Valentine’s Day, 14 February, is a traditional Western holiday and is crucial for e-commerce sellers. According to Fundivo research, 25–34-year-olds spend the most on Valentine’s Day, averaging $234. In contrast, even those aged 55 and over spend an average of $95 per person. Several reports and surveys show that men generally spend more money on Valentine’s Day gifts than women, with men spending an average of $217 on Valentine’s Day, while women consume less than half that amount. The average man spends $217 on Valentine’s Day, while women spend less than half of that figure.
Since there is a strong demand for users to shop on Valentine’s Day, sellers have ample opportunity to make money, so it is essential to do an excellent job of Valentine’s Day marketing. This article is here to reveal:
Product category selection: traditional advantageous categories are more competitive; goods that have gift attributes can be “packaged.”
Nowadays, Valentine’s Day has changed from a mere couple’s holiday to a mass shopping frenzy, which can be subdivided into the following three selection ideas according to the strength of their direct relevance to the holiday：
Traditional advantageous categories: products with advantages but fierce competition
Through a survey of US consumers, the following four categories are the most popular on Valentine’s Day, as follows:
Flower
Candy
Products of these categories are on the top of the list in almost every year’s Valentine’s Day hot categories, so the chances of choosing the wrong product are low. But it’s not very friendly to small and medium-sized sellers interested in promoting sales, because of the fierce competition, the head effect will be more obvious.
For example, to Amazon candy sellers, the BSR ranking is a difference of one. The difference in monthly sales is very likely to be very large. So, suppose you are not operating the above advantageous categories of goods sellers. In that case, there is absolutely no need to be in a hurry to Valentine’s Day hotspots and shelves of these goods. Sellers with experience in the operation of such goods need to start preparing in advance keyword selection, advertising on and off-site, and other operations and marketing work.
Pan-commodification: goods need to have festivalization; POD merchandise performs well
According to the National Retail Federation, nearly 49% of consumers spend more when there is a “big sale or discount,” so sellers are well placed to take advantage of holiday sales and “Valentine’s” pan-holiday items.
Generally speaking, the main items that users often buy during promotional festivals are as follows:
Practical, lightweight Kitchenware
Household Goods
Trendy Digital Accessories
For novice sellers, POD items can be better packaged for the holidays. A larger variety of things can be differentiated, making it easier for sellers to select items. The POD mug pictured below, for example, has recently begun its Valentine’s Day marketing preparations, and the BSR is already clearly showing an upward trend.
Pet supplies: no special holiday packaging required, items with a high reuse rate are preferred
With 27% of those celebrating Valentine’s Day in 2020 planning to buy a Valentine’s Day gift for their pet, pets are indeed becoming a more significant emerging segment of Valentine’s Day spending, according to a survey by NRF and Prosper Insights & Analytics.
As buyers buy pet supplies on Valentine’s Day mainly for holiday promotions, sellers do not need to make special holiday packaging for their products. In contrast, sellers new to the industry can choose some daily necessities for their pets, with high usage rates, high repurchase rates, and stable sales.
For example, pick-up bags, pee pads, pet toilets, and cat litter that made the Amazon list of pet supplies are good choices, while pet food. However, the product features meet the requirements, is not recommended to be tried quickly as many countries require food certification before it can be sold.
Product detail page optimization: Valentine’s Day keywords + special events
The selection of products is the first step in creating a pop-up. After the selection of goods, you also need to decorate the detail page, the purpose of which is to obtain more search traffic, as well as to create a festive atmosphere, to stimulate buyers to place orders. This article will focus on two methods：
Title: add “Valentine’s Day” keyword
Adding the keyword “Valentine’s Day” to your product title will help your product rank better in search engines and e-commerce platforms, so make sure you add relevant keywords to your product title and description.
The selection of keywords needs to take into account the traffic and creativity. Traffic can be judged with the help of keyword analysis tools. In addition to Google trends, selection tools are also a good choice. For example, the majority of large selection for Etsy platform and Amazon platform are providing keyword analysis function and the search keywords for similar keywords or long-tail keyword recommendations, easy for sellers to select.
And the headline ideas need to be more innovative, referring to the headline copy of headline sellers, for example:
- The perfect Valentine’s Day gift for husbands who love fishing
- Funny Valentine’s Day gift for moms who like to drink wine and do yoga
Special features: add a special event on the “Valentine’s Day” page and a personalized search section
Adding “Valentine’s Day” keywords to product titles and page descriptions is considered standard for detail page optimization. To create a festive atmosphere and promote sales, sellers could set up a “Valentine’s Day” special event in their shops to avoid the dazzling gift pages and make more efficient and accurate orders.
In addition, if you are an independent seller, you can consider setting up different types of personalized columns based on user search habits to facilitate user searches and improve user retention and conversion rates. Such personalized columns can be interpreted as Valentine’s Day shopping guide and can refer to the following directions:
Valentines’ gifts meaningful
Valentines’ gifts sweet
Valentines’ gifts unique
Valentines’ gifts cute Valentines’ gifts geeky
A collection of marketing ideas
Advertising creative that expresses the element of intimacy
It can be challenging for sellers of non-Valentine’s Day-related categories to create advertising ideas with Valentine’s Day elements. Still, in recent years many good advertising creators have incorporated intimate aspects of Valentine’s Day into their advertising ideas, making even non-Valentine’s Day-related categories very good at rubbing off on Valentine’s Day.
In 2020, for example, IKEA placed the furniture ad pictured below, which not only conveyed the buy-one-get-one-free promotion but also embodied a sense of intimacy that blended well with Valentine’s Day atmosphere.
Immersive Commerce
Live commerce is a marketing technique that is not new to sellers, and live commerce is also very suitable for Valentine’s Day promotions. However, what we are introducing here today is a recent emerging commerce method – immersive commerce.
A video posted by a TikTok blogger @twiniboo not long ago showed the blogger brushing and bathing a kitten to a soothing musical background with a pet toiletry called Pethroom. It is a brand specializing in pet toiletries. Because it is naturally integrated into the scenario of bathing a pet, not only does it not trigger a reaction from users, but it attracts users to search for it actively.
Immersive commerce is suitable for many categories, like pet supplies, food, kitchen utensils, personal care, etc. The following picture shows the immersive commerce video made by TikTok blogger @popcornshow6 for popcorn. Every Day, the host’s video is mainly about popcorn of different flavors that can be blasted through a pot, and the highest exposure rate has reached more than 164M.
to be cured or spend time on the social platform under the epidemic. The background music of the immersive video can be chosen to be soft, warm, and comfortable, with the scene set just right to catch the user’s eye at first glance. The product will naturally enter the user’s mind.
Conclusion
In addition to the tips mentioned above, Valentine’s Day pop-ups also require sellers to be patient, as survey data shows that almost 46% of people will wait until February to buy a Valentine’s Day gift. So there is plenty of time for cross-border sellers to take advantage of the opportunity to capture these “last minute” shoppers. And at last, eComhub wish all sellers a great Valentine’s Day sale!