How to Attract Your Target Audience for Valentine’s Day
The annual holiday of love is just around the corner. Are you wondering how you can boost your online marketing in time for Valentine’s Day 2019? Have no fear – studies of marketing trends show that Valentine’s Day traditionally inspires a jump in last-minute sales, both online and instore.
Unlike other occasions, Valentine’s Day shoppers tend not to plan too far ahead. Online activity is significantly higher in the week leading up to Valentine’s than the month before.
According to one study of US-based online florists, the two days before Valentine’s saw an impressive peak in web traffic and conversions.
So now is the perfect time to implement some winning digital strategies to help catch lovestruck customers just before the holiday.
Love is in the web
According to the National Retail Federation, nearly 54% of Americans will spend money on Valentine’s Day gifts and treats, with an average consumer spend of just over $136. Clearly, Valentine’s Day shoppers are feeling the love – nearly 20% are even planning on buying a Valentine’s gift for their pet!
Which means it’s the perfect opportunity to entice potential customers with special offers, time-limited discounts, and incentives. Help your customers tap into their loving spirit by giving them a little extra.
Check out this cute idea from WOW, the low-cost Icelandic airline. They are offering a free ticket from the US to Iceland for the significant other of anyone whose first or last name is “Valentine”. It’s a fun way to grab attention among a wider audience, even if the special offer is limited to a fairly select audience segment. Genius – we love it!
Set your sights on the right target
Marketing is a lot like love – you’ve got to set your sights on Mr/Ms. Right. Fortunately, when it comes to marketing performance, there’s a range of advanced targeting tools that can make it much easier to find your best audience.
On Valentine’s Day, men are the big spenders – in fact, men spend about twice as much as women on Valentine’s gifts. For many brands and advertisers, it might well be worth creating a campaign focusing on a male audience. Also, the typical Valentine’s day shopper tends to be younger. Among those aged 18 to 34 years, between 60% and 65% are purchasing Valentine’s Day gifts, with the figure dropping to less than 50% for older consumers. Many of these younger customers are using their mobile devices for Valentine’s shopping – half of smartphone owners will buy their Valentine’s Day gift via their mobile phone, or use it to research and make a purchase decision.
So, the perfect match for your Valentine’s Day campaign may well be a predominantly young, male and mobile-savvy audience. Keep that in mind when choosing your targeting parameters.
“You had me at the landing page”
If the native ad is the first date, then the landing page is when things start to get serious. By clicking your ad, the user has expressed definite interest in your content. Now’s the time to take things up a notch and really get them to fall in love with your product or service. How? By creating a beautiful, creative and smart landing page that entices them to follow through and complete the conversion.
First up, think of creative content ideas that will make your landing page stand out. For example, the Hershey’s chocolate brand created a Valentine’s page featuring fab ideas for romantic recipes and games, such as “Rom Com Bingo”, a bingo game based on famous lines from romantic comedies. It comes complete with instructions, printable PDF bingo sheets, and an idea for the prize – Hershey’s Kisses, of course.
When designing any kind of landing page, it’s important to follow these best practices to drive the highest possible conversions. For special occasions, like Valentine’s Day, spice up your landing pages with seasonal design elements and colors, or add a little twist to your existing design to highlight the season and get your viewers in the Valentine’s buying mood.
Check out this example from Pandora jewelry’s Valentine’s page: they’ve added cute heart emojis, and countdown till Valentine’s sale ends. Just a few small design elements set a heart-stopping romantic tone.
Love at first click
Valentine’s Day is the perfect excuse to get up close and personal with your potential customers. According to McKinsey, email marketing is 40 times better at getting new customers than Facebook or Twitter. So what are you waiting for? This Valentine’s Day, launch an email marketing campaign that makes your customers feel special. The happy, romantic holiday is a ripe opportunity to get creative and a little bit daring with your email marketing.
Combine a sassy subject line with a special offer that they can’t refuse. The advantage of email marketing is that your offer lands straight in the inbox of the potential customer, which is a great chance for you to make a direct, one-on-one impression.
Check out this email campaign promoted last year by Outbrain for Valentine’s Day. We enticed customers to open the email with a romantically styled subject line: “We’re definitely interested…are you?”. Then we showed our interest in the customer by offering a coupon worth $100 of free traffic on their next Outbrain native ad campaign.
The results spoke for themselves: the Valentine’s email campaign got a CTR (click-through rate) that was 220% better than previous email campaigns, and 12x better ROI than similar campaigns.
The language of love is universal – and so is email. So why not harness both to get results you can really fall in love with?
Valentine’s Day is not just chocolates and flowers
Even if you’re not selling a traditional Valentine’s product or service, you can tap into the loving feeling of the season, and boost your online success during February.
Find a romantic angle that best highlights your offering in the context of Valentine’s Day, and use the tactics and tips above to make your customer relationships even deeper.
That’s true marketing love!
