Marketing for Valentines and beyond

Valentine’s Day is approaching this week, sending couples into a frenzy of romance-themed shopping (unless your other half is an accountant in which case they will most likely tell you they’ll buy you twice as many roses for half the price next week!) If you sell chocolates, wine or flowers, or run a fancy restaurant, you may not need to create a special marketing strategy to see an upturn in sales. But how can the rest of us capitalise on the holiday spirit?   

 

Mothers’ Day 

Everyone knows a mum, has a mum, or is a mum, so this holiday is a really universal one to get involved with! If you don’t provide products or services that would usually be associated with Mothers’ Day gifting, you can still use this holiday as a marketing opportunity. If you’re looking to make direct sales, then you could package your offer as an ‘alternative’ gift for ‘the mum who has everything’ (unless you sell irons or hoovers in which case just leave well alone!). For those of us just looking for more exposure why not run a campaign about the mums in your company, or your employees’ mums, to show the human side of your business? This will help people to connect with your brand, to view you as trustworthy, family-oriented, and someone they want to do business with.  

 

Easter  

 Like Christmas, Easter has moved into the mainstream and is now celebrated by many cultures as a chance to indulge in chocolate and food with family and friends, rather than as a solely religious festival. There are obvious sales opportunities here for manufacturers of sweet-treats, and venues able to hold egg hunts and family get-togethers, but the rest of us can also get in on the action. Why not run a virtual egg hunt where people can win prizes by ‘finding’ the eggs hidden on your website? The aim is to get more brand exposure with potential customers who haven’t already heard of you, so make sure you use holiday hashtags across your social networks to find these strangers and turn them into customers!  

 

VE Day 

 This year in particular VE Day is a major event, which conjures up military pride, British patriotism, and nostalgia for times gone by. While we need to be careful not to minimise the serious nature of this festival, we can run ‘Best of British’ style campaigns at this time of year which highlight our ‘Made in the UK’ credentials, without becoming disrespectful. If you are looking to target international clients, make sure you use lots of Union Jacks, crowns and lions in your marketing imagery, and a red, white and blue colour palette – and if you can get Harry and Meghan tied in to a brand endorsement deal, even better!  

 

Halloween 

 Although this festival has become horribly over-commercialised in recent years, it still presents an opportunity for some extra marketing exposure. If you don’t make sweets or lurid costumes, you can still get in on the action by running a ‘trick or treat’ marketing campaign where your social media followers can click on an interactive image to reveal a prize or a ‘trick’. (In our Halloween marketing plan for this year we’d planned to give away money as treats, and put errors in your tax returns as tricks, but for some reason Steve and Jon wouldn’t sign-off on that idea….) 

 

Bonfire Night 

Bonfire Night is a trickier sell, since it effectively celebrates the murder of some olde-worlde terrorists! However, it does provide some good opportunities for marketing using the theme of fireworks, talking about your ‘explosive’ deals, and using eye-catching imagery to draw people in. Alternatively you could go down a PR route instead, and organise a family-friendly Bonfire Night celebration, with all proceeds going to charity. This means you can treat your customers, show that you care about a cause, and capture some great images to share after the event.  

 

Christmas 

The most significant holiday of them all, Christmas offers boundless opportunities for marketing and sales campaigns. Check back with us later in the year when we’ll share all our top tips for creating a festive marketing campaign with real sparkle!  

 

If you are an ER Grove client looking for advice or support with marketing, contact our in-house marketing team.