The Marmite of calendar events is swiftly moving upon us (Valentine’s day!). Whether you love it or hate it, leveraging Valentine’s Day can be a great way to bring in business.
Before you begin though, you need to understand whether using Valentine’s day as a way to help market your business is right for you and your customers. Probably best suited to the retail, hospitality, leisure and entertainment industries, simply asking customers how they feel about Valentine’s day will give you an idea about the level of loveydovey-ness you can get away with. Other industries can probably get away with using Valentine’s day marketing in a more tongue-in-cheek way, e.g. a car dealership could promote a message of “there’s no love greater than between a person and their car”, or businesses could even go down the anti-Valentines route and promote offers for one.
For those businesses wanting to use the Valentine’s day angle to help promote any events/offers/products/services, there are a number of digital platforms that will help get their message across to key audiences. Social media is one of the most important tools that a business can use to market themselves, it’s also extremely versatile in the fact that a variety of content can be posted from social media platforms (images, videos, blogs, case studies etc.). Sponsoring any Valentines themed content across key social media channels (Facebook and Instagram would be ideal for this) is a cost-effective way to get some love for your business. Not only can you set budgets to make sure you don’t overspend on these sponsored posts, you can also choose specific audiences for the post to appear to (e.g. certain age groups, certain locations, those with certain hobbies etc.). 2-3 posts a week leading up to Valentine’s day with different Valentines themed content should be enough to keep your social pages busy, and generate interest from new and existing audiences.
Thinking about the landing page that customers are going to arrive on after clicking the sponsored post is important. 9/10 times these landing pages will link to the business’s website, which makes it extremely necessary to make sure the website has a fresh and clean look with easy navigation. If your business has the ability, making the landing page more Valentines-ey will follow the theme through from post to page, and increasing the likelihood of potential customers spending more time browsing through your website. Something as simple as changing background colours to red/pink or adding a few of love-heart images can help keep attention for those browsing your site.
It can be a balancing act to ensure existing and potential customers don’t get scared off by Valentine’s day marketing. If you’re ever in doubt, think about what you’d prefer to see (or ask a friend) and how much would be too much for you (or them). Luckily though, Valentine’s Day campaigns should only really last the three weeks running up to the day, so anyone that does get scared off has the rest of the year to forgive and forget.
For anyone wanting help and advice as to which platforms and marketing methods would be best for them, contact us today. We’re here to help your business grow.
