How To Kick Off Your Sales On Father’s Day: 10 Marketing Ideas
How To Kick Off Your Sales On Father’s Day: 10 Marketing Ideas
This article will not include any father’s day jokes.
But if it did…
Just kidding.
Father’s Day is such a special holiday. Around the world, it’s celebrated on different days. But many might not know how the holiday started.
Buckle in for one good story.
It all began in the Middle Ages in the Catholic Church in honor of Saint Joseph (the father of Jesus Christ). As time went on, the holiday spread and was eventually adopted in other parts of the world.
In America, it was inaugurated in the twentieth century as a complement to mother’s day and it was agreed that it would be celebrated on the third Sunday of June.
If we fast forward to today, father’s day is particularly of interest to business owners. As you would well expect, sales spike because everyone’s out to get the perfect gift for their dads.
If you happen to be a business owner, we’ve got good and bad news for you. The good news is that this article includes 10 great marketing ideas for Father’s day. The bad news is that it’s tough to stand out with your marketing activities when there’s so much competition.
Don’t worry though, these creative ideas will help you with that if you put your own spin to it. No one knows your business like you do, so go through these ideas in the context of your brand to see what you can do differently.
Throughout the article, we’ll also sprinkle some free social media templates to help you promote your business on this special day.
Top 11 Marketing Ideas For Father’s Day
One thing to know about all these Father’s day marketing ideas and campaigns, is that they vary in difficulty of execution. Scroll down to find an idea that fits your brand, and adapt it based on what’s within your capabilities. Remember – it doesn’t have to be super complicated!
Some of the best campaigns have been the most heartfelt ones. Another side note is that in the age of social media – anything and everything is possible. Let’s get started.
1. Carry out a survey
You can conduct a survey to find out how your clients feel about the holiday. You can then use the information you get from the survey to improve your products and services. You can also use it to figure out which marketing strategies will be most effective for the big day.
While conducting a survey may not lead to actual profit, it can help you understand your customers, and that will eventually lead to sales in the long run.
Below is an example of Airbnb’s customer satisfaction survey. It’s nice how they tell you upfront that it only takes a few minutes to fill out, and that the results will help them improve their service. This makes people more likely to fill the survey.
One of the best questions you can ask customers in your survey is this: “what products (or services) would you like to add to our offers?” Besides giving you some needed information, customers also feel invested in your brand when they take your survey and are more likely to patronize you in the future.
Mind that your survey can include holiday-marketing related questions to help you with future campaigns. It’d be great to know the kind of offers your clients are on the lookout for.
When sending out your survey, it is important to make it as appealing as possible (especially on social media), so you can get high response rates.
One of the best ways to do this is to use beautiful and simple designs like those offered by VistaCreate. VistaCreate makes design templates for everything from social media posts to advertising and marketing. A great design might go a long way in helping you increase your response rate.
2. Experiment with media and formats
Most of your marketing efforts will be geared towards driving visitors to your website and social media pages. With this in mind, you should make these spaces as engaging as possible. To do this, you need to find a way to present who you are and what you do to your visitors in a simple and easy to follow format.
Consider this – if you give an infographic a second glance, and perhaps stay to read some bits – that’s great evidence of a very successful infographic. Imagine how many visitors you’ll impress if an illustration like this describes your business and offers.
Infographics are just one of the things you can use to impress your visitors. Another one is to create fun profiles of your employees, including unique pictures and descriptions like Ola interactive agency did with its impressive employee profiles.
3. Tell a good story
Here is a fun fact: the average person’s attention span shrunk from 12 seconds in 2000 to 8.25 seconds in 2015. Today, the numbers are even lower. This means that your online marketing campaign needs to tell a great story if it’s going to have any chances of success.
In a busy social media feed, it’s especially important to keep this in mind. People quickly scroll their feeds, and if your posts don’t catch their attention – you’ve lost a potential client. The secret to success on social media includes creating thumb-stopping content.
You got it, that means great design. Browse free VistaCreate templates for any occasion to easily create content for socials with our convenient drag and drop functionality.
[Explore templates]
Toyota‘s ‘My bold dad’ is a fantastic example of a great Father’s Day marketing campaign that told a compelling story. Not only did it feature an emotional narration of what it means to be a father, but it also included awesome product placement. That’s marketing!
4. Social media contests
Carrying out a social media contest is a very inexpensive way to reward your customers while driving more engagement at the same time. The great thing about social media contests is that the gifts don’t have to be very expensive, and you can give out things like discount coupons and small cash prizes.
One of the best social media marketing strategies was implemented by Kellogg’s Eggo back in 2013. In it, Eggo invited contestants to submit their favorite waffle recipes and then asked fans to vote for their favorite recipe. The owner of the winning recipe won a cash prize of $5,000.
For your business, you can organize a creative ‘dad and me’ selfie contest and give away free items. That’s just one simple idea. Have a brainstorm about all the different contests your business can carry out for your Father’s Day campaign, or test it during one of the holidays.
5. Guerilla marketing to the rescue
Guerrilla marketing is not the most sophisticated marketing strategy you can use, but it is still very effective, especially for creating awareness for your business.
Guerilla marketing is about being bold, doing something unexpected. It’s like an alternative ad campaign that’s really daring.
There is a great example of an MCD campaign. It was a street lamp redesigned to looked like a McDonald cup of coffee being filled from a pot. This will definitely get passersby to notice a subtle ad for a fast food chain.
As you can see, your creativity is the only limit to what you can achieve with guerilla marketing. If you have an online business, consider how guerrilla marketing principles can be applied to online activities. Now that’s food for thought!
6. Hold a Father’s Day live event
A live event is another marketing example that can work just as well for online businesses as it does for offline businesses. They can help you connect with your customers on a more personal level while allowing you to promote your products. You can even make the event fun by holding Fathers’ Day themed games and let fathers compete against their kids (and hand out Father’s day gifts!).
In general, in-person events are great for raising brand awareness. You can pair this with a social media contest and improve your online and offline participation.
One thing that’s difficult with this Father’s Day marketing idea, is that gathering the crowds to attend your event might be tougher than expected, and the costs to rent a place and organize everything you want to do is quite costly.
If your business can afford it, an all-out live event is a really wonderful idea (something to keep in mind for any holiday campaign in fact).
7. Create a Father’s Day gift guide
If you own an online store, you can make shopping easier for your customers by creating a gift guide. A Father’s Day gift guide is helpful because many people don’t know what to get their dads on Father’s Day. There are many corny ideas out there (socks, mugs, etc.), but even those can have a unique spin if you produce those products.
In any case, a gift guide is super useful for those that are a bit lost when it comes to finding the perfect gift. If your brand offers a range of goods and services – all the better! Create a gift guide and promote it on social media.
Seeing offers sorted into popular categories like price, interest, and age can help people put things in perspective and settle on that perfect item.
For example, Macy’s created a classical gift guide for the holidays and sorted their products according to gender, gifts for the home, and so on. Even though it is simple, it makes shopping easier.
8. Set limited-time offers
You can use limited time promotions to motivate people to buy your products or services on Father’s day. By making your offers time sensitive, you’ll see an increase in sales because most people won’t want to miss out on great deals. Most online stores already sell male-oriented products at a discount around Father’s Day.
Amazon did something really cool for their Father’s day marketing campaign.
Instead of price slashes, you can also give out branded promotional items like stress balls and face caps for free when people spend a certain amount of money in your store. Besides encouraging your customers to spend more, the items will also go on to advertise your brand wherever the customers go. It’s a win-win for your business.
9. Search Engine Optimization for the special day
Generally, when Father’s Day (or any other holiday) approaches, searches for those holidays increase a few months before the day. This means you have a great opportunity to drive traffic to your website and generate sales. Using keywords in your blog articles, you can rank higher for certain projects and offers, and generate traffic for your website at the same time.
You can use tools like Google keyword planner and SEMRUSH to do your keyword research. You can also do search engine management, in which you pay for your website to display on Google’s top page when users search for Father’s Day.
All things considered, even if you make a holiday gift guide, you can create an article about it and a website. One of them can be super optimized for the keywords you’d like to rank for. Many businesses rely on organic traffic for holiday-related requests. If you haven’t tried this strategy, give it a shot with one of the upcoming campaigns!
10. A kind gesture
Lastly, think about your email marketing campaigns. Have you done one for Father’s Day before? Often, businesses get so caught up in trying to generate sales, that they can forget about small, kind gestures that can go a long way.
Consider an email marketing campaign to say thanks to all the fathers out there, and to put the spotlight on your clients that celebrate it.
Yes, it’s still a marketing channel you can use to promote yourself. But in general, focus on the message and integrate a small section with some gifts. Integrate your product in a very subtle way in case your clients find it a good occasion to purchase something for the special occasion.
11. Video campaign for Father’s Day
The internet is full of such wonderful examples of video campaigns for different holidays. Although Christmas campaigns take center stage, consider that smaller holidays are still a great occasion to integrate your brand.
You might want to explore the option of doing a video campaign for Father’s Day to further solidify your brand in the minds of consumers. Nowadays, winning ideas have viral potential across all the social media platforms.
Get inspired by really outstanding examples online, and see if you can plan for something video-based for your campaign. No need to go lavish with a full scale production – nowadays, even TikTok video campaigns have the potential to spread like wildfire.
Bonus idea: Make it personal
You got this far! And we’ve decided to include a bonus Father’s day marketing idea at the end. Instead of thinking outwards (and ways to involve your clients), think about a potential campaign that looks inwards (focuses on your brand and your employees).
People look to brands not only for things to buy, but to see what the brands stand for. This holiday is a great occasion to involve your employees and do something a bit more personal. Think of a campaign where you can do so, and potentially create something viral.
People can share their personal stories in any format, and you can feature some of them on social media. This will get people talking about your brand. In raising more awareness for your brand, you might also generate some sales in the process.
Final thoughts on Father’s Day marketing
While some of these marketing tips (like guerilla marketing and live events) are fun on their own, you have to be creative with some of the others (like creating your buyer’s guide and testing new media and formats for campaigns).
The ideas you decide to go with depend on your time, budget, and the available resources to execute these Father’s Day campaign ideas.
With the right planning, any of these ideas can be scaled down or scaled up to do something truly outstanding for Father’s Day this year.
Remember that VistaCreate is the perfect place to realize all kinds of visuals for your Father’s Day marketing campaigns (and any other campaign). Check out our free templates and enjoy designing your content all on your own – no design skills needed.
