‘Ours is my favourite love story’, ‘I love you to the moon and back’, ‘You’re my favourite person’…we have all heard the Valentine quotes but how can we go about delivering the best marketing campaign this Valentine’s Day?
Customers are looking for the perfect Valentine’s gift for their loved ones, even their pets, and are looking for inspiration in the search for that special present.
Valentine’s Day is big business in the UK. Around 40 million Brits celebrate Valentine’s Day, with an estimated £1.37 billion spent on this day of love with around 25 million cards sent! With such a huge amount to be spent it is an opportunity to raise your brand profile with your customers.
How do you tap into this market and what should you consider when you are developing your marketing campaign for Valentine’s Day?
Marketing, in particular social media, plays a vital role in the promotion of products and services ahead of Valentine’s Day. Social Media engagement has grown over the last few years, especially with the rise in online shopping. Customers turn to social media marketing online and on-screen sources for ideas and inspiration as to what gifts to purchase. This is the perfect opportunity for you to place your brand at the heart of your customers.
The team here at Piece of Cake Marketing have taken this opportunity to share some of their best tips on how to create the perfect Valentine’s marketing campaign. If you feel like you need support with your social media content – check out our social media content creator club.
Pick the perfect Valentine’s Day products
Before you set about creating a marketing plan for your Valentine’s promotion, you need to first think about the products, services or offerings that you want to promote. Think about your best-selling products, or any specific products or services that you want to push sales on or those products or offerings that you know from previous years do well during this time of year.
Once you have decided on the products or services, think about the price. Do you want to put on a special Valentine’s promotion to encourage more sales?
Once you have the perfect products at the perfect price, then you can start to set out your campaign and plan the channels you are going to use to go to market. Think about the channels and your audience to ensure you get the messaging right. Don’t forget this isn’t just about social media. Do you have an email database? How can you use this to drive sales? Can you grow this database over this busy time by holding a competition or offering a discount in exchange for an email address?
If your focus is on e-commerce sales, make sure you utilise your website by drawing out the Valentine’s Day offering within a bespoke area of the site dedicated to the special day. Encouraging customers to spend time on your website by displaying the offering on the homepage.
To create a buzz around your offering and entice visits to your website or store which will increase sales, you need to think about what channels you are going to use, who you are targeting and how you are going to use them. A campaign or content calendar is a useful tool to set out the activity and help outline the key messages.
According to Statista, consumer surveys reveal those platforms such as Google, Facebook, and Instagram feature as sources of inspiration for UK consumers when looking for Valentine’s Day gifts. Social media is therefore a key channel to utilise as part of your marketing campaign.
Social Media Valentine’s Day Campaign
Before you even start posting make sure you consider the Valentine’s Day hashtags you are going to use in your social posts. Using hashtags is a fantastic way to ensure your content reaches an audience wider than your followers, it also helps you to track the engagement of your posts, as well as checking out who else is using the same hashtag.
Make sure you do your research on the hashtags you want to use, to ensure they are the best ones to achieve the best outcomes. Interestingly #valentinesday was a banned hashtag on Instagram in 2022. Probably best to avoid that one then.
Content for social is all about trying to stand out from the crowd. In addition to promoting the products and services you want to sell during Valentine’s, think about some alternative ideas to increase engagement and call to action. For example, if you are a restaurant, share a Valentine’s Day recipe, if you’re a beauty spa share some Valentine’s beauty tips. These types of posts are great for outreach and perfect for product placement whilst promoting your offering.
Think about engagement, is there a competition you can run, perhaps add some Valentine’s Day entertainment by running a quirky poll? A competition is a great idea to encourage people to get engaged with your content. It is also an ideal way to grow your email database. Find out more here…
It’s not just about social media, think about other channels you can use to get your product out there. If you are a retail business, how about getting together with other businesses in your area to create a Valentine’s Day hamper of goodies that you could give away as part of a competition? It’s a terrific way of marketing your product, whilst also gaining new customers.
Think also about any local advertising, either via social media or through online groups and publications. Are there any local events you could get involved with, or any tie-ups with any businesses?
Don’t forget, the marketing doesn’t stop on the big day. Why not share the love and celebrate this special day with all your customers and followers? Sharing uplifting messages and posts on social media, creating valentine’s events in store with customer’s, share the love by giving customers a gift instore, a little chocolate heart maybe.
Valentine’s day, along with other celebration events that take place throughout the year, give you and your business the opportunity to get creative with your brand and offering. Make the most of this with your marketing, it really is a good excuse to try something fun and something you wouldn’t normally do.
For more marketing and campaign ideas for your brand, make sure you follow Piece of Cake Marketing. If you need other post ideas for February look at our blog.
Finally, our FREE group allows you to plan out your social media for the month ahead. We will provide some ideas and support in the form of a monthly video, a Facebook group and an editable content plan. All FREE and you can find out join here.
Good luck with your Valentine’s campaign and we wish you a wonderful Valentine’s Day.
