Valentine’s day is fast approaching and as it is a time to show love to your lover, friends, family & colleagues; it is also a time to make money for your small business. While people are getting gifts for their loved ones, money is being spent and money is being made. For small businesses who have great products or services that people can gift their loved ones, it is a timely opportunity to make money, join the buzz and also grow their business.

In this article, I will be sharing some ideas small business owners can implement to make more sales in this period of love.  

1. Reward Your Customers With Discounts

You can reward your customers with discounts during this season, it is a time to show love and you can use this opportunity to appreciate your customers. This idea can help you grow your business because everyone loves sales and would definitely tell their friends about it. This referral leads to more awareness & more customers and definitely more money for your business. If you are a Flutterwave Store owner, we have made it easy for you to run discounts for your business with our new “Discount Code” feature. You can learn more about the feature and how to make the most of it here.

2. Create Valentine’s Day Gift Packages – Partner With Other Small Businesses

Gift packages have become really common and this has helped businesses make more money. Creating gift packages that vary in price is a good way to make the most of the season. Valentine’s day and in fact, other well celebrated seasons of the year is an excellent time to partner with other businesses. You can curate different gift packages and partner with other small business owners that have nice products. Here’s an example: Abisola is an excellent fashion designer who makes beautiful dresses and she wants to create gift packages for valentine’s day. She partners with Ashiwel who makes nice shoes; Edima who makes really nice Afrocentric beads, necklaces & bags; Eruke who makes quality wigs. 

Now, she can make different gift packages with all the products available to her based on these partnerships. She doesn’t only have access to her customers but to her partners’ customers too. These partnerships will be beneficial to all the parties involved, they will sell more and also grow.

3. Send Valentine’s Day Email To Your Customers

Everyone appreciates a sincere message, especially a well-written love letter on valentine’s day. If you have a list of your customers and their email address, you should definitely consider sending them a lovely & creative email on valentine’s day. It not only shows you care about them, but it also makes them feel seen and appreciated. 

You can even take it notch higher by adding a lovely handwritten note to each order you get during the valentine week or depending on how many orders you get, you can do valentine’s day. This encourages your customers, it also increases loyalty and love. Imagine the ripple effect of this, your customers can share the notes online thereby making more people to know you and also patronise you. 

4. Engage Your Audience On Social Media

Valentine season always trends on social media, always! You can plug into the buzz by creatively engaging your audience. You may want to create quizzes or polls around valentine, love & friendship; they can answer and also share to their audience. You can play around with the questions – funny questions, trick questions and so on. In fact, you can attach a small prize to it, to get more people to participate. 

You can also do a User Generated Content campaign and attach some money or gift to it. For example – you can ask your followers to create a short video sharing what love means to them, or a video about their favourite valentine’s day gift ever; you should choose the topic that works best for you. They should share the short the video once they’re done creating it and the video with the highest engagement will win a gift (can be money, discounts or a product). 

This will increase awareness for your business, help you get more customers and also grow your business. 

5. Create Content About Your Products

Before valentine’s day, you can also create content about your products and why they will be great valentine’s day gifts. You can write articles & make short videos of your product. People begin to think about valentine’s day gifts from early January till valentine’s day. Talking about your product and constantly sharing on social media can help place your business at the top of people’s mind. 

6. Forget Not The Singletons

Valentine’s day is a day to celebrate love, not only for lovers but also a time to celebrate your friends, family and colleagues. However, for those who may be feeling lonely because they are single, you can also work out something for them. 

You can create special packages for them or do a campaign where people can send gifts to their single friends. If you are creating a package for couples, you can also create one for single folks too. If you are a contrarian, you can actually do discounts only for single folks on valentine’s day. 👀

I hope you try out some or all of these ideas even as valentine’s day is fast approaching. I wish you the very best as you try them out, I can’t wait to see some of these ideas executed. 

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