April 2017 - Leverage Marketing

How to Use Snapchat in Content Marketing

April 28, 2017/1 Comment/in Content Marketing, Social Media /by Bob Kehoe

Since its initial release in 2011, Snapchat has exploded in growth, becoming the leading image messaging app, known for its disappearing pictures and fun filters. In 2017, Snapchat has 8 billion daily views, reaches 11% of the US digital population, and is worth more than $16 billion. It’s hard to ignore Snapchat for content marketing—it’s an important platform that reaches younger users in substantial numbers. The average Snapchat user spends 30 minutes daily in the application—time that advertisers can use to market to them.

But Snapchat digital marketing isn’t the same as marketing through Facebook or Instagram. Snapchat requires a more personal style—even from branded accounts. Creating connections on Snapchat may mean engaging with individual Snapchat users by directly sharing photos with them. Large branded campaigns are harder on Snapchat. Smaller accounts can’t do traditional ad spending on Snapchat, as the minimum ad spend for CPM (cost per thousand impressions) is $40,000 a month.

However, with Snapchat’s incredibly large user base, a talented advertiser can use Snapchat for marketing to create stories that engage their customers and create a loyal following. We’ll walk you through successful Snapchat marketing campaigns and tips to build your Snapchat account. Count on Leverage to grow your Snapchat prowess.

How to Improve Your Snapchat Marketing Skills

Snapchat can be a challenge for many marketers attempting to first break into the platform, because it’s markedly different from Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram or Pinterest. It’s more of an authentic experience, as users (and brands) don’t polish their images or videos the same way they would on other forms of social media. Snapchat is ephemeral, and the content produced for it is therefore not as professional. Users want to find something that feels genuine, a behind-the-scenes look at your company, not a heavily-edited marketing video.

One of the most important things to note about Snapchat is its demographics—more than 60% of its users are in the 13-34 age group, with 37% between 8-24, and 71% between under age 25. Only 2% of those using Snapchat are 55 and older. It’s a young audience—and your best practices and ideas for use should reflect that.

Snapchat Marketing Best Practices—and How to Use It

If you’re embarking on Snapchat marketing for your business, there are some best practices you should take advantage of when creating a campaign:

Create Urgency – Snapchat is all about ephemera, images, and videos that only last a certain amount of time. Creating an ad campaign, whether it’s a Snapchat story (a series of videos or images) or just a single video or image that evokes urgency will help in getting your message across.
Test Your Content in Private Messages– It’s imperative that you test your Snapchat content before sending it out to hundreds or thousands of followers—create a dummy Snapchat account or connect with a co-worker to gain feedback and see if your campaign works well on various platforms (iOS, Android, etc.)
Fit Your Content to the Platform– When developing content for Snapchat, it’s important to remember you can’t just use images you’ve created for Instagram or Facebook. As mentioned previously, Snapchat requires a personalized touch—address your audience like you’re talking to a friend and develop a persona for your Snapchat account and brand.
Use Both Images and Video– It’s important to use all forms of available media for Snapchat. With Snapchat Stories, you can combine both pictures and video using available filters and lenses to create a story your followers will love.
Tell Your Story- Your brand or company has a story. Use your Snapchat account to tell your fans a personalized story about what you’re marketing. You can use custom images and still photographs, as well as candid video to tell your company’s story. Polished and perfect won’t work for Snapchat, so develop something that feels core to the brand.

Market to Your Audience

With all these best practices, you still need to sell your product to the audience. For advertising to the younger Snapchat demographic, try some of these ideas to convert your followers:

Coupon Codes: Limited time coupon codes (ephemera) that expire after a brief time
Influencer Marketing: Snapchat celebrities or popular accounts can cross-promote your product
Anticipation for an Event: Use a popular event, like the Oscars or Super Bowl, to build hype for your company or product—tying it in with a promotion or offer

Snapchat Campaigns that We Love

Since Snapchat is a relatively new platform, it can be harder to find successful Snapchat marketing efforts. Nevertheless, here are a few of our favorite Snapchat marketing campaigns:

WWF (World Wildlife Fund) used Snapchat to raise awareness about endangered species through its #LastSelfie campaign. This selfie hashtag campaign symbolized the diminished population of many animals in Turkey and Denmark and played on people’s emotions for success. It used Snapchat’s ephemeral format to demonstrate how the animals, without intervention, could be the last of their species on Earth.
GrubHub took advantage of Snapchat to find summer interns, using the medium to share the job posting. By considering the average age of Snapchat users, GrubHub took advantage of the platform’s uniqueness. The job posting required “Snapchat Skillz” and included an application link within the Snap itself.
Audi partnered with Snapchat and The Onion, a satirical online newspaper, to drive up its Snapchat following during the Super Bowl. Audi gained over 6000 new Snapchat followers, posted dozens of images not necessarily related to their cars, and was talked about throughout the Super Bowl and for days afterward. By using of-the-moment memes and millennial jokes, Audi reached out to the target Snapchat population.

Snapchat as Your Marketing Partner

Snapchat is certainly not a traditional advertising platform: it doesn’t offer CPM for smaller marketers, its demographic is far younger than average, and it traffics in ephemera. However, if you play to Snapchat’s strengths, using less expensive targeted geo-filters, target the younger demographic, and follow the best practices, you can succeed on Snapchat. Remember, Snapchat is a useful social media platform only for some target audience. If your buyer personas are all older millennials, Gen X’ers, or baby boomers, Snapchat may not be the right choice for you. Leverage Marketing can help you decide whether Snapchat can pay off for your company.

Leverage Marketing’s marketing team has the experience with Snapchat you need. Our social media gurus know everything there is to know about Snapchat, Instagram, Facebook, Pinterest—all the platforms you need for your business. Contact us today to learn more about our social media services.

4 Wedding Industry Insiders Share Their Digital Marketing Strategies

April 25, 2017/2 Comments/in Content Marketing, PPC, SEO, Social Media /by Leverage Marketing

As someone who recently got engaged, I’ve realized there’s a lot I have to learn about wedding planning. And as a content marketer, I’ve noticed that wedding businesses are great at reaching me while I’m doing research online. From sponsored posts about wedding day survival kits on Facebook to the promoted wedding dress Pins I keep seeing on Pinterest, brands are everywhere.

To get a better understanding of how wedding businesses are capitalizing on digital marketing, I reached out to the following four wedding industry professionals:

Kaleigh Wiese, founder of Méldeen—Wiese founded luxury stationary company Méldeen in 2009. Méldeen creates custom save-the-dates, wedding invitations, ceremony programs, thank you cards, and more. In 2016, Wiese introduced PIXEL by Méldeen, a custom Snapchat filter design service.
Stephanie Padovani, co-founder of Book More Brides—Padovani and her husband, Jeff, started Book More Brides as a part-time project that played to their shared interest in marketing. Their consulting business, which helps wedding entrepreneurs increase leads and revenue, now grosses over six figures a year.
Ariel Meadow Stallings, founder of Offbeat Bride—Stallings launched her Offbeat Bride site in 2007 to promote her book about nontraditional weddings. The website gained popularity thanks to its focus on inclusivity and empowerment and now averages more than 1 million visits per month.
Jennifer Stein, co-founder and Editor in Chief of Destination I Do—Stein was inspired to help start Destination I Do in 2004 when she was planning her own destination wedding and realized there weren’t any magazines covering the subject. Destination I Do is now an international magazine with digital components, including a blog and online planning tools.

Méldeen: Using Analytics to Reach Wedding Planners

For Kaleigh Wiese, success in digital marketing is all about focusing on the right audience. Because of Méldeen’s price points and minimums, Wiese has found that wedding planners are her best customers (although she gets some direct inquiries from engaged couples, too). Wiese has a few major strategies for getting Méldeen in front of wedding planners:

Research the keywords and hashtags wedding planners use when searching for inspiration.
Explore relevant search terms that are getting more volume (e.g. foil, letterpress). Capitalize on those concepts in Pinterest content before they reach peak popularity (and saturation). Use Promoted Pins for high-value, relevant content.
Use Google Analytics to identify where the most traffic is coming from and focus paid campaigns on those geographic locations.

Bonus Tip: Wiese also pointed out that digital marketing strategies can help with networking—something that’s especially important for a wedding business that works with other wedding professionals. When using Instagram, Wiese says that she always tries “to tag all vendors involved in the day-of event.” It’s something that not a lot of wedding vendors think to do, but tagging one another on social media helps to build network connections and leverage credibility with potential customers.

Book More Brides: Capturing Leads with Hot-Button Content

Stephanie Padovani isn’t afraid to speak her mind when it comes to writing content for Book More Brides. She shared the following recipe for attracting clients (in her case, wedding professionals):

Identify a controversial topic your target clients get really worked up about.
Write an article that proves the arguments for your prospects and makes them look good.
Promote the article to your target audience and encourage sharing and republishing.

Padovani explained to me how she did this with one of her blog posts: 10 Things Couples Need to Know About the Wedding Industry That the Media Will Never Tell You. She wrote this post in response to common headlines that talk about “wedding markups” and “getting taken advantage of” when planning a wedding. In her article, she explains why those accusations are mostly false and how much behind-the-scenes work goes into being a wedding professional.

In addition to publishing the post on the Book More Brides blog, Padovani shared it with her email list and social media audience, encouraging readers to republish it and spread the word. In a few days, the post had received 3,000 page views and over 3,500 Facebook engagements and Tweets. To date, the post has received over 24,000 unique page views.

After getting the ideal audience to the site, Padovani recommends using multiple opt-in offers to generate leads. For example, the Book More Brides blog prominently displays an email template that visitors can download after they submit their email address.

Offbeat Bride: Listening to the Online Community

Ariel Meadow Stallings launched the Offbeat Bride website in 2007 as a way to promote her book (Offbeat Bride: Creative Alternatives for Independent Brides), and since then the site has become an active online community and collaborative blog with well over a million readers per month. As the site has grown, the Offbeat Bride brand has evolved to reach a wider audience. In an interview on her site, Ariel said:

“My initial target readership was super weird people planning super weird weddings…It became clear within a year that the majority of my readership was not actually all that weird, nor were they especially tech-savvy. The majority were brides planning what initially appeared to be relatively traditional weddings, looking for creative and unique ideas to make the weddings feel personal.”

Stallings often gets ideas for content that will resonate with her audience by going straight to that community of readers. Until 2015, Offbeat Bride had a private online forum with members who were “super vocal, super engaged, and highly invested.” Stallings sometimes sourced content directly from forum members and followed discussions to get an idea of what issues were most popular with her readership. While the forum is no longer online, Stallings now uses native insights from Facebook and Instagram to listen to the Offbeat Bride community. When she and her staff develop content, the focus generally remains on material “that’s positive but also provocative, relevant to consumers as well as industry readers.”

Destination I Do: Adapting to Changing Landscapes

Destination I Do began as both a print and online magazine, and while the publication still includes both traditional print and online components, its marketing strategy has evolved to meet the needs of today’s readers. Co-founder Jennifer Stein told me that because so many engaged couples rely on online and mobile content when planning their weddings, Destination I Do has invested in increasing visibility and providing a great user experience. Stein noted:

“We invest marketing dollars in Instagram to generate a genuine engagement with our readers as well as leveraging idea inspiration platforms such as Pinterest. We also put our budget in areas like Facebook, Google AdWords, and SEO [strategies] to drive traffic directly to our site. Data is only one piece of the puzzle. Our goal isn’t just to get unique visitors on our site to bring product awareness, it’s to engage with our readers so that they can experience a helpful conversation with us.”

Stein and the rest of the team at Destination I Do are most interested in targeting a niche audience of engaged couples who are planning a destination wedding and honeymoon. Stein said that because a destination wedding is such a big moment (and one that requires a lot of planning), “we do our best to provide partner products, inspiration, and content that will help [couples] with that process and, in the end, make it fun and stress-free.”

Takeaways for the Wedding Industry

Although the four wedding professionals I spoke to are all targeting different audiences, I noticed a few similar strategies:

Pay attention to what your target audience is talking about in wedding forums, blog comment sections, and social media posts. This will help you develop content that effectively engages that audience.
Use Google Analytics (and other data collection tools) to get a better understanding of your site visitors’ behavior and interests. You may find that your site is appealing to different segments than you originally thought.
While search engine optimization is important, it’s equally important to optimize your wedding business website for your visitors. Provide the inspiration and information that will be most useful to your audience, whether they’re planning their wedding or assisting with the planning for someone else.

Are you a wedding business owner with an online presence? Let us know what digital marketing strategies have worked for you in the comments. And if you have any questions about how you can increase your traffic and conversions, don’t hesitate to contact Leverage Marketing directly.

How the Evolution of the Google Search Engine Has Changed Business

April 19, 2017/1 Comment/in SEO /by Bob Kehoe

The word “Google” has become nearly synonymous with the concept of “search” over the past couple decades. With the emergence of technology such as voice searches, one must wonder if the word “Google” will someday replace the word “search” entirely (Lost your keys? Just Google them!).

Businesses are learning that they are left behind without a presence on Google’s search results pages. Gone is the heyday of direct mail and billboards – if your customer can’t find you on the first page of search results, do you really exist? No matter who you are or what your business does, you need to know about the evolution of Google search to understand how your site will be affected and what you can do to beat out the competition in this space. Hence, we’re looking into the history of the Google search engine, the world’s most famous algorithm.

Just BackRub It

While the full history of search engines began several years before, Google started in 1996 as a concept engineered by two Stanford students in a dorm room. While other search engines primarily collected and retrieved URLS and titles based on pure keyword match, the earliest iteration of Google was different. The early Google search algorithm, then named “BackRub”, utilized citations to help provide searchers with valuable search results. It gave pages “value” based on how many times they were mentioned (linked to) across the web. Pages that had a lot of links pointing towards them were given stronger rankings on the search results pages, as the number of mentions indicated that the page was important to readers.

Does that sound familiar? If you have some knowledge about search engine optimization, you’ll know that gaining links to your site is one of the most powerful ways to rank in higher positions on search pages and get more traffic and conversions. Maybe the name has changed, but Google still values the “backrub” your site gets when another reputable site links to it.

You (Can) Always Get What You Want

Have you ever Googled something and been amazed by how perfect the results were? Contrary to what you might think, Google’s algorithm can’t read your mind – well, not exactly.

The minds behind Google spent the years after its inception looking for ways to make the algorithm produce more relevant results for searchers. They found a lot of nifty ways to achieve this. In 2000, the great evolution of the Google search engine began when the team started to tweak the algorithm that helped bring trustworthy and relevant pages to the top of the search results. There have been a lot of changes to Google search over the years, but some notable updates include:

2003: Google began cracking down on sites that were manipulating the links-as-votes algorithm with huge sites created simply to link to other sites. In fact, Google is still perfecting the way it determines “good” links and “bad” links – which is why trying to manipulate Google’s algorithm by purchasing or trading links is an unwise long-term decision for your site. Google will find you, and it will penalize you.
2010: Google started taking into account signals from social media when deciding what pages rank highest. Similar to links, social signals help indicate that a site is a place that people like and trust. That’s right–Twitter is not just for the kids anymore.
2011-2015: The Panda algorithm updates went live to help demote ad-heavy and thin content pages, which offer a somewhat unfriendly user experience. With this big round of changes, Google helped push up high-quality content and websites to the top of the list. A grammatically-incorrect paragraph or two just doesn’t cut it anymore.
2012-2016: The notorious Penguin updates took a swing at websites using spammy tactics to improve their rankings, such as keyword stuffing. In other words, if you’re writing for the machines and not humans, Google probably doesn’t like your site.
2015: Google announces that machine learning was being built into the algorithm and was one of the most important ranking factors. Essentially, Google is not just reading the words we search, but also interpreting what we really mean when we type them.

The continuous improvement of Google’s algorithm is one of the reasons it has dominated the history of internet search. While Yahoo! technically existed before Google, people flocked to Google due to the ever-improving relevancy of its search results. Sounds as if we like having our minds read – and sounds like we should be trying to read our site visitors’ minds when creating our sites, too. Google’s doing it, after all.

Don’t Rage Against the Machine

What’s next for Google, then? A robot that comes to your house and answers your questions before you can ask them? Maybe not yet – but we’re not that far off.

Mobile technology is driving changes in Google’s search algorithm and layout, and up-and-comers like voice search are beginning to change the way we search and the way Google answers. “Googling” is ingrained into nearly every moment of our daily lives. We don’t look through the phone book to find a plumber anymore – we Google “plumbers near me”.

And even the concept of Google has taken over the way we do things – everything from dating apps to shopping sites operate using intelligent search algorithms that want to read your mind and give you what you want.

While other mediums will still hold value, search is becoming the main battleground for all kinds of businesses – ecommerce, service, even entertainment. Search is where you win conversions such as phone calls and form fills, or where you lose customers with weak rankings and spammy-looking titles. Google constantly looks for ways to give better search results to searchers, and sometimes, sites get hurt when Google decides they’re not good enough.

But why fight it? Give Google what it wants – because it’s also what every business’ customers want. They both want to see high-quality and easy-to-use sites that answer their burning questions. If there’s anything business owners can learn from the history of the Google search algorithm, it’s that it just wants the results that are best for everyone.

You know what they say – build a great site, and the customers will come.

Ready to get in Google’s good graces? We’ve got you covered. Subscribe to our biweekly newsletter for the digital marketing advice you need to step up your site’s performance, or get in touch with us to learn more about how a digital marketing agency can grow your brand.

40 Questions To Ask Before Hiring a Digital Marketing Agency

April 13, 2017/28 Comments/in Content Marketing, PPC, SEO, Social Media, Web Design /by Leverage Marketing

Maybe you’re planning to hire a marketing agency for the first time. Maybe you’ve been burned by a black hat SEO agency and have sworn you’ll be more particular about the next marketing partner you choose. Whatever the case, you know that when hiring a digital marketing agency, you need to do your research and ask all the right questions.

Not sure if you’re covering enough ground with your current list of questions? We can help with that. We’ve come up with a list of 40 questions to ask before hiring a digital marketing agency. Many of them are questions that our clients have asked us—or that we wish would come up more often!

No time to read the list right now? Save it for later:

Jump to a section:

SEO

How will you improve our search engine rankings? Get the agency to talk about their process. Watch out for agencies that use black hat techniques (such as buying low-quality links) or promise that they can get your page to rank number one for certain keywords.
What’s your process for earning high-quality links? Does the agency have a database of relevant placement opportunities and a process for reaching out to bloggers?
Do you follow Google Webmaster Guidelines? Your agency should always follow the Webmaster Guidelines to help Google find, index, and rank your site. Following these guidelines will also help your site avoid penalties.
Have you ever helped a site recover from a penalty? Can you tell me about that process? Hopefully, the agency hasn’t gotten any of their clients penalized, but they may have had new clients come to them needing help recovering from a Google algorithm penalty.
How long will it take to see results? The agency won’t be able to give you an exact date, but effective SEO campaigns should start positively affecting your site in about three to six months.
What will I need to do to make the campaign successful? Find out what information you can give the agency to make your SEO campaigns as successful as possible.

Content Marketing

Can you show us some writing samples? Any agency that offers content marketing services should be able to show you examples of their writers’ best work.
How will your writers familiarize themselves with our business and industry? You need to know your agency can handle the amount of research needed to produce authoritative content for your business.
How do you optimize your content for readers and search engines? Learn about the content team’s process for connecting with your target audience. Find out how closely they work with the SEO team and whether they optimize their content for relevant keywords.
What types of content do you produce? Find out if the agency has experience producing not just website copy and blog posts but also infographics, video scripts, short animations, email campaigns, eBooks, and more.
How many internal and external content pieces will you create per month? If your goal is to stay top-of-mind with your audience by publishing a new blog post every day, you’ll need to make sure your agency has enough bandwidth.
Will you be publishing new content on our site? Find out if the agency can add images, format content to appeal to online readers, and publish the final product to your site. If the agency doesn’t handle publication, you’ll have to assign an in-house team member to stay on top of it.
What metrics will you report on? The agency should go beyond just vanity metrics (traffic, social shares, number of comments) and measure how their content assists in conversions.

Paid Search

Do you have a Google Partner Badge? If your agency has a Google Partner Badge, it means they have employees who are certified in Google AdWords, have access to their own Google Agency Team, and keep up with the latest AdWords innovations.
Do you offer services across multiple PPC platforms (not just AdWords)? While Google is the most widely used search platform, it may be worthwhile to find out if your PPC agency also uses Bing Ads (especially since Bing has a 22% share of desktop search traffic).
What tools do you use to optimize your paid search campaigns? The agency you’re interviewing might use paid search tools that would be too expensive for you to bring in-house. They may also have proprietary tools that you can’t get anywhere else.
Will we be able to see actual spend within AdWords? Your agency should be transparent about how they’re spending your ad dollars.
What metrics are included in your standard reports? CPC, CTR, ad positions, conversion rate of keywords and landing pages—your agency should deliver easy-to-read reports that make it clear how your paid search campaigns have been performing.
Do you have experience managing paid campaigns on Facebook and LinkedIn? As organic reach on Facebook and LinkedIn decreases, it’s becoming more valuable to hire a marketing agency with experience in paid social media.

Social Media

What social channels should my company be on? Chances are, you don’t need to be on every social media network in existence. Your agency should be able to recommend the channels that are most relevant to you based on your audience and business goals.
What is your process for community management across platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, etc.)? A good social media team should be prepared to respond to comments and facilitate conversations on all your social channels—and to look for ways to connect with customers across those channels.
How will you ensure our social media presence reflects our brand? Your agency should be thinking of social media strategies that are consistent with your brand rather than just resorting to tactics they’ve used for other clients.
What is your content development strategy? Find out how closely your agency’s social media and content marketing teams work together when it comes to producing social content.
How do you measure ROI on social media efforts? Your agency should be able to describe how they’ll track campaigns and measure the results in relation to your goals (e.g. conversions, revenue, customer acquisition).

Web Design

Can you show us some of the websites you’ve designed? Although your website obviously won’t look exactly like the others your agency has designed, it’s good to get a sense of their aesthetic before you commit.
Do you custom-design websites or use templates? If you have a limited budget and your website isn’t a major source of sales, a template site might be enough. However, if you need a unique site that will generate leads or sales, you should talk to agencies that offer custom design services.
How much input will I have in the design? Find out if you’ll be able to see the website and provide input as it’s being created. You should also find out what the agency’s process will be if you don’t like the initial design.
Will you use responsive design? Any good web design agency knows that websites need to look good on all screen sizes, from smartphones to desktop monitors.
Will my website be able to scale as my business grows? Your agency should design your website so that more products, services, navigation options, and other features can be added as needed without a complete site redesign.
Do you offer ecommerce services? If you have an ecommerce business, you’ll want to work with an agency that can handle shopping carts, support for multiple currencies, updating prices to reflect discounts, and more.
Do you offer ongoing maintenance once the site goes live? Will the agency be able to handle troubleshooting post-launch, or will you have to find another vendor to maintain your website?
What role does SEO play in your site design? Will your web design agency also be able to produce keyword-optimized content, add title and meta tags, implement a crawlable link structure, and use other strategies to make your site SEO-friendly from the start?
Do you set up Analytics tracking when designing a new site? It’s important to get Google Analytics tracking set up with your new site so that you can begin viewing behavior and performance metrics.
What kind of security features do you offer? It’s a good idea to make sure your agency can set up a Secure Socket Layer (SSL) certificate to establish a secure connection for traffic between the web browser and server.

General

How will you help me stand out from my competition? Your agency needs to understand your target audience and what you can deliver to your audience that your competitors can’t.
How will you improve my site’s conversion rate? The agencies you interview may talk about how they can improve your visibility and increase traffic to your site, but they ultimately need to increase conversions/sales to make your investment pay off.
What experience do you have working with businesses in my industry? It’s nice to know if your agency has experience with other businesses in your industry, but it’s not necessarily a deal-breaker if they don’t. You could also ask: What steps will you take to become an expert on my business and industry?
How will we communicate? Find out who you’ll be working with on a regular basis and how often you can expect to talk with them.
How will you report on our progress month-over-month? Will the agency deliver an easy-to-read report and summary every month? Will they walk you through the report in a monthly meeting?
How do your different marketing efforts fit together? Ideally, you’ll find a digital agency that sees all its departments as working together towards big-picture goals, rather than existing in separate silos.

We hope these questions will help you in hiring a digital marketing agency. And don’t forget: Leverage offers all the services described above. Contact us to learn more, and subscribe to our biweekly newsletter to have helpful marketing advice delivered to your inbox.

Mother’s Day Marketing Secrets that Lead to Profitability

April 11, 2017/0 Comments/in Content Marketing, Email Marketing, PPC, Video Marketing /by Bob Kehoe

Mother’s Day is one of the biggest commercial holidays of the year. Thanks to companies like Hallmark and the power of collective guilt, in 2015 the average consumer spent $173 on Mother’s Day gifts. The holiday has expanded from mothers to wives, daughters, sisters, grandmothers—women in general. The challenge, therefore, is figuring out how to develop Mother’s Day marketing ideas for this larger population.

Developing a Mother’s Day marketing strategy before the holiday is integral to your success. With an increased focus on online shopping, three in 10 shoppers will buy a Mother’s Day gift online this year, using mobile phones to research and purchase their gifts. By developing a mobile-focused and forward-looking approach to Mother’s Day advertising, your brand can succeed this year.

Marketers use conventional techniques around holidays like Mother’s Day to entice shoppers, including free shipping (55%), price cuts (44%), and coupons (41%).

But beyond these apparent techniques, here are some of our Mother’s Day marketing ideas to help your business delight customers and the important women in their life this year:

Video Marketing

Mother’s Day video marketing campaigns like Proctor & Gamble’s 2016 Olympic Games’ ad employ emotional techniques, invoking the bond between mother and child. This Mother’s Day marketing strategy displays the strength of mothers and how they help their children succeed. Developing Mother’s day video marketing campaigns can be extremely successful, as videos like this can perform up to 20% better than similar as placements.

This P&G ad has over 22 million views at the time of publication. The ad shows Olympic athletes’ mothers helped them in their journeys to the Rio games, comforted them in times of struggle, and supported them through everything.

When creating Mother’s Day video advertising ideas for your product or brand, attempt to play on the feelings of the audience—the connection between mother and child, or wife and husband. By utilizing emotional advertising techniques, you can capture market share and increase your sales around Mother’s Day.

Contests and Giveaways

No matter the season or holiday, consumers love contests and giveaways. You can utilize sweepstakes and giveaways around products you’re promoting to drum up excitement for your Mother’s Day sales and marketing efforts. Tie your special or contest into the items you’re trying to sell, such as beauty products, chocolates, or flowers for mom.

Offering a high-value prize, like a spa day or a vacation package for two, can get customers talking about your brand. This type of Mother’s Day marketing strategy can be an excellent way to get email sign-ups for your mailing list as well.

Gifts and Mother’s Day Specific Products

When creating Mother’s Day marketing, focus your deals and promotions on specific gifts for Mother’s Day. Remember that Mother’s Day goes beyond gift-giving for mothers–to aunts, sisters, grandmothers, wives, and even daughters. You can create Mother’s Day packages targeting specific segments of the population, as well as those to whom they want to give the gift.

Nostalgia is a powerful factor in driving customer engagement—whether it’s a child buying their mother a gift that’s reminiscent of a good time in their lives or a husband giving his wife a gift reminding them of how happy they are to be parents. Utilize social media to promote your Mother’s Day gift packages—Pinterest and Instagram are the most popular social media platforms for Mother’s Day.

Email Marketing

Before beginning an email marketing campaign for Mother’s Day, it’s important to segment your email lists and create email content that speaks to your individual customer bases. As Mother’s Day is a diverse holiday, create well-crafted emails targeting those who plan far in advance—in addition to emails for last-minute gifts will allow you to maximize your email list.

Simply starting email subject lines with “Mother’s Day” will also increase your success, as titles that start with the holiday phrase have a 16% higher engagement rate than those that include the phrase later in the line. By segmenting your lists, using Mother’s Day-front loaded subject headings, and writing original emails, you can succeed in capturing market share during the holiday.

Mother’s Day PPC Campaigns

To make an impression this Mother’s Day, work with your PPC team to create a campaign several weeks before the holiday. Make sure to update relevant ad copy for Mother’s Day product categories and talk to your team about prioritizing bids for Mother’s day product categories, including popular gifts and presents.

A smart Mother’s Day PPC marketing strategy would be to start with low bids on broad queries and then segment and monitor engagement to accurately remarket to likely customers. Advise your PPC team to save ad dollars for last-minute Mother’s Day shoppers as well.

By using these techniques and other Mother’s Day advertising ideas, you can increase your sales and build goodwill towards your brand. Mother’s Day grows each year, with spending reaching $21.2 billion in 2015. Grab a slice of the pie by utilizing these marketing strategies.

If you need help with your Mother’s Day advertising strategies, the Leverage Marketing team can help you develop a plan to increase your sales and website reach. Sign up for our newsletter to stay up to date on the latest news in the digital marketing world from Leverage.