Ideas for a Valentines Day Marketing Plan 14-Day Countdown

 

It’s fair to say that US consumers “love” Valentine’s Day (if you’ll forgive the pun). Statisticbrain.com put Valentine’s Day consumer spending at more than $13 billion. The NRF (National Retail Federation) puts this number even higher, estimating that consumers spent more than $17 billion on Valentine’s Day.  In fact, Valentine’s Day spending comes in as the fourth most popular holiday with consumers, trailing only purchases made for the winter holidays, back to school and college, and Mother’s Day.

What Consumers Buy for Valentines Day

Cards top the list of items most-purchased for Valentine’s Day followed by candy, dinner out, flowers and jewelry. More than six in ten consumers will celebrate Valentine’s Day in some way and half of the women who do say that it’s so important to them that they would end their relationship if they didn’t receive a gift. A disproportionate 85% of Valentine’s cards are purchased by women and 14% of women send themselves flowers. (Statisticbrain.com)

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Assuming that you have stocked your shelves and filled ready inventory with cards, gift cards and high hopes for capitalizing on consumers love of this holiday, here’s a 14 day Valentines Day marketing plan you can execute using your blog, email, social media and SMS text message marketing channels in order to make the most out of this popular holiday.

14 Days, 14 Ideas for a Valentines Day Marketing Plan

February 1

Let the countdown begin. Send an email, post a social update and text contacts that your brand’s countdown to Valentines Day has begun and extend a time-limited early-bird offer.

February 2

Post a social update calling out the love that you have for your customers and send an email with a customer-exclusive offer.

February 3

Share trivia about the history of Valentines Day on your social networks or hold a contest to see if customers can answer questions about its trivia. Reward the first correct answer or hold a drawing for all social followers that comment on or share your post, make your give away an item, service or visit that can be redeemed on Valentines Day.

February 4

Just ten days to go! Post an article on your blog with a list of local stores with great options for Valentine’s Day gifts, restaurants that are perfect for dinners out, unique local destinations for people that want to take their date somewhere unexpected and – of course – a reference to the Valentine’s Day gift/s they could buy from you. Blog posts like this may very likely become your most-read web content at this time of year and will continue to pay dividends in more web traffic in the years to come.

If you reference other businesses in this article, include web links to their businesses and let them know that you’re promoting them on your blog. Tag them when you promote this post on social networks to extend post reach and encourage more social shares.

February 5

Promote the blog post you published yesterday on social networks and consider sponsoring the post to extend its reach with a geo-targeted social media ad; even a few dollars spent daily can mean significant increased reach for posts on Facebook, putting your business’ Valentines Day marketing ideas in the feeds of local customers during the next 10 days.

February 6

Use email, social networks and text SMS marketing to let subscribers and followers know that your gift cards are ideal for Valentines Day. Incentivize further with a buy-one, get-one Valentines Day gift card offer or enter everyone that buys a gift card from your business into a special drawing for a prize to be awarded on Valentines Day.

February 7

Valentine’s Day is now just one week away. Send a reminder email to customers with 3-4 good ideas for gifts and destinations. If you posted a blog post on this yesterday, you can repurpose the article into this email.

February 8

Ask social followers to comment, like, and share a post asking people to share their favorite Valentine’s Day gift or destination ideas. For all that do, hold a drawing and give away one or more gift cards to your business. Giving away gift cards can mean a net gain for your business; 41% of those who tried a business for the first time did so because they received a gift card and seven in ten will spend more than the value of the card (from The Secret Sauce for Selling More Salon Gift Cards).

February 9

Valentine’s Day is a popular day for proposals. Ask social followers to share stories about their own proposals or ask whether any are planning to propose soon. Invite would-be proposal makers to pop the question in your business and offer to help.

February 10

Ask social followers to leave a comment tagging a local business that they have purchased from or visited on Valentine’s Day in previous years.

February 11

With only 72 hours remaining, people who waited until the last minute might be starting to panic. Send an email and SMS text message and post a social update listing your top 3 last-minute Valentine’s Day gift ideas – along with a special offer for one or more of these items.

February 12

If any of your Valentine’s Day inventory items are slow-movers, extend a special offer to help them move, such as making them a free add-on with equivalent $ gift card purchase or a buy one, get one offer.

February 13

Your 14-day Valentines Day marketing plan is almost played out!  If you still have reservation or appointments available, send an email and text SMS messages to clients inviting them to book before all the spots are gone.

February 14

All that’s left to do in your Valentines Day marketing plan is to thank your customers and let them know how much you value their patronage now and all year through.

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Elizabeth Kraus is the author of 365 Days of Marketing.
365 Days of Marketing is available on amazon.com in print or digital format. It contains marketing how-to, inspiration and content for every day of the year — including Mother’s Day and Father’s Day to help you build a bigger role for your business in the lives of your clients, 365 days a year!