How to Gain Customers’ Love This Valentine’s Day

There are two types of shoppers in the world: one who is a shopaholic, and the other who shops only when there is an occasion or a need to shop.

While businesses prefer the first kind, they love it when both types of shoppers come together during an occasion such as Valentine’s Day.

Valentine’s Day is a special occasion celebrated by couples all over the world, and for businesses, it is a prime opportunity to increase sales and connect with customers.

In this article, we will guide you through how businesses can effectively prepare for Valentine’s Day and take advantage of the opportunities it presents.

How Businesses can Prepare for Valentine’s Day

As the holiday quickly approaches, it is crucial for businesses to start planning and preparing for the surge in demand.

From decorating the store, offering special promotions, and creating a festive atmosphere, there are many ways businesses can show their customers they care and make the most of this romantic holiday.

Here are seven ways businesses can prepare for V-Day:

• Valentine’s day theme

At least a week before February 14, businesses should start preparing to give their shop a cheery look – the one that loudly says the business has special offerings for Valentine’s Day.

You should decorate your shop with a Valentine’s Day theme to create a festive and romantic atmosphere. You can use hearts, roses, and other symbols of love to enhance the décor of your store.

One other way to stand out among your peers is to redefine Valentine’s Day to suit your brand. Most brands target young couples. Based on your product and brand you can choose to celebrate the long-standing romance between parents. Oyo did this with its Valentine’s Day special advertisement that showed an old couple talking about how they enjoy doing the same thing every Valentine’s Day, that is booking the same room in the same hotel every year.

Alternatively, you can also choose to go anti-Valentine’s Day to celebrate those who don’t have a partner. For example, WakeFit created a tongue-in-cheek video in 2021 to celebrate people who have not found a partner yet.

• Targeted pop-ups

Merchants who run online businesses should use pop-ups on their websites that give users some special coupon code for free delivery, discount, or early access to their new Valentine’s Day special product. You should plan ahead so that these pop-ups are visible on the website weeks ahead of Valentine’s Day.

You can ask your customers to put their email addresses or mobile phone numbers in the pop-up so that you can send them an early-access link for Valentine’s Day discount.

This is one of the best ways to increase your email list of users as well as create a buzz around Valentine’s Day.

• Valentine’s Day specific offers

You can attract customers to your shop on Valentine’s Day by offering them special promotions and discounts. These special offers could range from discounts on selected products, to buy one get one free offers, and even offer free delivery.

Other than discounts and special offers, you should bundle a few relevant products and sell them as a Valentine’s Day special. Durex created a Valentine Kit, a box with different condom packs and play cards. Similarly, Bombay Shaving Company also launched a curated gift box for Valentine’s Day.

These methods will not only ensure more customers purchase your shop but it will also make their shopping experience memorable.

• Sell Valentine’s Day related products

There are certain businesses that are more suited for occasions such as Valentine’s Day. These include businesses that are into jewellery, apparel, restaurants, gifting, flowers and perfumes, destination hotels or villas, etc. If you own one of these businesses you don’t have to worry about storing appropriate products as you naturally fit into the category.

However, if you are into a business such as electronics, kitchen appliances, etc, you might have to get creative to fit into the Valentine’s Day theme and sell appropriate products. For example, merchants that own electronics stores can market products like television and Netflix dongles as a gift for Valentine’s Day so that they can watch their favourite shows with their partners.

On the other hand, you can also create a marketing campaign around Valentine’s Day such as letting customers play a personality game on your website. At the end of the game, they will discover what kind of partner suits their personality or sun sign.

• Partner with relevant brands

While it’s important to have products that are relevant to customers looking to buy products for their loved ones, you can’t possibly sell everything. Instead, you can partner with relevant brands to offer your customers a coupon, which they can use to buy products from the other brand.

For example, if you run a jewellery store, you can offer customers a discount coupon for a visit to a vineyard. You can limit this offer to only customers who bought jewellery of more than Rs 1,00,000.

On the other hand, you can create a campaign around Valentine’s Day by partnering with a relevant brand. For example, skin care product brand Mamaearth partnered with TrulyMadly, a dating app to encourage people to update their dating profile with a question “What Makes Them Beautiful”.

Such strategic partnerships can help you reach new customers and increase your visibility. This is a win-win for everyone involved.

• Offer limited-edition products

This strategy is for those merchants who have a big budget for Valentine’s Day and have the resources to plan for it much ahead.

You can create a line of limited edition products meant just for Valentine’s Day. These should be exclusive products, something that is unique and no other brand has done before. For example, Cadbury launched a limited edition of Dairy Milk Silk chocolates just for Valentine’s Day. These chocolate bars had a heart-shaped chocolate inside the packet.

• Social media hype

Social media is one of the primary resources your brand should explore to create an effective campaign around Valentine’s Day. It will help not only in creating noise and awareness about your brand, but if it’s done well customers will start noticing you even after the campaign has ended.

Depending on your budget, you can either choose to use all social media platforms and create custom campaigns for them, or choose one platform and dedicate all resources there.

Also, don’t forget to create a customer hashtag for your campaign. For example, Tata Cliq Luxury launched #GiftWithLove campaign on Instagram. The brand used the hashtag to celebrate just married couples.

One way to get more customers to interact with your campaign and become customers is to start a giveaway campaign on social media. People simply have to like the post, tag their friends, and share the post to be eligible for the giveaway.

This will ensure an increase in interaction and users’ interest in your brand.

Conclusion

Valentine’s Day provides businesses with a great opportunity to reach new customers, increase sales, and build customer loyalty. By following these tips, you can make the most of this special occasion and grow your business.

Frequently Asked Questions

Question 1: How can I analyse my sales on Valentine’s Day?

Answer: Accepting digital payments from customers will make it easier for you to track and analyse customers’ purchases. This is true for both online and offline sellers. If you use Paytm Payment Gateway, you can easily get deep analysis of your sales, how customers preferred to make the payment, highest selling product, etc. Right from the Paytm dashboard, you can gather all kinds of analysis of your sales on Valentine’s Day.

Question 2: How much in advance should I start preparing to make Valentine’s Day special for my customers?

Answer: Although, there is no right or wrong answer to this question, you should start the preparation at least a month before the V-Day. The preparation time will depend on the kind of campaign you want to run. If you are going to make video and audio promotion for the Valentine’s Day, you might have to work on it much in advance. Also, if you plan to partner with a brand, you should start talking to different companies months before Valentine’s Day.

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