Valentine’s Day Ideas: How to Capitalize on the Fastest Growing Retail Holiday

While Valentine’s Day might have originated in the United States (which spent a whopping $19.6 billion last year to celebrate this day), India is not far behind. According to the most recent survey, more than 75% of the respondents were going to buy gifts for their partners on Valentine’s Day. In fact, they were likely to spend as much as Rs 1500-3000 to buy gifts for their significant other. This amount went up to Rs. 2000 when it came to respondents between 16-24 years.

Better yet, Indian consumers focus more on online options when it comes to finding the right Valentine’s Day gift. As many as 81% of respondents said that they shop online for Valentine’s Day. 

In short, if you own a business that is remotely connected to the business of love – then make sure you have a valentine’s day marketing campaign planned way ahead of February 14. 

Meanwhile, here are some important things to keep in mind while creating your valentine’s day marketing strategies.

Find the Right Customer Segment

Valentine’s Day is an occasion that is celebrated in different ways by different groups of people. It’s important for you as an online business to understand which customers you can attract to you sales funnel – who will be interested to buy your product? 

If you are wondering “How can I promote my Valentine’s Day products?”, this is the first thing to understand. Know your buyer.   

For instance, according to the survey, married people prefer experiences like a romantic dinner to a gift. Also, nearly half of the respondents believe that men should be the ones paying for dates or gifts.

Another important aspect of Valentine’s Day is people who are not in relationships. According to NRF research, many single people, especially those between 18-24 years, also celebrate Valentine’s day to express self-love. There is also a huge section of single people who take the anti-Valentine’s day route. So, you can even target them if that is in sync with your online store messaging. Keep these factors in mind when you figure out how to position your brand on Valentine’s Day.

Get the Timing Right

Valentine’s Day is famous for being a day for which shopping is done at the last moment. In fact, 32% of the purchases are made during the holiday week itself. And only 16% of people buy gifts as early as the first two weeks of January.

But when should you start marketing on Valentine’s Day? You have to start early and keep doing it till the last minute. 

Since the occasion is such a last-minute affair, you need to time your online marketing accordingly. Of course, you should start with content marketing initiatives early on. However, marketing tools like Adwords, push notifications, and email campaigns should start just 15-20 days in advance and really build up during Valentine’s week.

Since most of us are so used to procrastinating, do not forget to target the last-minute shoppers. Ecommerce companies like Myntra and Amazon, work on exactly this guilt factor, pushing out lots of marketing messages to entice this last-minute-shopper group. While that is also a marketing strategy that cannot be ignored, you could try promoting your fast-paced delivery services to your last-minute customers. In this way, you can ensure that even if your customers are buying at the last minute, the gifts are reaching their loved ones – a perfect carrot to dangle. 

Also Read: E-commerce Microcopy: A Simple and Effective Way to Increase Sales

Use Valentine Themed Targeted Pop-ups:

Pop-ups sometimes get a bad rap, mostly because they are annoying. But they do work. This is why – 

• Pop ups that are well-implemented can show up at the right time to deliver the correct message to the audience. Think of when you are visiting Hubspot and reading one of their very engaging blogs, a pop-up nicely slides into your notice from side, offering an ebook. This has led me a lot of times to click on the link. Why? It was relevant to what I was interested to read about. 
• Pop-ups show up in the face and cannot be ignored. Hence the message does get delivered. 

So, use that pop-up to offer some great options to your consumer like say a gift-guide you have created, discounts you can offer, free shipping, or same day delivery, or whatever you think you can throw in to push the customer deeper down the sales funnel.

Also Read: Easy Way to Understand The B2B Sales Funnel & How to Build One for More Sales

Researches have shown that pop-ups with shades of pink, blue and animations along with discount coupons convert more customers. You can also use discount wheels to make it fun. So, tickle your creative brain and create some amazing pop-ups. 

Drop a Limited-Edition Product

Limited edition marketing works on the sense of urgency, time, FOMO, and exclusivity. It signals to the customer that this product is special and you can only have it for some time, stoking the urge to buy now. This can also satisfy the appetite of people who are always looking for the different or special gift. 

However, for this strategy to work make sure that the “Limited Edition” tag is actually a real claim, meaning it is actually available in the market for a limited time and in limited quantity. If this claim is not kept, consumers will feel cheated and might not trust the brand anymore.  

Also, you need to remember that there has to be something really great about that product that will also attract the customer to buy.

Also Read: 5 types of content that will attract paying customer

Make Them an Offer They can’t Refuse

As many as 78% of respondents in the survey cited above said that they wait for online sales and discounts to buy Valentine’s Day gifts. Hence, you need to make sure you make the right offers at the right time.

Work on building a sense of urgency and FOMO (Fear of Missing Out) through your offers. Flash sales and time-bound offers work great during this holiday. Focus on promoting offers like a “ Valentine’s Day password valid for just 24 hours” or “Last 20 red roses remaining” and so on. Emails, push notifications, and social media are great tools for promoting time-bound offers.

Also Read: How to write great social media posts

Get your Online Store Ready

We all know how beautiful offline stores look before Valentine’s day. Flowers, hearts, decorations and teddy bears giving these stores a festive feel. They immediately draw the customer in to find the perfect Valentine’s day gift. That’s exactly the vibe that online stores should attempt to recreate on Valentine’s day.

You don’t need to invest too much time and energy to make your e-commerce website Valentine’s Day ready. A home page which emphasizes Valentine’s day items with romantic product descriptions, a shopping cart with a themed icon, interstitial screens with attractive Valentine’s day offers and decorating your website with hearts, flowers and cupids are just some of the ideas that work. The idea is to make sure your customers feel that your website is the perfect one for Valentine’s Day shopping

Get Creative with your Offerings

If you’re an online store that specializes in chocolates, jewelry or flowers, Valentine’s Day is probably the busiest day for you anyway. But don’t despair if your products aren’t traditionally associated with Valentine’s day.

Believe it or not, people spend as much as $700 million on dog gifts during Valentine’s Day! IKEA Australia also organized a hugely successful Valentine’s Day campaign that offered free cots for children born 9 months from Valentine’s Day. You can make any product relevant to Valentine’s Day as long as you’re ready to think out of the box about the messaging.

Another good option is to create bundled offerings. Chocolates and roses are still the most common gifts for Valentine’s Day. Offering a free box of chocolates with a Valentine’s Day gift purchase is a great idea. Another great offering on Valentine’s Day is free gift wrapping. That will definitely reel the customers in.

Run Unique Valentine’s Day Campaigns

If you look at Valentine’s Day ads, you will see similar themes in most of them. And let’s face it, the goal of every brand doesn’t align with valentine’s day. No matter if your brand is valentine’s day-friendly or not, you can still jump on the bandwagon with quirky campaigns. 

Also Read: Valentine’s Day Marketing Campaigns That Won Our Hearts

You can go two ways to follow this, either you can try to attract the people who are in a relationship or support the singles to express self-love. 

Write catchy copies, create enticing graphics, use valentine’s day sales slogans that line up with the nature and USP of your brand and create campaigns. 

For example, Zomato and Swiggy run campaigns all over their social media, use push notifications and send emails which are funny, quirky and of course, exceptional.

Help Customers Make the Right Choice

One of the biggest problems couples face before Valentine’s Day is not knowing what to give their significant other. 

Keeping that in mind, create content on your website that is able to guide them to a decision – basically helping the customers close the messy middle’s loop of exploring and evaluating. 

One way of doing this is by creating unique content around gifting ideas. If you are a gifting store, you could create a long-guide on what to gift to your husband, or spouse or lover. Try and make it as specific as possible. 

If you are a travel company, you could create an ebook on the best places for a romantic getaway, and you get the idea. 

Make sure you promote this piece of content through social media, Pinterest boards, and email newsletters. Try and tweak your gift guides by gender, and by categories to make them more personalized. Another innovative approach would be to have a basic chatbot on your website that actually guides your customers towards different gifts based on their partners’ likes and dislikes. That can be a huge differentiator for your website this Valentine’s Day.

Conclusion

Given that there has been steady rise in the demand for gifts and experiences for Valentine’s Day (both offline and online), it only makes sense to have a proper Valentine Day marketing strategy for your business. Use these valentine’s day marketing ideas to prepare early and cash in on this Valentine’s Day!