Since January 2019, The AMP Agency SEO team has been tracking the top three most searched queries, as reported by Google Trends, on a daily basis. Over this time, we noticed that national days of celebration have been popular drivers of search behavior. Some of these national days have been dedicated to food or beverages. Because we have been recording and tracking these phrases over the last 2+ years, we’ve gotten a taste of what national days may be popular in the future.
For this article, we are focusing on a few food and beverage “holidays” that occur in the summer. Over the last several years, these days have been gaining popularity in search interest. This year, the stars are aligning for these days to reach peak popularity. AMP Agency believes that this type of data (trending search queries) attached to brand-friendly topics (National Celebration Days) can be a powerful tool for our clients and prospects in planning their marketing activities.
Now there are many National Celebration Days during the year. It seems every day is a holiday for something, if you look at the right calendars. The issue is that not all days are as popular as others. Below are three National Days that have captured the imaginations of a large group of the populace and are primed for a cultural explosion this summer.
National Doughnut or Donut Day
This national day is celebrated in the United States and in some other countries on the first Friday of June of each year. Here’s a chart from Google Trends that shows the search interest in this holiday over the last 5 years.
AMP Agency pulled data based on Trends’ categorization of this query as a “Celebration”, which compiles data of related queries and displays them in one chart. As you can see, there is a small spike in interest during the month of November. From our research, we learned there is a less popular competing National Doughnut day that occurs on November 5th.
Because of behavioral changes caused by the pandemic, the interest in the June observation of this holiday was not as large as in prior years. AMP believes that this popularity will rebound in 2021 as more people get vaccinated and donut lovers will feel more free to enjoy a treat on June 4th.
National Ice Cream Day
National Ice Cream Month is celebrated each year in July, and in the United States, National Ice Cream Day is celebrated on the third Sunday in July. This chart from Google Trends shows the search interest in the holiday since 2016:
This day of celebration has some real clout – it was signed into law back in July of 1984 by President Reagan. Although the search interest waned a bit in July of 2020, July 18th of this year should prove to be a wonderful day of honoring and consuming ice cream!
National Tequila Day
The only fixed date of the bunch, every July 24th is the day that Americans can set aside time to celebrate National Tequila Day. This Google Trends chart conveys the rising popularity of this National celebration day:
Many of the websites we reviewed when researching this holiday stated that its origin is unknown. Looking at the all-time Google Trends data, National Tequila Day became a measurable search term in 2007 and gained its first spike of search query activity in July of 2009. With a return to social gatherings this summer, the popularity of this day could see new heights.
How Can Brands Prepare
There’s a bigger takeaway from this article than just the fact that people have interests in days that celebrate donuts, ice cream, and tequila. Clearly these are not traditional holidays – and the public’s interest in them is fueled by free giveaways and brand promotions.
Brands have the ability to capitalize on national days of celebration and it seems like most days in the calendar have been designated already to be a special day set aside to celebrate something. Not all national days of celebration are popular, but they have the potential to be.
Brands can own these days with proper planning. With AMP’s Search Listening platform, we’re able to predict what days are gaining interest and can instruct brands on the search terms they are using when seeking information about the special day. This data can be used to create a marketing campaign to reach and engage your target audience.
So, work with us and we can set a plan together. Is there a National Day of Celebration that makes sense for your brand? Does your audience know about it already? Is there an opportunity to add to the momentum or do we need to build it up from scratch?
Additionally, if your brand is in either the Doughnut/Donut, Ice Cream, or Tequila industry, contact us right away!
