Weekly News Insight: Smart Way to Perfect Your 2020 V-day Communication
“Valentine’s Day is a sentimental tradition, but gift-giving can be driven by the economy.”
Valentine’s day, the annual celebration of love and commercialism is around the corner. Despite its romantic roots, it’s a significant shopping holiday for shoppers worldwide. According to the annual survey by the NRF (National Retail Federation), Valentine’s day celebrants in the US planning to spend an average of $196.31, up 21 percent over the previous record of $161.96 in 2019. And the total spending is expected to $27.4 billion, up 32 percent from the record of last year, $20.7 billion! It is indeed a great chance for marketing your brand and products.
“Valentine’s Day is a sentimental tradition, but gift-giving can be driven by the economy,”
NRF President and CEO Matthew Shay said.
Millennials driving Valentine’s Day spending
While flowers and chocolates still remain high on gift shoppers’ lists, consumers are looking for new ways to celebrate this day, and not just with their significant others, but also with family, friends, co-workers, and pets. Valentine’s day became a day to celebrate all forms of love: romantic, platonic, and self-love.
The latest study also says that this shift is caused by a more socially conscious and influential younger generation. And they’re the ones in charge: younger millennials, age range 23–29, are the most likely generation to splash out on Valentine’s since they make up the majority of singles looking for love or couples settling down. Gen X is close second when it comes to spending money on their loved ones, followed by the baby boomer generation.
Gen Z and millennials are the young groups who should not be underestimated. Especially when the Millennials are driving Valentine’s Day, celebrating on this Day for the fun and to meet the expectation from others. The length of the relationship and social media is the reason.
These younger adults are more likely to be in newer relationships, meaning they may feel pressure to spend more to impress their partner. That corresponds with Bankrate’s survey findings, which showed that those who have been in longer relationships tend to spend less on their spouse or partner than those who are in newer ones.
Social media and the internet, such as Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat come with a certain pressure to impress friends and followers, have caused them to spend more money on V-day. At the same time, retailers may be influencing shoppers through ads and messages.
73% of Millenials and Gen Zers think that Valentine’s Day is just a good opportunity to show affection to their loved ones.
For the brands and business owners, you wouldn’t like to miss this big holiday. And how to catch the Millenials and Gen Zers’ eyes and efficiently communicate with them? Here are some insights we would like to share.
Complementary Relationship Between Gen Zers and Influencers
Gen Zers placing trust in their peers and groups to find the best products. Thus, Influencers have played a vital role that helps deliver messages between brands and audiences. According to statistics, roughly one in five of Gen Z and millennials estimated made a purchase inspired by an influencer or celebrity post on social media. The combination of economic and tech-culture has made Gen Z quite industrious, creative, and accepting of this type of work.
Create Your Unique Promo
The best and most effective way to communicate and engage with Gen Zers, which will most possibly become the potential market of brands, is to understand the features of social media and influencers, hence utilize it on reaching your target audiences accurately. Last but not the least, combining social media with e-commerce marketing tools could definitely bring your better exposure specifically to internet users and drive wider demographics of your target market. Below are some tools and functions that you can use to catch Gen Zer’s attention:
- Exclusive Valentine’s Day Products
Redesign your best-selling product with a V-day signature, or create a new product line particularly for V-day, such as T-shirt with hearts, couple set merchandise. Consumers are always attracted by exclusive products, and it could be the most obvious and easiest way to drive your sales.
- Online Promo Code
This special offer is not only exposed to your target audiences, but also potential consumers. Revealing the code on the website or app, it will be seen by every user, including those V-day celebrants that come for it, and regular users that are just here to shop but might possibly be marketed.
- Product Customizing
Without a doubt, couples love customized goods, especially those with acronyms of their names or their photos on it. Customized products make consumers feel special as if they’re tailored for them. And it apparently makes a good reason for them to place the purchase. Customized cake, chocolate, or handkerchief with a monogram on it, could become a memorable and meaningful object for couples.
- USG on Socia Media
User-generated content is now being considered as one of the most effective and important marketing tools on social media since it’s always more trustworthy for consumers nowadays to hear words from a genuine product user or service experiencer. Integrating it with the product promotion methods that we’ve discussed above. You have your exclusive products, and what you have to do now is to find the right influencers that are the leads of the communities of your target audiences, gift them the products/services, and communicate with them regarding the features that you would like to share with your audiences. Remember, even the content is user-generated, it’s still vital to keep it relevant and authentic. Let the influencers tell the stories in their own ways, or it will make you no difference compared to regular ads.
- Special Hashtag
When it comes to influencer marketing, it’s always essential to put a tailored hashtag at the end of the content. The hashtag is one of the signature function on Instagram that’s being widely used by both regular users and brands. It simplifies the process of tracking results and performance for marketers and meanwhile makes it more convenient to check the related promotions and reviews of a particular brand or product for users.
- Interactive Content
A smart way to increase engagement is to interact with them. Influencers can share their own love story or anecdote in their contents, and invite their followers to also share their owns. Stories resonate with audiences could stimulate them to leave comments or share the post with even more people. Interactive contents usually get more attention and reach a better engagement rate compare to regular posts, and this significantly maximizes the effect and advantages of influencer marketing.
To sum up, according to the fact that majority of Gen Z’s purchase decision and consumption pattern is dominated by social media marketing, it’s absolutely vital for brands to understand the features of social media platforms and then utilize it while doing promotion and marketing. E-commerce strategies and influencer marketing can meanwhile become a very solid and helpful tool to support your promotion. Marketing and communicating with Gen Z, the adopter of this shift of era, the best and only way is to know their language, the social media, and ask the right person, the influencer, to approach them!
