5 Social Media Marketing Ideas to Swoon Over this Valentine’s Day

Valentine’s Day presents innumerable opportunities for your business to experiment with social media campaigns. The real challenge when putting together a marketing strategy for the holiday is cutting through the noise to truly engage with your customers. Mobile accounts for 36.8% of all online shopping traffic on the holiday, and embracing February 14th by utilizing your social media to the fullest can help move your customers from their social platforms to your shopping carts. Spread the love by trying one (or all!) of these campaign ideas.

Have Fun with Instagram or Snapchat Stories
Take your followers behind-the-scenes to build a deeper connection with your brand by creating a series of fun videos or pictures to post on Snapchat or Instagram Stories. Snapchat always has fun holiday-themed filters, and you can even create your own On-Demand Geofilter; an inexpensive and quick way to have potential customers and employees help create engagement for your brand. (To see more click here.)

One prime example would be Dunkin’ Donuts’ sponsored geofilter for this past Valentine’s Day. Geofilters can be a great way to spread the word about your business and offers up a more organic way to grow your business through Snapchat, as it causes people to connect directly with their friends.

Run a Valentine’s Hashtag Campaign
Creating a branded hashtag on Instagram is a great way to spread the word about your business, find content posted about you by your followers, and (of course) promote your Valentine’s Day campaign. Encourage your followers to show your business their romantic side by sharing photos of how they’re spending their holiday using your hashtag. They key is finding an authentic way to incorporate your brand into the campaign.

Last year Versace got into the Valentine’s Day spirit with the hashtag campaign #VersaceSharesLove, which the Italian fashion house used to push a line of T-shirts in its Valentine’s Day Gift Guide.

 

Offer an Exclusive Discount or Deal
Create a holiday discount code that is only available for your social media followers. Whether it’s a discount code that’s revealed only to your Snapchat friends or a giveaway post only on your Instagram, making your social media audience feel a little extra special during the holidays can result in extra love for your business. Remind them of why they wanted to follow you in the first place!

Starbucks and Match.com took offering exclusive deals to the next level when they partnered up to help people connect over coffee with their campaign World’s Largest #StarbucksDate, unveiling a product feature on Match called “Meet at Starbucks” that is exclusive to users and was only available on Valentine’s Day. In addition to the product featured, participating company-operated and select licensed locations in the U.S. and Canada featured a special pairings menu.

Hold a Contest
Hold a V-Day-inspired contest in which your audience engages with your brand in return for rewards. Usually done through getting your followers to either post an Instagram or Snapchat with specific branded hashtags or simply by commenting on a post, this is a great way to get more brand visibility by engaging your audience to share content about you that’ll be seen by their followers as well.

Miss Me Jeans held a Valentine’s Day contest on Instagram, where followers were encouraged to get creative by posting a picture of a heart that they created accompanied with the hastag #MMVday. The grand prize for whichever post was most creative was a pair of Miss Me Jeans, with second place being a Miss Me tee and runner up being a Miss Me beauty gift set.

Focus on Your Customers
Show your customers some love and feature their content. You can incorporate a user-generated content campaign with any of the above ideas that utilize a hashtag. Find the UGC that best fits your brand aesthetic and feature them in a variety of places across your social media platforms – create a collaged Facebook cover photo or a Twitter header, create a Layout for Instagram featuring a few of your favorites, or even use an app like Flipagram to create a mini video featuring some of the best content.

Revlon’s current #LoveIn3Words campaign features content on their website created by their Instagram followers who posted using the hashtag. Revlon is committed to donating $250,000 to the Women’s Heart Alliance in 2017, regardless of purchase or post, to engage their customers and spread the love.

Just remember not to overcomplicate your strategy by making it confusing for your customers. Usually the most effective campaigns are the simplest! Valentine’s Day is all about fun so be playful but on-brand and always remember, your campaigns should be focused on providing value for your potential customers.

Happy Hearting!
XOXOXO

 

This article was written
by Carolyn Hanuschek