Alexandra Radugina
Senior Marketing Manager

Can you feel love in the air? If not, you should feel sales opportunities are!

An average of £980 million was spent on Valentine's day in the UK in 2017 (globaldata)  and according to some, Valentine's Day is considered the second-busiest holiday buying season of a year.
One of the general holiday marketing rules tells us to never, ever ignore a holiday. It would be a mistake ignoring Valentine's day just because you’re not in a flower or jewellery business… As long as you come up with a good marketing strategy, almost everything becomes ‘gift-able’.

Not sure of how to start with your marketing campaign for Valentine's Day?
We’ve prepared a few tips to help you stand out from your competitors and engage with your audience in a different way, to get your business measurable results:

1. Add a V-Day section on your website

Your first goal is to create a dedicated Valentine's section on your website, to showcase the range of products with straightforward navigation for ‘gifts for Him’ and ‘gifts for Her’, as it could simplify further product searches. The second goal is to show products in an attractive and romantic way.

In the pre-Valentine's Day shopping period the challenge is to connect with your customers by being helpful and reducing shopping stress. While telling your customers to buy your products could be considered a bit bold, you could incentivise them by including your products in a gift guide that helps them find inspiration. Also, it never fails to use extra selling points like a free next day delivery or a 10% off voucher, or even a small gift like a chocolate bar with any purchase.

2. Market early in a smart way

Don’t wait until the last minute to start your marketing! According to statistics, a month isn't too early, whereas marketing a week before could be a bit risky. Additionally, consider targeting last-minute shoppers in the week before 14th of February.

Don't forget to display delivery deadlines on orders to ensure arrival on or by the special day. Offering or proposing gift-wrapping could be a great way to differentiate yourself from your competitors as well.

3. Emails for lead generation

Email marketing is a powerful tool for engagement and customer acquisition. For Valentine's emails, you should include something creative that will spark your customer's interest: Valentine's gifts, seasonal outfits, tips on how to choose the perfect present or creative gift wrapping tutorials. Your design should be thematic. The Call-To-Action should stand out in the email so that users can find it with ease.

4. Social Native Advertising

Did you know that 71% of customers make purchase decisions based on social media referrals? Target your Valentines Day customers with Social Media Native Advertising. It's a powerful way for businesses of all sizes to reach customers without disrupting their browsing experience. Most of the social networks give you a full range of targeting options like "gender", "age", "relationship status", "life event" and many others, so it’s quite easy to send your message to the right audience. You can boost your sales by targeting more men than women, as they spend almost twice as much on presents.

Moreover, Valentine's Day advertising campaigns should be creative enough to break through other advertisers' messaging. Stand out from the crowd and drive not just sales but the growth of your social network in future promotions. You want users to interact with your ads so that it reaches a broader audience at lower cost. Customers will be encouraged to share content only if they enjoy it. The best type of ads that you can use to engage, interact and drive sales are Interactive Native Ads. Have you already tried it?

Another excellent way to promote your business through social media in a fun and interactive way is hosting a competition. It can increase your customer base by reaching friends of the people who share the competition, or they invite their friends to participate.

5. Find a partner

Let's say that your business is selling a correctly targeted product for Valentine's Day, but you don’t feel comfortable with dealing with your e-marketing alone. Find a partner who is and would be happy to benefit from your services! It is a win-win solution as you can split promotional costs and gain each other's customer base.  Come on, it is time to double your efforts to increase your sales this Valentine's Day!

Using a combination of these approaches and planning in advance is the way to a successful Valentine's Day marketing campaign. Also, don’t forget to track and monitor your campaign with the analytics tools.

Happy V-day,
From the Whichit team