What is a 'made-up holiday' and how can I use one for a sale?

A made-up holiday is a date you or a company invents to create a sales event, not a traditional holiday. For example, Alibaba invented Singles Day on November 11th, and it now does over 25 billion dollars in sales in one day. Amazon invented Prime Day. These are completely fabricated, but they work because the companies create massive discounts, add scarcity by making the sale time-limited, and coordinate huge marketing pushes. As an individual artist, you can do the same thing on a smaller scale. Pick a date, invent a fun name or theme, create a steep discount, give it a deadline, and promote it hard across all your channels. The key is the discount, the scarcity, and the coordinated marketing—the actual ‘holiday’ can be anything you want.

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Asked by synthesized from teaching · Answered by Patrick Shanahan · art-marketing-podcast · 2017-11-14