According to recent research, up to 52% of consumers celebrate Valentine’s Day, with 35% shopping for gifts online.
With the right approach, you can make the most of Valentine’s sales, giving last-minute shoppers a reason to choose your product as the perfect gift. A strong Valentine’s Day campaign can mean big things for your business and your bottom line.
Often, the best Valentine’s Day marketing ideas are the simplest. Still, you might be wondering where to begin. That’s why we’re here! This is your Plann guide to boosting sales with an unmissable Valentine’s Day sale!
Planning Valentine’s Day Specials
First, the key is to plan ahead and decide what you’ll offer as part of your Valentine’s Day marketing campaigns.
Think carefully about the customers you serve and the products you offer. How can you highlight product value while staying in keeping with the Valentine’s Day theme?
When planning your Valentine’s Day sales, make sure to consider:
- Your sale dates: are you running a one-day-only flash sale or a week-long love fest for customers? Plus, consider when your pre-campaign teaser content will begin (ideally two weeks out from the start of your sale).
- Your campaign approach: are you teaming up with influencers and creators, focusing on loved-up couples or targetted singles celebrating self love? Be clear about your campaign messaging and creative.
- Your goals: what does success look like? Set clear KPIs for your campaign, including sales targets, audience growth metrics and even engagement goals to quantify the success of your efforts.
Planning your specials also gives you an opportunity to start work on your sales strategy long before the big day. This can help you come up with a better marketing campaign and even prepare your sales channels for extra gift shopping traffic.
Crafting Irresistible Offers
Similarly, it’s important to think about what makes your Valentine’s Day offer special. This will help you stand out from the crowd and create a sense of buying urgency.
An irresistible offer should appeal to new and existing customers alike, providing an incentive that makes people want to buy now instead of waiting for later. A limited-time offer can be a game changer, helping you showcase your impact and drive sales.
There are so many options when it comes to crafting an amazing offer! You might deliver a free gift with purchase or release a secret promo code that unlocks a discounted price. Alternatively, you could provide early access to a sale or sell themed products crafted just for Valentine’s Day.
Marketing Your Specials
Marketing strategies are essential in winning over new customers (and convincing loyal customers to revisit your brand). You need to shout your offer from the rooftops before Feb 14.
Use a range of different content types and formats to engage your followers across all social media platforms. You can even offer exclusive deals for Instagram followers or your TikTok community, which can be helpful if you’re trying to grow one account in particular.
Here are a few practical ways to harness social media to drive sales this Valentine’s Day:
- Use Instagram Collab to partner with influencers and share campaign assets across both of your audiences.
- Go LIVE on TikTok to demo your products and offer an exclusive discount code to attendees.
- Run a user-generated content competition on Instagram, asking users to share content using your products using a branded hashtag.
A good marketing campaign doesn’t have to stop there. Craft a blog post, or send an email to your mailing list with your offer in the subject line. Be sure to show up on and off social media to amplify your efforts and boost the visibility of your sale this Valentine’s Day.
Creating Captivating Visuals
In peak sale seasons (like Valentine’s Day), standing out from the crowd is a must. With carefully curated assets you can tap into your brand’s visual identity to design graphics, stories and video content to capture your audience’s attention.
Celebrate love with pink and red tones coupled with your brand colors and high-quality product images. Add hearts in the spirit of the holiday, and make sure your graphic designs are crisp, clear, and comprehensive in the information they communicate.
Remember, images are critical to stopping the scroll and getting people to take notice of your content. Visuals can make or break your whole Valentine’s Day marketing campaign, so make sure they do your brand justice.
🔥 Hot tip: alongside graphics designed in Canva, it’s important to harness authentic user-generated content in your marketing campaign. Why not send out product to influencers and creators ahead of Valentine’s Day in exchange for UGC that you can share as part of your sale campaign on social media?
Building Anticipation
Valentine’s Day is an exciting event for many consumers, so it’s time to take advantage of the anticipation. Whether you focus on romantic love or self-love for Galentine’s Day, this is your chance to make an impact.
Start your holiday marketing strategy well in advance, and make sure you’re offering something for everyone. Communicate with your customers, and give people the opportunity to tell you what they’re really looking for this Valentine’s Day.
If you have an exciting offer on the way, don’t be afraid to create teasers that build anticipation around your discounts and deals. When you get people excited about your brand, they’re much more likely to choose you as a number-one source of gift ideas.
🔥 Hot tip: Use the countdown sticker on Instagram Stories to remind followers about your upcoming sale to build anticipation. Why not prompt users to sign up to your mailing list to grow your database and boost the chance of sale success?
Valentine’s Day Exclusives
Sometimes, the best way to win over your customers is by providing something exclusive! Valentine’s Day exclusives can be big sellers, giving your sales stats a well-deserved boost.
Can you offer a limited edition product just for the holiday season? What about a special gift that helps couples and friends celebrate a love story? The right special offer will appeal to a range of shoppers and help you make this Valentine’s Day one to remember.
How else can exclusives work for you? These products promote a buy-now mentality and build more buzz around your business. If your Valentine’s exclusives are popular, you can bring them back next year or as part of another sale later on.
Leveraging Customer Engagement
Customer engagement is an important part of scaling your business and driving more traffic to your sales channels.
“How will you spend Valentine’s Day this year?” Even a simple question like this one can start a conversation, helping you learn more about your audience and get people talking about your brand. You can even invite your followers to share their Valentine’s and Galentine’s Day memories!
Engagement is often a critical first step in the buyer’s journey, but that’s not the only benefit. You can also leverage engagement for your social strategy. Encourage buyers to share pictures of their purchases, and you can use these as user-generated content in the future.
🔥 Hot tip: Use the question sticker on Instagram Stories to inspire interactions from your audience. Make sure to reshare audience responses to boost users’ loyalty and engagement with your brand in the lead up to Valentine’s Day!
Measuring Success
As with any holiday campaign, it’s essential that you measure the success of your Valentine’s Day marketing program.
Use your social media metrics to get a sense of how users interacted with your holiday content. How many people watched your TikToks, shared your Facebook posts, or viewed your Instagram stories?
Be selective with what metrics you track and ensure these are linked to your campaign goals:
- If you’re looking to increase your audience, track follower growth
- If you’re looking to boost website traffic, track profile visits and bio link clicks
- If you’re looking to increase sales, look at shoppable product tag engagement metrics
Next, analyze the traffic and conversion rates on your website. If you’ve sold well on themed deals, you can consider your Valentine’s campaign a success! If you are hoping for better results, you can use this as an opportunity to learn before the next big holiday sale.
Post-Valentine’s Day Strategies
When Valentine’s Day is over, you might be wondering what’s next for your business.
Find a way to generate more sales using your Valentine’s Day stock by selling leftover items with a discount code or a little gift free with purchase.
By thinking strategically, you can improve your brand’s reputation and build better connections that encourage shoppers to buy from you all year round.
Ready to Plann ahead for Valentine’s Day? Inside Plann, you’ll discover everything you need to effortlessly map out your sales strategy, repurpose your content, and take your social content to new heights.
Go on, and redeem your 7-day free trial of Plann Plus. If you don’t like it, keep using Plann for free!
