Love is in the air and Valentine’s Day is just around the corner, which is something you should be planning for if you have an eCommerce site. Although it is not nearly as big as Christmas or Black Friday in terms of the kind of sales, there is still a marked increase in spending around that period. In the UK, between 2015 and 2018, spending on Valentine’s Day had increased by over $25, taking the total to £650million.
Keeping those numbers in mind, you could be doing your business something of a disservice if you miss out on the potential of those extra sales and an influx of customers (both old and new).
Just as it is with any other holiday season and big sales period, you need to plan your Valentine’s Day push well in advance. What can you do to take advantage of consumer’s interest in Valentine’s Day? Are there marketing techniques you could be utilising, but aren’t?
That is what we are going to look at in the following post – some effective tips to help drive more traffic around Valentine’s Day that will increase brand awareness and revenue.
Give your homepage a mini makeover
One of the easiest, but most effective ways to prepare your site and customers for Valentine’s Day is by giving it a mini makeover. We have emphasised the words mini makeover, because it may not be the best idea to completely redecorate it. Not only could that potentially cause problems with the backend of the site, but it would be very time-consuming and expensive.
You want to show visitors to your site that Valentine’s Day is important to your site and brand and that you have special offers and deals to celebrate it.
For instance, implementing a special Valentine’s Day header bar or slider on the Homepage could be enough, along with details of any special giveaways, products and promotions you are offering. Take a look at the sophisticated and elegant homeware and gift retailer Culinary Concepts homepage. The Valentine’s Day promotion is present and correct, but it doesn’t ruin the look and feel of the homepage or brand.
Optimise your listings and keywords for Valentines Day
This is crucial. You need to think about how your consumers think. Although your listings and site may be optimised for conventional keywords, you need to consider what the average visitor to your site/store might type in the search bar.
Ask yourself these questions:
- Who are they buying for? (husband, wife, girlfriend, boyfriend)
- What are they looking to buy? (depending on your store – flowers, chocolates, jewellery, lingerie etc.)
- What is the theme? (unique, romantic, funny etc) For instance, using the search term “romantic” on Pimpernel’s site returns 72 results.
Using the above you should be able to better optimise your store and listings to increase visibility for products that are likely to sell more during Valentine’s Day.
Email your existing customers
You can use Valentine’s Day as an excuse to re-engage with existing and past customers. If you have their details on file, why not take advantage of them. Big brands like The Body Shop, Amazon and various gift and clothing web stores send various newsletters out to their customer list throughout the year to highlight holiday promotions.
What’s more, it is believed to be 65% easier to sell to existing customers than it is to new ones.
Start marketing for Valentines Day as soon as possible
Have you ever noticed that almost as soon as the dust has settled on Christmas that many of the huge retailers and supermarkets start promoting Easter and Valentine’s Day in the first couple of weeks of the new year? You need to follow suit. Although most people will only seriously start looking for Valentine’s Day gifts once February comes along (often around the 7th is when there is the biggest influx of interest), it’s best to have your products and promotions in place and ready to go.
Besides, starting early with Valentine’s Day-related promotions can act as reminders for your visitors that that’s the next big day they need to buy something for (if indeed they celebrate it).
Offer anonymous gift delivery and free gift wrapping
A lot of the fun of Valentine’s Day for many people is the mystery involved in sending gifts to unsuspecting people. You can capitalise on the mystery and surprise associated with the season, if you don’t already do so, by offering anonymous gift delivery. Customers may be more willing to buy your products and take advantage of your promotions if they know they know their identity will be hidden from the recipient.
While we’re on the subject of deliveries, other options you may want to offer if you don’t already do so is a free gift-wrapping service. It means it’s one less thing your consumers need to worry about and makes the whole experience more convenient.
Offer special Valentines Day gift bundles
You should also consider creating product bundles, as this is often a great way to increase the size of customer orders. Although this works throughout the year, it can be especially effective during the Valentine’s Day shopping season. Rather than designing new products, look at your inventory and combine related products to transform them into single product offerings.
The great thing is that it gives customers the illusion that they are getting a great deal, even if you don’t reduce the price. Obvious combinations would be bundling items like chocolates and balloons with flowers or perfume and jewellery with a handbag. However, you could try to think outside the box a little and think about how you could reposition specific products as Valentine’s Day gifts.
For instance, a company like Wax Lyrical sells candles and reed diffusers all year round, but with some simple packaging and design alterations, they have a perfectly elegant Be My Valentine gift and card package.
Create Valentine’s Day categories
Make it easy for your customers to find what they are looking for when shopping for Valentine’s Day gifts by creating new categories for these items. In relation to our first tip, it is best to feature either a banner, link or even a small teaser on the homepage highlighting what you have on offer.
You could even take the subtle approach, like Forever Unique, who have a whole Valentine’s Day collection accessible from the Shop by Occasion section of their Clothing drop-down menu on the homepage.
Build up momentum by creating daily deals and time-sensitive offers
A sense of urgency can increase the number of sales by as much as 25%. Why is that? It’s because many of the issues customers have that stop them are that they wait too long or think too hard about what they are going to purchase. By placing a time limit on specific deals and offers, you can encourage your customers to buy items using the often-overused concept of “fear of missing out”.
How can this be done? Well, you could attract their attention as soon as they click through to your site by offering Valentine’s Day promotion with a countdown timer attached to it. Alternatively, or as well as the above you could use your email marketing to provide your existing customers with a series of 24-hour daily deals on Valentine’s Day gifts.
Given how popular Valentine’s Day is, it would be a shame to miss out on those extra sales. The above is just a snapshot of the different techniques you can use to drive traffic to your site and increase revenue. If you would like to get a bigger piece of the Valentine’s Day action, speak to Superb.
