Valentine’s Day is coming up fast and there will be many dollars spent to prove that love is real. How much? Over $18 billion, according to the National Retail Federation, over $136 dollars per person. That’s a lot of love-shopping that your affiliate program can capitalize on with the right strategy. To help out, here are our tips on how you can (make) bank on love.
1. Try “Him & Hers” Messaging in Your Marketing
We’ll tread lightly here: men and women are different… when it comes to Valentine’s Day spending. Of that $18 billion above, men’s spending accounts for 65% of it, spending on average $210 compared to women spending $127. And there are obvious differences in what they buy for each other. Men buy more jewelry and clothes, women buy more dinners out.
This means there isn’t a one-size-fits-all type of messaging to capture both segments. Rather, it’s important that your affiliate marketing uses different messaging to funnel men and women to different products on your e-commerce store. Men and women are looking for different things, and if you cater to both, the right marketing push can get them where you want them to be.
For example, set up two different versions of your “Valentine’s Day 2019” sale page, one for men and one for women. With two different URLs, you can target your affiliate reps that cater to men or women. Say Affiliate A’s demographic is 80% males. You know what link to give to this affiliate and can suggest to them which products should be pushed for the male audience.
2. Learn Your Social Media Demographics
Similar to the point above, if you use different social media channels for your affiliate marketing (and you should), knowing the breakdown of the audience on each platform can help you not only target your messaging, but showcase the right products for each group.
For example, according to research by SproutSocial, Facebook skews slightly toward women as 83% of women are on Facebook compared to 75% of men. Instagram has an even wider gap with 38% women to 26% men. Ok, so they both have more women, so it’s fair to say that your messaging on these platforms can lean more in that direction.
However, there are a lot more demographic information you can pull to narrow your messaging. While both the above mentioned social networks skew female, both the age and level of income of these women are higher on Facebook. Factoring this in, it wouldn’t be a bad idea to feature more expensive items on your shop on Facebook as opposed to Instagram. Not to mention, since Instagram skews younger, you’ll be hitting more unmarried couples there than on Facebook which should affect your Valentine’s Day marketing strategy.
Knowing these statistics, you can work with your affiliates to put out specific messaging on each social media network, and you can even reach out to specific Influencers who are strong on a certain platform for a one time affiliate marketing campaign for Valentine’s Day.
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3. Shoppers Really Like Gift Idea Lists
At some point in the next few weeks, millions of people will be searching some variation of “valentine’s gift ideas,” on Google. A quick look at Google Trends shows when searches will peak:
This tells us two things: 1) people search for gift ideas more and more over the course of the entire month leading up to Valentine’s Day; and 2) people love to procrastinate! See that peak on the graph? That’s February 13th. It’s funny and it’s true.
Knowing this information, we suggest creating gift idea lists that evolve over the month. You can start with lists like:
- 10 Valentine’s Day Gift Ideas for Men/Women
- 10 Creative Valentine’s Gifts
- 10 Valentine’s Day Gift Ideas for Outdoorsy People
Then eventually put out gift idea lists like:
- Last Minute Valentine’s Day Gift Ideas
- Forgot to Get a Gift? Here are 10 Quick Ideas
- 10 “I’m Sorry” Gifts for Belated Valentine’s Day
For your affiliate marketing strategy, note the spike in searches and be sure to do a last minute push to bring in late shoppers. You can tell your reps to queue up content on the 11th through 14th with links to products that are no-brainers to buy.
4. Don’t Neglect Single People
Hey, the world’s changing. There are currently more single people in America than ever before, and it would be foolish not to try catering to them during Valentine’s Day as well. Whether they’re broken up, divorced, looking, or just enjoying their best life; targeting singles with the appropriate product or service during mid-February can tack on additional sales.
Pet lovers often use Valentine’s Day as an excuse to treat their sources of unconditional love. Recently single people might be looking to treat themselves with some luxury items. And don’t forget the rise of Galentine’s Day, a fictional-now-actual alternate event that many women and men come together to celebrate in a communal and different way.
Additionally, people buy Valentine’s Day presents for mothers and grandmothers, their own children and nephews/nieces, and even coworkers. Depending on what type of product your business sells, launching a niche affiliate marketing campaign around these “forgotten” groups can help you gain traction on your competitors during this season. Think outside of the box of chocolates, and leverage that affiliate rep with an audience in one of these demographics.
Happy Valentine’s Day!