Last-minute Valentine’s Day sales promotion ideas for a small business

Will you be my Valentine?

Valentine’s Day isn’t just a holiday for jewellers, florists, and chocolate lovers. Every small business can take advantage of the holiday to share some love and appeal to their audience. You can run cute marketing campaigns, offer deals, and do many other things to boost your sales!

To inspire you, here are our Valentine’s Day sales promotion ideas:

• Charm people with email marketing
• Couple up your products
• Share videos with gift ideas
• Promote a Valentine’s gift on Google
• Don’t forget your single customers
• Something for the fur babies

Valentine’s Day is a great opportunity to entice your audience using themed emails. Send something to people on your email list that stands out from the other boring correspondence they probably receive all the time. 

Start with an irresistible subject line, and make sure they:

• Play on the theme of love and romance or mention Valentine’s Day. 
• Hint at the contents of the email while being clear about the special offer.
• Use emojis where appropriate to help you stand out. 

Once you have a great subject line, it’s time to create the email itself. You want to make it appealing enough to drive customers to your website and buy your products. 

Aside from the amazing offers, make the email extra special by designing it in a Valentine’s Day theme. From the header through to the copy and call-to-action (CTA)! 

Need ideas for your email campaign? See our Valentine’s Day email marketing ideas.

A lot of Valentine’s Day circles around couples, so what better way to boost your sales than to couple up your products?

Whether you sell products online through Etsy or Amazon or run a physical store, you can display items that go well together. 

Examples of product pairs could be:

• Earrings and a matching necklace.
• Shoes and a belt.
• Wine and cheese that go well together.
• Matching bath towels.

While it’s tempting to highlight red, pink, and white merchandise, there are many other options to choose from. 

In fact, thinking outside the box helps you avoid clichés that your customers see everywhere. If your customers wouldn’t be interested in red heart-shaped products, there’s no use in promoting them. 

Focus on colours and shapes that your ideal customers would want to make your Valentine’s Day offer appealing to them.

When the same-old flowers and chocolates won’t cut it anymore, people will welcome a little gift inspiration. 

So why not create a video where you share your best gift tips?

With only a few days left to go, a well-timed video could be a life-saver for some of your customers. 

There’s no need to get fancy with it either. All you have to do is stand in front of the camera and show customers a few hot Valentine’s Day gifts. Or, if you’re camera-shy, you could create a slideshow that’s full of product pictures. 

All you need is your cell phone, a good staging area and a little help from other tools. For example, your Instagram story or a TikTok live session could be enough!

Just remember to share a link to these products to make it easy for customers to buy them.

Next on the list of our Valentine’s Day sales promotion ideas is Google. While running an ad for Valentine’s Day would be great, it’s not ideal last-minute.  

But thanks to the Google My Business platform, you can publish posts that show up when people find your business. 

Hosting a Valentine’s Day event? Create an Events post to encourage people to attend. Or you can create an Offers post to help expand the reach of your limited-time Valentine’s offer. 

Posting stuff on your profile is also one of the many Google My Business optimisations you can perform to rank higher on Google Maps. A higher ranking increases your chances of popping up in local searches. 

With so much talk of love and romance, single people might need a little confidence boost on Valentine’s Day. Or they might just want to indulge in some self-love to celebrate being happy alone. 

That’s why one of our Valentine’s Day sales promotion ideas is to also cater to the singletons during this romantic holiday. 

Valentine’s Day is the ideal time to market self-pampering items like soaps and spa items, delicious treats, or other items people wouldn’t buy every day. 

One clever strategy for these campaigns is to demonstrate that your products are perfect for enjoying alone.

For example:

• Share a picture of one person enjoying your box of chocolates in front of their favourite film.
• Shoot a short video of a bubble bath surrounded by lit candles and your products next to it. 
• Send an email with an encouraging message like “(Self)Love is in the air!” or “Take the time to love yourself this Valentine’s Day!”

No matter what products you promote in your sales promotion, singles will get the message if you portray a single person enjoying it.

Did you know that Brits spend £27 million on gifts for their pets?

So throw in a little something for the floofers to help boost your sales for Valentine’s Day. A well-planned post can go a long way to get your customers to buy a treat for their fur babies. 

Why not:

• Throw in a freebie with a purchase to show customers how ‘pawsome’ you think they are?
• Run a last-minute contest where customers share their cutest pet video? The winner could get a box of Valentine’s-themed treats. 
• Display heart-shaped treats at the check-out counter?

Now that you have some wonderful Valentine’s Day sales promotion ideas, it’s time to pick your favourites and get to work.

Determine who you want to target with your campaign beforehand to help you get more traction from your content!

And remember: Valentine’s Day is about love.

The key is to spread love, be positive, and highlight how buying your products will make this holiday magical for whoever buys them. 

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