No matter your feelings towards Valentine's Day, there's no denying it's ability to draw money out of people - $18.2 billion globally to be exact!
As Digital Marketers, Valentine's Day represents an opportunity to engage our communities in a whole bunch of creative ways across various Digital Marketing channels.
In honour of Valentine's Day, we're giving you a series of blogs filled with ideas on lead-up campaigns, social media competitions, email campaigns, and social media posts for the big day.
Valentine's Day Social Media Competitions
The lead up to Valentine's Day presents the perfect opportunity to engage your Social Media audiences with a fun competition, and there are plenty of options when it comes to the type of competition you run.
Do keep in mind, however, that any Facebook competition you run where you're specifically asking people to engage (comment, like, share, tag) will need to be a paid promotion after Facebook's recent News Feed algorithm update which will downgrade "engagement-baiting" posts. Paid Facebook ads won't be affected by this algorithm update, however.
When it comes to timing, don't limit these competitions just to the day of Valentine's Day. Use the competition as a way to build awareness of the fact that Valentine's Day is coming, while also allowing your campaign to stretch out over a week and build momentum.
Once you've had people engage with your Valentine's Day social media competition, you can of course segment out and re-market to those specific audiences if you have something you'd like to offer or promote.
But even if your business isn't one that typically benefits from Valentine's Day, use it as an excuse to be engaging with your audience.
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Tag someone you love in the comments!
A timeless and simple option! Incentivise your community to tag a special someone in the comments for Valentine's Day. The benefit of encouraging "tag & win" style Social Media competitions is that it automatically increases the reach and exposure of your page, and encourages engagement which is prioritised in Facebook and Instagram's News Feeds.
AGV Australia: One of our client's approach towards a "tag a loved one" Valentines competition
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Create a wishlist of our [product/service], share it below and tag a special someone. We'll surprise 5 lucky people with items from their wishlist!
The benefit of this is that it encourages people to check out your products/service/menu which generally involves visiting your website and spending time familiarising themselves with what it is you do. The second benefit here is that by tagging "a special someone", that special someone is now being given a list of wishlist items they could potentially purchase for the other for Valentine's Day! Facebook will also love the conversational aspect that this type of campaign will promote.
ADRENO Spearfishing: One of our long-term client's approach towards incorporating a wishlist into their Valentines competition.
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Share the love! Tell us how you fell in love with [something relevant to your business/product/service] and be in the draw to win!
This is a great chance for people to tell stories about something they love or are excited about, and allow you to engage back with your audience while getting to know them.
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Share the love! Take a photo with the [relevant business product] you love the most, and tell us why you love it, or a story. Bonus points if you post your photo on your Instagram and tag #MyValentine and @businessname!
Once again, engaging with a story and also getting them to tag or post a picture will encourage virality. Just make sure the incentive is high enough to make them want to do this, and that your business is the kind that would suit this style of competition.
Bushranger Power Equipment Australia: One of our long-term client's approach towards incorporating a wishlist into their Valentines competition.
- Tell us about your first date and tag your partner!
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Tell us what you love about a partner, friend or family member and tag them. You'll both be in the draw to win...
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Tell us your worst dating or break-up story!
More of an anti-Valentine's competition!
Hopefully this gives you some V-day social media inspiration! We're running all kinds of campaigns for clients this year to leverage these ideas and will keep you up to date with how they go after the big day. In the meantime, keep an eye out for our blogs on email campaign ideas, lead-up campaigns and on-the-day posts to make sure you've got the best Valentine's Day Digital Marketing campaigns around.
