Feeling the love this Valentine’s day: how to get your brand noticed
A 2015 National Retail Federation survey projected Valentine’s Day spending in the US to be almost $20bn. That figure is only expected to go upward. Furthermore, the survey found that nearly 91% of people planned to buy a gift for their special someone. Therein lies the opportunity to lure the lovebirds to your online or retail store.
Getting noticed this Valentine's Day
More than 70% of shoppers turn to the internet for help before buying a Valentine’s Day gift. That is reason enough for brands to capitalize on digital marketing campaigns.
Here are a few tips to help your brand's message out there to those consumers who are willing to feel the love.
The selfie bandwagon
Selfies can be brilliant a marketing tool for brands. 24 billion selfies were uploaded on Google photos application alone in 2016. Furthermore, almost 50% of adults take at least one selfie a day.
People take selfies all the time, so you could exploit the phenomenon for an engaging campaign. Ask people to take a selfie with your product and post it on your Facebook page with a convenient hashtag. Give discounts in return to promote engagement.
Take a cue from Axe’s #KissForPeace campaign. For the initial promotion of your campaign, use ads that show people using your product, as people respond better to ads with faces.
Target men
Men are likely to spend almost twice as much on Valentine’s Day than women. When creating your Facebook campaign for Valentine’s Day, be sure to target men in the 25-34 age bracket and increase your ad frequency as the holiday gets nearer.
Video and guerilla tactics
Ford’s 2015 Speed Dating campaign went viral. Video posts on Facebook get the highest engagement. If you don’t have the kind of marketing budget that Ford does, you can crowdsource video content by turning it into a contest. For instance, if you are an online music retailer, you could ask people to woo their pets with a song.
Give the campaign a hashtag that includes the word love, and make sure you get the targeting right. An example of an audience segment in this case could be millennials with pets who regularly post on Facebook or Instagram. Most people post their pets’ videos anyway, and you can cash in on the trend.
Avoid selling candy or jewelry
Candy and jewelry account for the most popular purchases on Valentine’s Day, but you don’t need to have a traditional gift item to cash in on the popular holiday.
Take PetSmart’s “Be My Valentine Adoption Weekend” campaign for instance. The special two-day event aimed to find homes for single cats and dogs. The idea is to tie in your product with the notion of love and when done creatively, allows you to capitalize on the season of romance successfully.
Ad fatigue is a real monster that can wreak havoc with your marketing budget. If your CTR is dropping, the first thing you need to check is whether you have been running the same ad for too long.
Display advertising, for example on Facebook, is especially susceptible to banner blindness. To make sure users are not ignoring you, change your creatives periodically. Even subtle differences like a change in background color can make the difference.
Start tracking your campaigns’ Creative Optimal Rate (COR). This is the effective rate of ads needed, based on a specific budget and target audience, for your ads to compete at the most efficient rate in the auction. Having a strong COR, along with regularly refreshed creatives, gives your media budgets more power and reduces ad dollar wastage.
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Winner of Facebook's 2016 Innovator of the Year, ReFUEL4 is the world's leading online ad creative management platform.
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