8 Super Simple Ways to Sell More this Valentine’s Day
I’ve spoken to more than a handful of e-commerce store owners who make the majority of their yearly income in November.
Why?
Because of Black Friday.
It is, without doubt, the most important e-commerce holiday period. However, too many of us focus on it as if it’s the only holiday period to focus on.
Which is BS.
There’s countless e-commerce holidays throughout the year. All of which present a great opportunity for you to make some moola.
But from the viewpoint of customers in relationships there are 3 celebrations more important than the others. 3 celebrations which, if forgotten, spell months in the dog house.
They are:
- Your partner’s birthday
- Your anniversary
- Valentine’s Day
2 of these three are different depending on the couple.
However, we can all optimise and run campaigns for Valentine’s Day.
And right now is the time for you to start focusing on your promotions for the most romantic day of the year.
So, where do you begin?
Understand What it is Your Customers Want
Valentine’s Day is the first big consumer holiday of the year (if you’re not including Chinese New Year).
And there’s a ton of money to be made.
Last year saw the number of sales grow to over $20 billion in the US alone.
Big numbers, right?
But how does that number break down in terms of spending habits?
- Engaged couples tend to spend the most on one another, with men spending an average $17 more than women.
- 32% of customers wait until the week of Valentine’s Day to pick up their perfect gift (with around 10% shopping on the day itself!)
- 47% of people plan to spend V Day at home with 36% planning to head out to a restaurant.
- There’s no real surprises when it comes to the most popular Valentine’s Daygifts.
- 21.2% aren’t just buying gifts for that beloved person in their life, but are also picking up a special something for their pets.
- 42% of people would love the gift of an experience over a material gift (comedy nights ranked high here)
If you have the right campaign and angle, you could stand to make a lot of money on February 14th 2019.
And I’m about to run you through some foolproof ways to make more of an impact this Valentine’s Day.
Keep it Simple, Stupid! (KISS)
I had to lead with this as the acronym is perfect for Valentine’s Day.
Jokes aside — keeping your marketing as simple as possible is one of the keys to success in any campaign.
Too often we’re told to split our attention.
We’re drawn in 100 different directions because we’ve read that Facebook is providing great gains, that Insta is best for your industry, and that email is the ROI king.
So, we launch campaigns across all of those channels.
The result is a marketing strategy that’s incredibly broad, but woefully shallow.
You’ll get far better results by focusing on one or two channels and angles. Really attacking them 100% and excelling in them than spreading yourself too thin.
It’s better to do one thing well than a dozen things poorly.
To understand where you should focus your attention, there’s one preliminary step you’ve got to take.
Know Your Audience
Who is it you’re selling to?
And what is it they want?
Some weak, vague answer here isn’t gonna cut it.
We’re not talking about ”women / men in relationships” or “singles”. You’ve got to go deeper than that.
Before you go into detail planning your Valentine’s Day camping you have to know as much about your target market as possible. In particular, what they’re most likely to buy.
The stats at the top of this piece (and the articles they link to) should help you understand how people are buying.
However, you’re gonna have to dive into your statistics to see who your best customers are.
Then you’ve got to find the overlap to discover the best products for that segment.
So let’s run through an example using the above stats.
The image from the Shopify piece has the highest earning segment as females between the ages of 35–44.
They spend an average of $27.78 per order.
Couple this with the Statista data above explaining that women tend to spend more on greeting cards, candy, or an evening out and you’ve got a good overlap to explore.
Find the products in your store that run ~$30 per order and are related to the top selling items and boom — you’ve got yourself a potential product or bundle that appeals to your most profitable segment.
Think Aesthetically
We’re in the age of social media.
And growth is off the charts.
Which makes social channels a great way to connect with your audience and promote your products.
Here’s the thing, social is also super competitive.
Trying to stand out when 3.2 billion images are shared every day is no easy feat.
But it can be done.
And romanticized messages will help you make more of an impact (and thus more sales) in the run up to Valentine’s Day.
However, to really stand out, you’re going to have to produce messages in the formats your users want. And there’s an overwhelming desire for highly visual posts.
So if you’re running V Day specific campaigns, make sure you’re leveraging images and video in your marketing collateral.
However, having a snappy image or fun video is only half the job. If you really want to go the extra mile then consider this…
Leverage the Emotion of the Holiday
There’s a great saying I’ve heard countless copywriters use in the past.
To paraphrase;
“People purchase based on emotion, and justify that purchase with logic.
If you can tug on the ol’ heart strings you’re more likely to get a sale.
The user will retroactively look at the features of the product to justify the purchase after the fact.
So, rather than just create visually appealing posts, be sure to inject a little emotional element for users.
It’s proven to increase the engagement of your social media posts.
As this is the holiday of love, something that’s romantic will do well.
Here’s a funny example from UK brand Deliveroo addressing the “third-wheels” out there. It works because it addresses something we’re all familiar with and is kinda funny to boot.
Which leads us nicely into our next tip…
Don’t Ignore Non-Couples
So the above example from Deliveroo seems, to me, to be targeting couples who hang out with a single friend.
But it’s still targeting couples, right?
Valentine’s Day might be a holiday to celebrate relationships, however, there’s plenty of folk out there who will treat themselves on Valentine’s Day.
There are groups of people out there who will spend pretty decent amounts of money despite not being in a relationship.
In the stats at the start of this piece you’ll notice the AoV of single people on Valentine’s is around $44.
You’ll also notice that there are people who buy gifts for their pets (which is obviously the true love in their life, right?).
What I’m trying to say is there’s numerous segments you could target for Valentine’s Day that aren’t couples.
The three big groups too target include:
- Women on Galentine’s Day
- Pet owners
- Single people
Find out who’s in your audience, segment them, and offer them a relevant product or deal to appeal to their needs.
Prioritize Convenience Over Being Smart
One of the big problems I find with most brands’ marketing is there’s too much emphasis on being smart.
Too much time is put into devising complex funnels, overly creative ideas, or targeting requirements.
Often, the result is a campaign which either falls flat or fails to launch.
Good marketing is simple.
It serves a particular segment a message they’ll resonate with and offers a solution to a real problem.
However, the best marketing is also convenient.
The action it asks the user to take should be simple and logical. There’s a few ways you can leverage this to your advantage.
The first should be the initial CTA.
Let’s imagine a user sees a social post or ad from your brand that hits the above mentioned requirements of being highly visual and leverages the emotion of Valentine’s Day.
What a lot of brands tend to do is then give them a link to a product or category page. Then they have to go through the usual commenced purchase funnel which, if we’re being honest, is super leaky.
The problem is, there’s too much effort there.
Especially if you’re bringing someone over to your site from a medium that’s intended for social procrastination.
Making the purchase funnel as simple and convenient as possible will increase sales.
One of the ways we’ve found to be most effective is to let the user purchase directly from the channel where they’re engaged.
They cut out the traditional, long winded purchase funnel and gave the user to check out directly in their social channel for massive gain.
This idea of simplifying the actions a user can take is key to increasing revenue.
One of the better methods to achieve this on the back end is with cross and up sells to increase average order value.
Take Moonpig.com as an example. Once you’ve ordered a card, they allow you to add a gift to the order with a one-click upsell.
It’s a great way to increase the AoV as you’re not only selling another product, but you’re genuinely helping the customer get the right gift with minimal effort.
A Little Bit of Urgency and Scarcity
FOMO is a highly motivating factor for many consumers out there.
In fact, adding a deadline to your product offers is a great way to cause immediate action because the stress of that deadline is proven to suspend rational thought in favor of action.
Adding in a couple of urgency elements can massively increase your conversions. Here’s a few ideas to give your campaigns a little push int he right direction.
1- Delivery deadlines
These are big with Christmas campaigns. You simply let the user know when the last day they can order for guaranteed delivery before Valentine’s Day is.
This is a great one for those selling traditional Valentine’s gifts.
Here’s an example from a Christmas campaign.
If someone is buying flowers, they’re going to want to ensure that they’re delivered on the day, right?
So put a little deadline counter up to say “hey, you’ve only got 3 more days to buy for guaranteed V Day delivery!” to cause more folk on the fence take the action you want.
2 — Highlight stock levels
If you walk past any florist on Valentine’s Day at about 11 am, you’ll notice something.
All those ready made rose bouquets are sold out.
I pity the man who turns up at 11:05 to buy his partner a lovely bouquet only to find there’s nothing left.
It’s a worry for anyone trying to get a gift for any holiday.
So, to help your customers understand how quickly they’ve got to act, include a stock counter.
Let them know that this specific Valentine’s Day gift or deal only has 100 total items in stock, and that 80 are already gone.
When people see there’s only 20 left, they’re almost guaranteed to buy.
If you want to see an example of this in action, look no further than travel websites. These guys are the absolute best at including scarcity on their listings.
Offer More than Romantic Copy
I’ve already made mention that leveraging the emotion of the holiday is a great way to make an impact.
However, that should extend beyond the images and videos.
Your site, ads, and communication should encompass the holiday.
And there’s no better way to do this than through your copy (unsurprising coming from a copywriter, right?).
But, and this is a big but, don’t overdo it.
Your customers aren’t looking for a sonnet or declaration of your undying love.
Couple the feeling and emotion associated with Valentine’s Day with your brand voice.
This’ll create something unique that your customers expect and resonate with.
Here’s a great example from Virgin Mobile, the UK mobile telecoms company.
It plays on the ideas of relationships, but without sacrificing the brand’s tone of voice.
It’s cheeky, kind of fun, but also highly relevant.
The result is something that’s completely unique to the brand.
That’s what you’re aiming for. Copy that is kind of romanticised, but doesn’t sacrifice your brand voice to achieve it.
Now’s the Time to Start Planning for Valentine’s Day!
Honestly, it’s never too early to start planning your campaigns.
But you want to make sure that you’ve got something up and running 3 weeks before the holiday hits.
Now is when you’ll start making those first Valentine’s sales.
At the very least, you should have something set up for the week of the holiday. That’s when the highest number of sales are experienced.
If you fancy setting up an easy campaign that’s almost guaranteed to make some sales, sign up for a free jumper account right here.
With jumper, you’ll be able to promote and sell your best fit profits direct from your social media feeds.
Originally published at blog.jumper.ai on January 24, 2019.
