Don’t let the love hearts and sickeningly cute memes fool you – in 2021 Valentine’s Day is for everyone. This month love and friendships of all kinds will be celebrated (mostly with gifts) including Valentine’s (for couples), Galentine’s (for friends) and Pawlentine’s (for much-loved pets). Last year it was even recorded that the retail holiday was an excuse to “treat yourself” with 35% of 18-25-year-olds buying personal gifts.
So what are the best marketing strategies to ask your customers to be your Valentine this year and attracting shoppers to your e-commerce store?
Repurposed content
A simple strategy for letting users know that you’ve got Valentine’s covered is by making sure that your landing pages on both e-commerce and social sites are promoting the retail holiday. Many brands choose to repurpose their existing content since it will only be live for a short period of time. Due to Valentine’s Day’s nature, promotions will be short-lived, so content needs to reflect the urgency and be widespread across all channels to make a real impact on consumer behaviour.
Gift guides
Many consumers will be stuck wondering what to purchase for their loved ones with most spending Valentine’s Day at home due to the national lockdown. This is where brands can steer the conversation by publishing gift guides. Whether on your website, social channels or blog, gift guides can help users find creative ways to celebrate their Valentine. This is also a great way for your creative teams to reposition your products to be relevant for Valentine’s, or even for customers who want an excuse to indulge and “treat themselves”.
Shoppable posts
During the lead up to Valentine’s Day, social media channels are filled with humorous memes for singles, cute posts for couples and everything in between. With the increase in shoppable posts, retailers can take advantage of social media commentary around Valentine’s by engaging with target audiences and sharing links to their products. In the same context, their consumers are engaging with the holiday. This also a great place to publish gift guides as it allows discovery and purchase to be made on the same channel.
User-generated-content
With many brands competing for consumer attention within a short purchase window, user-generated-content can help retailers stand out and make that vital conversion. Valentine’s Day is traditionally about publicly sharing your love for someone, and in 2021 this often happens within social media platforms. Retailers can become part of the conversation by hosting photo competitions on Instagram, polls on Twitter, and asking users to vote for their favourite content.
Offering free giveaways for competition winners or lottery-style draws is also a good way to increase user interaction. The more time users spend within the space your brand has created, the more likely they are to make a purchase and become a returning customer. If this is your first foray into user-generated content, what better way to engage consumers than with an event that they are already familiar with?
Mobile engagement
More time spent at home due to successive national lockdowns has seen a shift in the number of users engaging with content via their mobile phones. Whilst planning your marketing strategy for Valentine’s Day, it is important to make sure that your e-commerce platforms are optimised for mobile devices. Increasing loading speed, for example, will reduce your bounce rate percentage. Email marketing is also an important strategy for desktop and mobile. By targeting emails to specific audiences, brands can cut through impersonal ads’ noise and connect positively with consumers. Furthermore, since more purchases are being made directly from mobile devices, product retargeting across email and social platforms can be an important strategy. The path-to-purchase can be reduced if brands are prepared to connect with users on the devices they use the most.
Paid search
Whilst the Valentine’s Day retail holiday can feel like it’s over in a flash, it is still worthwhile to create a paid search campaign. Utilising relevant keywords, even for a short-running campaign, can help to direct customers away from competitors. Social channels such as Facebook Ads allow businesses to choose a short running period and target key audiences for maximum PPC impact. Paid search campaigns are also important for linking customers with other parts of your marketing strategies, such as content and shoppable posts.
Conclusion
Kickstart your strategies early for this short-lived retail holiday. Don’t forget that any extra ads you put out into the atmosphere will also have long term effects on brand awareness and customer retention.
If you’re unsure about how to optimise your marketing strategies, have a chat with Superb Media’s friendly specialists today.
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Written and researched by Paige Elford, Digital Marketing Graduate
