Happy Romance Monetization Day!

A lot of people think I am somehow being too cynical when it comes to holidays like Valentine’s Day, but personally I’ve never taken to a day where we “celebrate” love by acting in ways that, if you were really in love, you’d be acting every day. Frankly, shoving all that love into one day pre-ordained by Hallmark is about as gothic as Halloween, where we celebrate fear, or St. Patrick’s Day, where we celebrate being lucky. None of that is to say I don’t like Valentine’s Day. In fact, Valentine’s Day is one of many reminders of how important holidays are - in marketing products. No matter what the holiday is, if enough people are celebrating it, you can use that to your advantage in moving products. Lingerie stores have a distinct advantage in this. They sell products for couples, and therefore can put together a decent sized push for Valentine’s Day in particular. It would seem then that they have a natural connection. This doesn’t mean your business can’t. The only important element in exploiting Valentine’s Day is that you should be selling a consumer product. B2B sales aren’t emotionally driven, and therefore you can’t expect a Sales Executive to buy his honey a romantic Interactive marketing strategy – even if you’re giving a weekend getaway to the first five customers. Enterprise customers aren’t interested in baubles – enterprise customers want results. Anyone else, however, is free game. And weaving Valentine’s Day into your campaign is actually quite simple, no matter what you sell. If you sell travel, be it plane tickets or motor homes, you can create a, “romantic getaway sale.” If you sell gourmet foods, it is simple work to convince customers that, “The way to a man’s/woman’s heart is through his/her stomach.” You can even move laptops more easily if you can convince consumers to, “tell her that you love her… with Dell!” If your copy uses the words, “love,” “romantic,” and/or “special someone,” and there is plenty of red and pink on your landing page, your conversions will show a dramatic increase on and leading up to February 14th. This is a bit of a simplification, of course, but since the populace already has the special-ness of this holiday ingrained in them, it is a waste not to take advantage of it by using web design and advertising copy tactics like these. Years ago, I told my parents I would never get married. My Mother, ever the pragmatist, told me that if that was true, then I should find a rich woman and marry her. After all, why waste an opportunity? The same is true for Valentine’s Day, or St. Patrick’s Day, or the 4th of July. Any holiday whose importance is already understood by the public is an opportunity that should not be wasted – even if your products aren’t directly related, even if you really aren’t feeling it. After all – I started this post talking about how I don’t care for Valentine’s Day. But how effective was I in making it work for our blog?

About the Author: Eric Reid

I am the Social Media Services Manager for Off Madison Ave. I've been with the company since 2006, when I was hired to do SEO, and link building in particular. When social networking sites started cropping up, at first I started using them to create backlinks - but they weren't the best for that, given all of the "nofollow" attributes. However, I did see the potential for all of the direct referral traffic they represent. Since then I've been actively pursuing both tactics for clients: Links that can help them for search, and social postings that get them involved in the conversation. It's about the coolest job you could ever get. ;)

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