Love spares no one and when in our lives it usually comes when we the least expect it, for marketers and e-commerce site owners love is pretty predictable each year. It comes every February the 14th and you need to be prepared for it to harvest all its best fruit. But it often happens that we have just barely recovered from all the Christmas fuss and excitement and – boom! – here comes the Saint Valentine’s already. So if you feel exhausted and drained of ideas after all the Christmas and New Year promotions, here is a short list of last-minute marketing preparations you can still make before the Saint Valentines.
And just to make you even more motivated to pull yourselves together and launch your February the 14th marketing preparations, I will reveal some statistics:
- Every year retail spending for Valentines holiday season increases by 21%
- An average person would usually spend $115 on a Valentine’s gift
- 62% of Americans celebrate the Saint Valentines
- Americans love getting their pets gifts for Saint Valentines, last year the amount spent on pets equaled $681 million.
Motivated enough? J Ok, let’s get going then.
1. Create a separate page/pages on your site devoted to this day
You should do this for the sake of SEO (keywords like “Valentine’s gift ideas”, “best Valentines surprises”, “gift ideas for him/her” and etc. in the URL, title, headings and content of the page), for the sake of better conversion rates (if you create and highlight the section of your site that would say “Special offers for Saint Valentines” it would definitely attract eye-balls), for the sake of paid advertising campaigns (everyone is going to be looking for the perfect gift for their significant other, provide them with the best-suited to their needs landing page). So again, just to make it clear:
- Group the products into special categories on your site – “Valentine’s gifts for her” and “Valentine’s gifts for him”
- Create posts on your blog devoted to this day – “Best gift ideas for Saint Valentines in 2014” and so on. Or simply create a post that would put together and describes in detail all the promotions and special offers that you run for this holiday.
- Create special landing pages for all your paid campaigns to make sure that people looking for Valentines gifts find them at your site
2. Trim your site’s logo and banners
No need to color all of it pink and flood every part of it with hearts, but just a little cute hint that you remember about the day and also feel that love is in the air is essential. I am sure if you brainstorm for 30 minutes with your designer, you can definitely think of something unique, having your brand identity, but at the same time romantic and heart-warming.
Get a free strategy session
As for the banners, you need not just think about trimming them, but also making them different for ladies and for gentlemen. If you are using remarketing (and if you don’t it’s high time you started!) remember to segment the lists by sex and shopping habits and create banners with a tempting offer for each group, create at least 3 variations for each and test which one works better.
3. Show you care about your customers with some extra service for Valentine’s
Believe me that you are not the only one who was procrastinating the preparation to Saint Valentines till the last moment. So such small, but important things as guaranteed shipping by the 14th of February may make all the difference for your visitors. And in fact, many may even be OK with paying extra for that. One more thoughtful thing to do would be to offer holiday wrapping and include a small Valentine’s card into the package, sparing the buyer from the necessity of spending extra time fussing around in search for a card. Also consider making gift receipts available at least for a period of holidays. As, let’s be honest, people sometimes make crappy gift choices and it would be wise to give them an option of returning a gift without revealing its price.
4. Spread love among your loyal customers
Think of the best way to tell you love them – it can be a postcard sent via email with a discount or a real small surprise delivered to their doorstep. Besides, make sure that they know how you feel about them and that other people also know how caring you are (well, it’s marketing, we can’t be generous without letting the whole world know about it, right?;). So, spread your special surprises via social networks and encourage your loyal clients to boast their exclusive gifts in front of their friends in social networks.
5. Run a light and easy contest in your social media accounts
Facebook (Twitter, Instagram, Pnterest, whichever) contests do not require huge resources or too much planning. The ideas for them, no matter how stale for other occasions, still always have a success on Valentines. Just a couple of quick contest ideas you can use:
- “Guess how many” contest with one of your not very expensive, but Valentine’s themed products. Just take a picture of a pile of goods, play guessing game with your followers and award the winner with one of the products on the picture or anything you feel like giving out.
Love-story contests- Romantic photos contest
- Most heartwarming avatar contest
- Contest for the most romantic gift idea
- Contest for the craziest Valentine’s day story
- Contest for the best/worst date ever
And so many more. All you need to launch your contest is imagination, juicy pictures to attract the eye-balls and a little marketing budget to give your message a boost in the newsfeeds of your target audience.
6. Remember to spread the word about your contests, coupons and discounts
Make sure to submit all you coupons and promotions to the most popular sites that aggregate deals to reach the biggest audience. Here is our recommended list:
7. Don’t forget about the singles
The only people who may get a bit irritated with all that love-is-all-around stuff are the singles. That is why you need to think about them too. Besides luring them to your site with blog posts titled “10 Perfect Valentine’s Day Ideas For Singles” and the like, you can again turn to the omniscient Facebook and target the singles with your ads. What can you offer to the singles on that not-so-special for them day? What would a single person usually do on Valentines? Just from the top of my head:
- Dress up and go out
- Treat themselves to some spa
- Treat themselves to some delicious goodies
- Go to bars, night clubs to hang out and relax
- Throw bach parties at home
So if you can offer them dress up ideas, drinks, activities, goodies without stressing out that it’s supposed to be Saint Valentines and a holiday for two and the holiday of love and romance, I am sure they will appreciate it.
Don’t miss this period, as it is rightfully considered one of the hugest events for e-commerce stores of the year (after Christmas and Mother’s day). If you devote some time and resources, think about your customers, you will be rewarded with their support and love.
Do you have more marketing ideas for Saint Valentines? Or did anything worked for you brilliantly last year? Please share in the comments!
Leave a Reply