When it comes to Valentines Day, most eCommerce stores will be offering some sort of sale this week, either with a love-themed discount code or pushing their Valentines Day merchandise (think pink and red everything!) on their homepages.
But what if your store doesn't fit into that heart-shaped mold?
Even if your target audience isn't likely to celebrate, you don't want to glaze over the holiday completely. Valentines Day sales are expected to reach $19.6 BILLION dollars this year, the second highest sales day apart from Christmas.
So if you don't want to touch your store or put your products on sale, it's time to get creative.
Focus on social media
By focusing your energy on social platforms instead of your online store, you can target buyers who are already emotionally invested in the holiday but aren't looking for anything specific. The perfect opportunity to draw their attention to your "non-traditional" Valentines products.
Gifts like this portable turntable below are becoming increasingly popular as shoppers look to skip the roses and chocolates in favour of something more personal.
photo via: CNN
Social media is a great place to roll out any new products you want to promote without having to rework your home page. Lets look at some quick and easy ways you can get your piece of the heart-shaped profit pie this Valentines Day.
3 last-minute Valentines campaigns for your ecommerce store
If you haven't planned anything for Valentines Day yet, don't worry — there's still time! Here are three quick and easy campaigns you can have up and running in time for the holiday of love.
Share a selfie contest
Want to get 50, 100, even 500 new followers in one day? Then an Instagram contest is your best bet.
Take a look at this fun and romantic contest from The Eglinton Way:
To get those numbers up, create an image (like the one above) to promote your contest, pick your steps and incentives, and get your captions and hashtags ready.
In this example, followers had to post a selfie and tag the business for a chance to win. Additional entry criteria could include asking people to follow your page, like a post or page, or to share your post on their own page.
Make sure there is a nice balance between the entrance criteria and the potential reward. If you are asking someone to share a picture on their own page, or follow your account, the prize had better be good.
But if the steps are as simple as posting a selfie (something your followers already do) and tagging you, most people won't mind doing this even if the prize isn't anything too extraordinary.
Make sure you use your own branded hashtags, PLUS popular Valentines Day hashtags to gain the most traction.
With only around an hour of prep, you can start AND finish setting up your contest by Feb. 14. If you find yourself with a little bit of extra time though, you can check out this step-by-step guide on How to Run an Instagram Contest, or keep reading for a few ideas on what other kinds of contests you can run.
Submit a love story on Facebook promotion
A text based contest is by far the easiest campaign you can run to get more eyeballs on your page.
Get your Facebook numbers up by getting people to tell a story about their most romantic (or disastrous) Valentines Day experience on your page.
And since Facebook image posts get 179% more interaction than text-based or video posts, make sure to use the perfect photo to maximize attention.
But remember to keep your message short. People don't read things on Facebook anymore, they skim. And if they're presented with a huge block of text, they're more likely to skip right past it on their timeline.
Simply post a status update on your page asking people to leave their response in the comments below. Make sure you set the status to public to get the most attention as possible, and encourage people to share the post.
Here's a great example:
Or you could give into the day just a little and do a cute spin on the contest by getting people to submit stories on how much/why they love your products like the one above.
Heavily, heavenly hashtags
Ever hear of Galentines Day? There were over 31.4 million Tweets related to #valentines last year, and Twitter reported that #galentinesday was one of the top trending hashtags!
Why am I mentioning this? Even if you don't think your products are marketable for Valentines Day, are many people out there who aren't just buying gifts for their significant others.
Sell dog food? Target pet owners who have declared their pets as their Valentines by getting them to tag your company or products in a picture of their pet.
Stationary: Followers can upload a photo of their beautifully-arranged desks and tag your company in it.
Party decorations: Get followers to tag photos of their #GalentinesDay parties with all their friends.
Make sure to set up your own hashtag and pair it with at least one of the most popular Valentines Day hashtags to maximize views.
Be careful: Getting users to post a photo and tag it is an awesome way to boost engagement, but beware of encouraging followers to re-tweet your photo. Posting duplicate updates or links is a violation of Twitters rules, so try not to encourage a lot of duplicate status updates (e.g., “whoever Retweets this the most wins”).
How do you incentivize participation?
While some of these campaign can be run without a reward, an awesome incentive will go a long way in making your Valentines Day campaign more successful. It’s what gets people excited about participating in your promotions! Try giving away:
- A discount code for a future purchase to everyone who participates.
- A moment in the spotlight! Tap into your users vanity by promoting their story/photo/personal account on your page.
- A gift certificate to your store.
- Your best-selling product.
- More than one prize (maybe the second funniest story gets a prize too).
- A Valentines Day experience, like a spa day or dinner for two in their city.
- A prize from one of your sponsors/brands you carry.
- Partner up with other businesses to create a prize package to get even more attention (like HQ did with their Instagram contest).
Whatever you choose, to make sure you get high-quality leads that not only boost your engagement, but have the potential to generate more business, choose prizes that are directly linked to your brand to take advantage of the interest in your product or service.
Looking for help managing your social media? Check out these 8 instagram management tools you need in 2020.
Don't forget to tag your store in the comments below to let us know what you have planned!
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