If most people are shopping for chocolate and roses, some of us are upgrading our website for Valentine's or upping our social media game with clever promos.
Here are a few tips to tweak your digital marketing campaign.
A Festive Makeover
If you're running an e-commerce site, try redesigning your website before your first Valentine shoppers drop by. As the busiest shopping period of the year, it's the perfect time to capture customers' attention with festive themes.
- Optimise your landing pages with a new background or colour scheme. It should be romantic and simple enough not to steal the spotlight from your products. Compare with this snowflake background on the Boots website during the Christmas season.
- Add Valentine-themed images like a heart or roses. It's a creative and simple way to entertain customers without interrupting their shopping experience.
- Redesign your logo. This is the perfect upgrade if you haven't got the time for a website overhaul. An additional rose woven into the logo or a heart beside your brand name is a simple but effective approach.
Look at Disney's holiday logo from last Christmas:
- Feature themed promos on your homepage. It would be a waste not to tailor your online store around the burgeoning market of Valentine. You should create buttons or linked widgets to promos like Valentine Gift Guide, Gifts for Dad, or Personalised Presents.
Amazon used this strategy flawlessly over the Christmas season:
A Holiday Voice
Now is one of the few times of the year when social media is running on a whirlwind of activity that's all similarly themed. Everybody will be posting pictures on Instagram, updating wishlists on Facebook, and tweeting loved ones on Twitter. It's a social networking hype that we should take advantage of through clever but subtle promotions.
- Run a good ole competition on Facebook and Twitter. People are generally up for a challenge, especially when prizes are involved. You can encourage competitions like Who Posts the Photo with the Most Likes? or Tweet that Gets the Most Retweet. It's a simple premise but one that can effectively create buzz for your brand.
- Come up with a memorable hashtag. It's a dynamic campaign that sets the stage for your future campaigns. For example, the hashtag #IloveShoppingAtMyStoreName invites your followers to share their stories and at the same time spreads your brand name. Read Scott Dylans take on hashtags, How to Hashtag Your Way to Social Media Success.
- Start a Valentine-themed scavenger hunt on Facebook, Twitter, and other social media sites. Post clues on different platforms and lay out prizes for every small win. The better your prizes, the more people you'll have sharing and talking about your brand on their own social media groups.
Cross-Platform Valentine Design
If you're tweaking your website design for the holidays, it makes sense for your Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other social network profiles to have the same festive spirit.
- Add a Valentine-themed cover photo on Facebook. Invite your Fans to post pictures of their shopping experience on your store. Let them share the images to your timeline and come up with a powerful and dynamic cover photo featuring your customers' most beautiful photos.
Look at what Walmart did for Christmas:
You should also change your Twitter header and background and Google+ theme.
- Encourage your Facebook fans to share their stories. Ask customers about their favourite Valentine moment, their most romantic movie, or about special traditions they have around Valentine. Invite them to post and share their stories with you or make a competition about it. Your main goal is to interact with your Fans, get them to Like or Comment on your updates, and fill your Timeline with related holiday images.
Here's how Zaggora did it for Chrstmas:
Bonus tip: Photos are powerful in ecommerce marketing. If you want to sell something, you better post a high-res photo of the product.