“The World Candle Month is the celebration of our industry, and its promotion is everyone’s business”

Every September candle manufacturers celebrate the World Candle Month. The objective is to give greater visibility to the industry, promote the proper use of candles and promote sales in the last months of the year. On this occasion, the concept created is “Igniting the Mood.” The proposal was born from the North American Candle Association (NCA) and later joined by the Latin American and European associations, ALAFAVE and ECMA, respectively. It is a great opportunity for candle manufacturers to carry out different promotional activities.

Claudia Duque, the digital marketing, and communications advisor at ALAFAVE, explains “this is relatively a new celebration that still needs a lot of positioning in each of the countries, especially in Latin America.” ​​ For this reason, she shares some ideas on how to maximize the benefits of the marketing during the candle month.

What suggestions do you have for the candlemanufacturers?

The most practical way is to talk about this topic on social media, but of course, strategically. I suggest the following:

1. Create a campaign and call it “World Candle Month”
2. Design a sales strategy. Use phrases like the best-selling candles of the year, launch a new fragrance, “free shipping” if we have a website, etc.
3. Plan which networks you will use to communicate:

• Create a blog entry in your website, consider the keywords for Google positioning, such as: Candle Month, Candle celebration, among others.
• Make a social media post using headers such #worldcandlemonth
• Partner up with an influencer so they can share your post. For example, if you launch a new product send it to 3 influencers and ask them to create a “reel” video or post where they are smelling a candle, burning it at home and use the same hashtag #worldcandlemonth
• Plan a Budget for social media paid advertising to share your new launch or post

4. Create a Company event, invite your customers, offer a toast, give them a present like a candle and share it in your social media.

How effective are the “Reels”?

The videos now called Reels are the best way to get more visibility in Instagram, unless we hear of further changes to the Instagram algorithm. One trick is to have different Reels audioshandy and use their templates; audios are constantly changing, stick to trendy ones. There are also accounts like @reels.tutorials or @reelstutorials that are very helpful.

Can suppliers join this initiative?

Yes, definitely! It is a celebration for the industry, and it is everyone’s job to position it. Suppliers could invite manufacturers to webinars and present their trends for the end of the year or present a snippet for 2023.

How will ALAFAVE support its members in this program?

We will support members who wish to participate with paid advertising geolocated to their companies or physical stores. Anyone interested must send us an email with their photos and Instagram account.

5- What special activity has ALAFAVE prepared for this month?

ALAFAVE has made available the toolkit on how to participate in this event, it contains ideas for publications and messages, it can be found on www.ALAFAVE.org. Additionally, we will have a webinar on Fire Protection, a super important topic for all our members.