Valentine’s Day is just around the corner. What comes up to your mind when this special day is mentioned? You probably will visualise red roses, chocolate, hearts and other lovey-dovey surprises/gifts. From marketing perspectives, V-Day means an opportunity to market their products/services in the most appealing way and to make profit. Various marketing campaigns will tune their social media to the right theme/tone in order to match the atmosphere around this time of the year.
For this year, you may want to try something different in order to be the central of attention while marketing your products/services. You don’t want the audience to view the same marketing concepts that other companies are also using. If you dare to use an idea that is ‘less used or popular’ but can create instant in-depth responses based on your creativity/imagination, I believe the audience will at least remember your products. Make them spellbind and talk about it by the awe of your marketing ideas. If you want to know more about these marketing ideas that will make your content more prevailing, join me here in my 5 exclusive tips.
White Day. On White Day in Japan, men will give return gifts to women who gifted them chocolates (‘Giri-choco’ or ‘Homei-choc’) on Valentine’s Day. If this happens only in Japan which takes place exactly one month after February 14th, why not have this idea in your country too? You can have V-Day twice in a year that are, on February 14th and March 14th. You will start seeing advertisements and large displays of gifts from mid-January right up to March 14th (or to be extended). It will not just stopped in mid-February. There should be continuous advanced reminders with gift displays so that there is no excuse to forget about this White Day. This will make any sales last longer as one track back stated the sales effect it had in Japan was that, “[…] The holiday has become big business for Japan’s confectioners, reportedly making up more than half of their $5 billion in annual sales. Japanese tradition, spurred on by the nation’s candy industry, calls for women to hand out chocolates to men on February 14 – with men returning the favor a month later, on “White Day.” […]”
It’s A Men Thing. No gentlemen, it’s not about soccer or how you win over a girl’s heart. It’s a Valentine campaign that talks about another kind of love. It is associated with the product that you intend to promote and how guys work on their love for the product. But be sure to include women in your video clip as part of men’s journey. This is so that women viewers will be equally impressed by the adventure that men are going through. One such example that has me viewing the video clip over and over again is about four lads’ love for their Land Rover.
Message In The Bottle. This is suitable for video content as it needs a story to bring out your brand. It normally keeps people wondering mysteriously as to what lies in the bottle. This idea allows room for your imagination on what message you want to put in the bottle and who gets the message in the end. The audience’s curiosity will lead them to view your video content till the end. It doesn’t necessarily have to be a bottle being thrown into the sea. You can make the message as touchy as possible. Or, you can make it comically done and end up having your brand being promoted. For example, a little boy put a love message in an empty bottle (say, for a branded drink) and put it on the table where a girl used to sit in class. Just before class starts, someone came over hurriedly and accidentally knocked over the bottle. It rolled on the floor and reached the teacher’s table. She blushed looking at the message, thinking that it must be from one of her secret little admirer in class. She didn’t know who did this but ended up buying the whole class the drink just to please everyone.
Generosity. The act of kindness can never be outdated and is a true love to be shared. Marketing content which encourages people to share their acts of generosity with people or even animals can bring remarkable results to the well being of your products/services. It can bring multiple positive messages on love for the young and old. You can team up with local charitable organisation, host an event and encourage your customers to support it by way of donation. At the same time, you can charge a small fee while donating a portion to charity.
Do It As If It’s Last-Minute. This is dedicated to last-minute V-Day shoppers who are busy or just habitually like to make last-minute purchases. Create ways that will conveniently help potential buyers to make last minute purchases for their love ones. Make your content in such a way that this is the very place for you to perfectly make your last-minute buy. You can break the ways into various categories, among others, such as:
- Last-minute gift for the committed Valentine. This is perfect for V-cards business to safe the day. For instance, you can offer to create a V-card in one page within 10 minutes to incorporate 5 messages with one design. In this way, customers can pen down their commitments and work them out from home.
- Last-minute gift for the stressed Valentine. Only remember V-Day after February 14th? No worries as you can promote say, your spa facilities to ease the stress of forgetting to get your love ones a gift on the special day. You can promote your Spa at a lower discount if signing up takes place after February 14th. To also state that promotion ends in 3 days time or to be extended if sales are progressing well.
- Last-minute gift for wanderlust Valentine. You can promote instant access on how to make last-minute online booking tickets to any desired holiday destinations. This is not only perfect for transportation business but also other forms of reservations, getaway packages and many more.
The applicability of the above V-Day marketing ideas can be performed on any products/services. It depends on how far you want to promote. Although not everyone celebrates V-Day and is looking forward to a gift from someone special, bear in mind that we are actually catering for people with different demographic profiles. If you can develop a demographic profile of your best customers, I believe you can target your marketing efforts more fruitfully. It would be even better, if you can blend your marketing strategy to fit in each type of audience in just one click. I bet it will at least create an everlasting recollection and mesmerise someone to buy your products or use your services.
