. Create an article series for business travelers describing how to build good fitness habits on the road.
- Kids’ clothing retailer. Publish a fitness guide for parents that lists entertaining games and activities for children while promoting the store’s products.
- DIY materials shop. Produce articles or videos for projects encouraging healthy habits, such as building a home gym or an outdoor living space.
2. National Dress Up Your Pet Day
Jan. 14, 2024, will be a sort of mini-Halloween for pet owners. National Dress Up Your Pet Day can be a fun opportunity for “pet parents.”
An online shop selling power tools probably won’t benefit from an article featuring pictures of lizards dressed like princesses, but it might publish a funny post about construction site dogs dressed like their blue-collar owners.
Dressing up pet iguanas is all about entertainment.
3. National Nothing Day
Jan. 16, 2024, will be an un-event, or at least that is what San Francisco Examiner columnist Harold Pullman Coffin imagined when he invented National Nothing Day in 1972.
“Nothing Day” is a protest against the many holidays enacted by Congress or other governing bodies and thus added to the various lists of national days.
Content marketers could take Nothing Day articles, videos, or podcasts in a couple of directions.
First, join the spirit and promote taking a break from would-be holidays.
Second, marketers could double down and create their own national day. Imagine, for example, an online craft-supplies shop inventing “National Candle Artistry Day” to showcase the art of candle making and design, offering workshops or special edition kits.
How about a day focusing on candle art?
Be careful, however. About a decade after Coffin proposed Nothing Day, Congress created Martin Luther King Day for the third Thursday in January — the 16th every seven years. It’s a near hit in 2024, as we celebrate Martin Luther King on the 15th.
4. Promotions Calendar
Content marketers are accustomed to an editorial calendar. It is a map of sorts, planning what to publish and when. Magazine publishers used to publish editorial calendars so readers and advertisers knew what to expect from upcoming issues.
Take an idea from old-school publishers and tell shoppers when your sales are coming.
For January 2024, consider borrowing this idea to encourage email subscriptions. Here is the idea. Publish an article listing your company’s planned promotions in 2024. Include everything from a February clearance to Black Friday and Cyber Monday sale dates.
There’s no need for lots of detail, just the dates and a short rationale for each event.
Then comes the pitch: Encourage readers to sign up for email messages to be among the first to know of every promotion.
5. Product Innovations
Janus could look forward to the year and back at what we learned.
January is named for Janus, the mythical, two-faced Roman deity who looks forward to the new year and gazes back on the just-completed one with its many lessons.
In January 2024, content marketers could use this concept to focus on the past and future evolution of their products or industry.
An online auto parts shop could address progress in fuel-efficient cars and likely improvements in 2024. A home furnishings retailer could describe how couches and chairs have become more environmentally sustainable.
The articles could demonstrate merchants’ industry expertise while promoting related products.
