Key takeaways
- Topical marketing builds content around current events, trends, festivals and cultural moments.
- Planned topical posts cover recurring dates; moment marketing or newsjacking reacts to breaking news within hours.
- A yearly calendar of festivals and awareness days lets you prepare creative weeks in advance.
- Only join a trend when the link to your brand is obvious and the topic is not sensitive.
- Bite-sized visuals, relevant hashtags and a fast approval process make reactive posts work.
- CRED's 2021 #IndiraNagarKaGunda ad shows how other brands joining a trend multiplies its reach.
What Is Topical Marketing?
Topical marketing is the practice of creating content around current events, trends, festivals and cultural moments so your brand joins conversations people are already having. It covers planned posts for recurring dates, such as Diwali or Women’s Day, and fast reactive posts, often called moment marketing or newsjacking, that ride a breaking story or viral trend.
In digital marketing, staying relevant and timely is more crucial than ever. This is where topical marketing, also known as moment marketing, newsjacking, or trend jacking, comes into play. Leveraging current events and trends, topical marketing allows brands to create content that resonates with the audience, enhancing brand momentum predominantly through social media platforms.
Understanding the nuances of topical marketing can be a game-changer in your marketing strategy. It not only helps in enhancing brand visibility but also fosters engagement and can significantly boost sales through industry-specific campaigns.
In this comprehensive guide, we delve deep into the world of topical marketing, exploring its various facets including its definition, the different types of topical posts, and the strategies to implement it successfully in your marketing campaigns. We will also look at some successful case studies and address frequently asked questions to give you a 360-degree understanding of this marketing approach.
Join us as we unravel the potential of topical marketing and how you can use it to steer your brand to new heights.
Deep Dive into Topical Marketing
Topical marketing is closely related to moment marketing: both use current happenings to create content that is timely and relevant. Knowing where they differ helps you decide which posts to plan in advance and which to create on the day.
What Is the Difference Between Topical and Moment Marketing?
While both strategies are grounded in leveraging contemporary events, topical marketing casts a wider net, encapsulating seasonal happenings, commemorative days, and other pivotal dates. In contrast, moment marketing is more impromptu, capitalising on viral phenomena or current news to craft content that strikes a chord with the audience at that precise moment.
Aspect | Topical Marketing | Moment Marketing |
Scope | Expansive, covering seasonal events | Spontaneous, riding on viral waves |
Focus | Long-term engagement | Short-term, fleeting engagement |
Content Creation | Pre-planned | Spontaneous, reactive |
Audience Reach | Broad spectrum through diverse platforms | Targeted audience via viral channels |
What Are the Types of Topical Posts?
Topical posts stand as the pillar of topical marketing, offering a fertile ground for brands to foster a connection with their audience. Let’s explore the diverse types of topical posts that can be a powerhouse in your marketing strategy.
Seasonal and Topical Days
Seasonal and topical days are a treasure trove for brands, presenting an opportunity to craft campaigns that resonate deeply with the audience. These posts, which can be curated in advance, recur annually, encapsulating festive days, awareness days, and days of national and international significance. Aligning your brand message with these pivotal days can forge a deeper bond with your audience, enticing them to actively engage with your content.
Date | Significant Day |
January 1 | New Year’s Day |
February 14 | Valentine’s Day |
March 8 | International Women’s Day |
March 17 | St. Patrick’s Day |
April 22 | Earth Day |
May 1 | International Workers’ Day |
June 21 | International Yoga Day |
July 4 | Independence Day (USA) |
August 15 | Independence Day (India) |
September 5 | Teachers’ Day (India) |
October 31 | Halloween |
Fourth Thursday of November | Thanksgiving (USA) |
December 25 | Christmas Day |
Please note that this list is not exhaustive and focuses on widely recognised and celebrated days. For India-focused brands, add festivals such as Diwali, Holi, Eid and Onam, whose dates change each year.
Newsjacking or Moment Marketing
Newsjacking or moment marketing is a dynamic strategy that involves crafting spontaneous posts that ride the wave of viral events or current happenings. This approach offers a fresh and unique perspective on trending topics, thereby enhancing visibility and fostering deeper engagement with the audience. By keeping a finger on the pulse of the latest news and trends, brands can swiftly jump onto the bandwagon, presenting content that is both fresh and resonates with the audience at that particular juncture.
The essence of this strategy lies in its spontaneity and the ability to offer a fresh take on a trending topic, which can garner more visibility and engagement. It is a strategy that thrives on timeliness, requiring brands to be always alert and ready to leverage a trending topic to their advantage.
What Are the Benefits of Topical Marketing?
Implementing topical marketing in your strategy comes with a plethora of benefits that can significantly enhance your brand’s visibility and engagement. Let’s explore some of these benefits in detail.
1. Increasing Brand Awareness
Topical marketing allows you to reach a broader audience by creating content around trending topics. This strategy not only increases brand awareness but also fosters a community of engaged followers who are more likely to interact with your brand on a deeper level.
2. Boosting Social Media Visibility
By leveraging trending hashtags wisely, you can increase your post’s discoverability. This strategy fosters engagement and drives traffic to your brand, creating a ripple effect that enhances your social media presence exponentially.
How Do You Implement Topical Marketing?
Successfully implementing topical marketing involves a strategic approach that encompasses various elements. Here, we delve into the strategies to help you implement topical marketing successfully.
Finding Relevant Topics
Choosing topics that align with your brand and industry is crucial. It ensures a clear connection between the topic and your brand, fostering relevance and engagement. By staying updated with the latest trends and news, you can find topics that resonate with your audience, creating content that is both timely and relevant.
Creating Bite-Sized Content
Topical posts are generally packaged as bite-sized content, allowing your audience to grasp the message at a glance. Our guide to short Instagram captions shows how to keep the words just as tight. This strategy fosters engagement and resonance, encouraging users to share your content, thereby increasing its reach.
Utilising Trending Hashtags
Employing trending hashtags judiciously can increase your post’s discoverability. Choose hashtags that are relevant and resonate with your brand to create a buzz around your content, encouraging more users to engage with it. Pair them with keyword-rich captions, as covered in our guide to Instagram SEO.
Topical Marketing Strategies
Developing a robust topical marketing strategy involves careful planning and collaboration. Let’s explore the strategies that can aid in creating successful topical marketing campaigns.
Strategy and Planning
Collaborating with colleagues in the campaign process is essential. Pitching post ideas to coworkers and acquaintances fosters a collaborative environment, encouraging diverse perspectives and innovative ideas.
Collaborative Efforts in Topical Marketing
Engaging in collaborative efforts involves your team in the brainstorming process. This approach encourages innovative and relevant content ideas, fostering a rich and diverse content strategy.
Topical Marketing Checklist: Should You Post About This Trend?
Speed matters in topical marketing, but a rushed post can do more harm than silence. Run every idea through these questions before it goes live:
- Is there a genuine link to your brand? If you need to explain the connection, the post will feel forced. The best topical posts make the link obvious at a glance.
- Is the moment still rising? Trends fade fast. If the conversation peaked days ago, a late post looks out of touch.
- Could anyone be hurt by it? Never turn tragedies, disasters, deaths or divisive political events into promotions. If in doubt, stay quiet or post a simple message of support without selling.
- Are you allowed to use the names, logos or clips? Major sporting events and entertainment brands often protect their names, logos and footage, so check the usage rules before referencing them, especially in paid ads.
- Does it fit your brand voice? Humour works for some brands and backfires for others. Stay in the tone your audience already expects from you.
- Who signs it off, and how fast? Agree a short approval path in advance, for example one writer, one designer and one approver, so reactive posts can go out within hours rather than days.
Planned topical posts are easier: build a yearly calendar of festivals, awareness days and industry events, prepare creative a few weeks ahead and leave room for reactive posts in between. If you want a partner to run this calendar, see how our social media marketing services work, and consider amplifying your best ideas through micro-influencers who already speak to your audience.
Topical Marketing Examples: Three Case Studies
Case Study 1 : CRED’s #IndiraNagarKaGunda Campaign
In its April 2021 IPL campaign, CRED used a trending hashtag, #IndiraNagarKaGunda, to create a substantial buzz and virality around its brand. The campaign started with an advertisement that quickly gained popularity, even though opinions on the ad were divided. The ad sparked a meme fest on Twitter (now X), with many brands, big and small, jumping on the bandwagon to leverage the trend.
For instance, Zomato tweeted, “Deliveries in Indiranagar might be late today due to an angry gunda on the road,” and Dunzo invited the “angry gundas of Indiranagar” to avoid traffic jams and order in. This collaborative engagement of brands created a ripple effect, enhancing the campaign’s reach and engagement.
According to Talkwalker data reported by exchange4media, the campaign generated over 3.6 million YouTube views and 114K engagements within a week of its launch. The hashtag became a top trending topic, fostering discussions and boosting brand awareness significantly.
This case study showcases the power of topical marketing in creating buzz and fostering engagement through collaborative and spontaneous content creation, leveraging a trending topic to enhance brand visibility and reach.
Case Study 2: Amazon Prime Video’s Campaign for “Mirzapur”
Amazon Prime Video orchestrated a meticulous campaign to drum up excitement for the launch of the second season of the Indian TV crime series “Mirzapur.” The campaign aimed to draw in a new viewing audience and ensure consistent engagement from potential spectators.
To reach people who might have missed the show’s launch, the agency released a follow-up campaign encouraging them to tune in. This strategy successfully leveraged a new audience, many of whom hadn’t watched the first season. The campaign’s success was evident as it managed to create a buzz and attract a substantial new viewer base.
Case Study 3: IVA Global’s “Beauty is Within” Campaign for Salus Haus (Floradix)
In this campaign, Floradix aimed to reframe its status as a market leader in iron tonics in Europe to fit the Chinese market. The strategy involved understanding Floradix’s customers deeply and using data to inform the campaign’s strategy.
They chose to represent the brand through independent women with no prior association to Floradix to appeal to other women and attract prospective customers. This approach was highly successful, leading Floradix to become a market leader in iron tonics on Alibaba, China’s largest e-commerce platform.
Conclusion
As we come to the end of this comprehensive guide, we hope to have provided you with a 360-degree understanding of topical marketing. Leveraging current trends and events offers a rich ground to foster engagement and enhance brand visibility, steering your brand to new heights. As we move forward, it remains essential to stay abreast of the changing dynamics to effectively leverage topical marketing in your strategy.
