Of Love and Money - the Valentine Bandwagon

Happy Valentine's Day

Valentine's day is almost upon us, so will you be doing the equivalent of the service station flowers for your marketing? Or are you madly banging your head against the computer keyboard trying to work out a way of jumping on the marketing bandwagon?

Did you realise that Valentine's Day is actually the second largest commercial event in the calendar, second only to Christmas? Love is big money, and the best way to get in on the action is to come up with a really well thought out campaign idea. The good thing about Valentine's Day is that it's the small, sensitive, personal touch that often works best, both for your relationship and your business marketing. Sure, huge marketing campaigns get results because of the sheer weight and money behind them, but there's no reason why the little guy can't have great success too.

Are you struggling to think of a good way to tie your brand in with Valentine's, then how about becoming the Valentine instead. Just because your brand doesn't immediately lend itself to the season of romance, doesn't mean that you can't make your campaign work. Try running a series of promotions based on how much you love your customers, or how about running a 2 for 1 offer on your products, because things are always better in pairs.

Virgin Mobile

But maybe you'd rather take the anti-Valentine's approach to your marketing. After all, not everyone is into the red roses and chocolates, and some of us who work in the industry are pretty much over all the hype by the time it rolls around. It's fantastic for anyone with a sense of humour, often going down just as well with couples as singletons. As long as your campaign is on-point, funny and clever there's no reason this couldn't work for you.

So while you're wondering how far you can stretch at marketing bow, here's a couple of facts about Valentine's Day that might help.

• 60% of shoppers plan to show their love for family members
• 45.2% will spend on their friends and pets
• While cards, chocolate, dining, flowers, jewellery and clothing are right up there, 11% of Valentine's gifts are "something else".
• Only 54% of people will actually spend the day with the one they love.
• 53% of women will actually break up because they didn't like their gift.
• Men spend almost twice as much on the gift as a female.
• the 25-34 age group are the big Valentine spenders, with the 35-44yo's coming in a close second.
• A quarter of Valentine shoppers will do it online, and will actually spend more than they would had they walked into a shop.
• 82% of Valentine's gift receivers said they would prefer an experience rather than an object for their gift.