Memorial Day is an important day in the history of the United States to honor those who’ve sacrificed their lives while serving in the armed forces. However, for marketers, it’s also a day that can help skyrocket sales and bring in new customers.
In fact, it’s one of the biggest holiday weekend sales of the year. And to capitalize on it, you need to have some powerful Memorial Day marketing ideas up your sleeve.
The COVID-19 pandemic has forced shoppers to move online, and its effects have already started showing results. Memorial Day sales saw a sharp spike of 63% YoY in 2020. While Memorial Day 2019 generated about $2 billion in spending, this figure was $3.5 billion in 2020. This was the case even though discounts were better, on average, by 3%.
But these attractive sales figures also mean that you can expect intense competition this year. To get ahead of your competitors, it’s essential to have solid marketing strategies in place for Memorial Day 2021.
So, let’s take a look at some of the most critical ones that can help you.
5 Memorial Day Marketing Ideas to Skyrocket Your Sales
Here are the best Memorial Day marketing ideas that can inspire your marketing campaign and boost your sales.
1. Photo Contest
Social media platforms are perhaps the best places for launching a contest and expanding your reach manifold.
And why is that?
The average social media user in the United States spends well over 2 hours daily on social media platforms. So, a contest is bound to catch their attention with ease, especially if the prize you offer is attractive.
Image via We Are Social
But why should you opt for photo contests?
The reason is simple — these contests can help you get tons of user-generated content (UGC), which works well in building your brand awareness. Additionally, all of this content would be visual, which, in turn, would help you gain even more traction. That said, here are some photo contest ideas that you can use for your Memorial Day marketing campaign:
- Veteran photos: Ask your followers to upload photos of veterans along with a story.
- Cemetery photos: Ask for photos of cemeteries that best represent Memorial Day.
- Branded photos: Encourage followers to upload photos with your products.
- Memorial Day décor photos: Ask your followers to upload photos of their home décor for Memorial Day.
The best part about these contests is that you can decide how you’d like people to register for them. They can either participate by using your branded hashtag in their posts or fill up an entry form (which aids lead generation).
Here’s a great example of a Memorial Day photo contest hosted by Outdoor Products in 2020.
2. Video Contest
Photos may be great visual assets but videos are clearly the next big thing when it comes to social media. As many as 87% of marketers say that videos give them a good ROI.
Additionally, videos can help you expand your reach on social media as people are twice as likely to share them than any other form of content. This added reach would also mean that more people might join the contest and create even more UGC for you.
Video contests are similar to photo contests and you can use a form for video submissions or directly pull content from social platforms using hashtags.
What’s more?
Using Woobox, you could also create video galleries on your website and enable voting to select the contest winner.
Some of the contests you could host are:
- Caption this video: You could create a Memorial Day video and ask your followers to provide a caption for it.
- Branded video: Ask your followers to create a video of them using your products.
- Make a wish video: You can ask your followers to create a video of them wishing for a product and explaining why they want it.
These are, but a few video contest ideas that could help you gain traction during the Memorial Day weekend. You could come up with unique contest ideas as well.
For instance, AAFCC Oroville hosted a photo and video contest for their Memorial Day giveaway last year. They asked their followers to capture the best moment of the day and share it with them.
3. Instant Win Contest
Most contests would require your participants to wait for the results. This may lead to many of them losing interest in them. As a result, they might not land on your website or social media accounts again.
You can avoid these undesirable outcomes by choosing to go for an instant win contest. These contests help you drive a lot of traffic to the contest landing page where the users can find out if they’ve won anything instantly. This helps you take advantage of their sense of urgency and the fear of missing out (FOMO) to get numerous leads and sales.
For example, Mattress Firm launched a Memorial Day giveaway in which they put up an instant win contest. The visitors had to fill up a form and could instantly win one of the fifty mattresses, each worth $3000. Even those who didn’t win got a discount coupon. This drove their engagement, website visits, and sales.
4. Hashtag Giveaways
Hashtag giveaway promotions can work wonders for your brand awareness by helping you harness the power of UGC. They’re fairly similar to photo and video contests that are based on hashtag registration.
In these contests, you’ve to ask your followers to create content related to Memorial Day and provide them with a unique branded hashtag. When they use this hashtag in their posts, it’ll gain traction and help improve your brand awareness.
But what makes these hashtag giveaways even more interesting is that you can run them on multiple social channels simultaneously using a platform like Woobox. As a result, your hashtag will trend on major social media networks and help you reach a more diverse audience.
Another good example: Bogg Bag launched a hashtag giveaway last year for the Memorial Day weekend. Their audience was asked to follow their page, tag their friends, and then comment using a unique hashtag that included their brand name.
5. Comment-to-Enter Contest
The easiest way to market your brand during the Memorial Day weekend is through a comment-to-enter contest. These contests are the simplest ones to execute and are targeted at increasing your social media reach and engagement.
To participate in these contests, all your followers have to do is comment on your posts. You can also take it a step further by asking them to tag their friends in the comments. The idea here is to increase the reach of the post as the tagged friends might tag others, and so on.
Additionally, you can ask them to like and share the post. However, remember not to include too many conditions for participation as they could potentially put off your audience.
Once the contest is over, you can randomly choose one of the comments as the contest winner using a platform like Woobox.
For example, note how Jack’s Fruit and Meat Market launched a comment-to-win contest for Memorial Day on Facebook. They asked their followers to tag three friends in the comments and also like and share the post. This has helped them get over 100 comments and shares within just 30 minutes of posting it.
Memorial Day Prize Ideas
As mentioned above, the prize that you select for your Memorial Day giveaway has to be attractive enough for your audience to participate in it. Here are some potential Memorial Day giveaway ideas for you:
- Shopping voucher/gift card
- Free products
- Home appliances
- Discount coupons
- Travel tickets
- Exclusive meal passes
Ready to Boost Your Sales on Memorial Day?
Memorial Day is an occasion to remember the sacrifices of our veterans, but it’s also become a major weekend to boost your sales. To amplify your reach, you can leverage marketing tactics like:
- Launching a photo or video contest
- Using instant win contests
- Starting a comment-to-win contest
- Launching a hashtag contest
To launch and manage all of these contests, it always helps to have a platform like Woobox. From quizzes to giveaways, we can help you take your brand’s marketing to the next level across multiple channels such as your website, social media, and emails.
So, get in touch with us today to get started with your Memorial Day marketing campaigns. Woobox Support is available from 9 am to 5 pm PST, Monday through Friday at 1-360-450-5200 and support@woobox.com.