What is gifting marketing? Well it really means “marketing your product or service as a gift.”
Gift marketing strategies are most common around major holiday or calendar events. Some products and services though are giftable year-round, like for kid’s birthdays.
But if you haven’t yet started thinking about a gift marketing strategy, now’s the time to do it, and fast. Here are four tips to help you quickly develop and launch a gift marketing strategy for the winter holiday and early part of 2023.
Tip 1: Determine Which Products/Services Are Giftable
Some brands have an entirely giftable line of products or services. Others may have only some. The first step is to identify which products and/or services are considered giftable.
Once you have that list, make a second column and mark if any are best for certain seasons to promote. For example Teak & Twine knows that it’s winter and holiday seasons, so products that provide warmth, caring, and love, or are shareable between friends and family will be most popular.
See below for a great example of how they’ve highlighted a holiday seasonal product on their website.
Tip 2: Match Up Consumer Views to Products
What we mean here is from the list of giftable products or services you’ve made above, now you need to identify which of your consumer segments best match each.
Doing this will result in helping you to
- Create targeted audience lists for advertising
- Decide which products can be marketed on social media, paid search, email and other placements
Determine how to visually showcase products – colors, video vs image, etc.
Tip 3: Create Varied Messages for Different Placements
Now you’ve got your list of giftable products. You’ve got the audiences you’re going after with each, the placements you need to use, and how to visually bring the products or services to life.
The final step before GO LIVE is to develop customized messages (copywriting) for each unique digital and/or offline channel. Everything from headlines and taglines to social post copy, CTAs and hashtags should be carefully considered.
Copy and messaging should be consistent in that a person seeing a product on Facebook will recognize it again on Google, but the content length, word choice and order, may be tweaked to uniquely fit the specific marketing channel it’s for.
For example, each of the below would have messages customized for different word counts, placement and design layouts
- Print (postcards, flyers, etc.)
- Facebook (Ads, Posts, Videos, etc.)
- Instagram (Reels, Stories, Posts, Ads)
- Display and banner ads
- Video ads (programmatic, YouTube, TV, will each be unique)
Tip 4: Have A Mix of Shopping Opportunities
No one message will appeal to everyone, and that’s why having an assortment of appealing sales opportunities is key. Let’s use Teak & Twine again. Look at how they’ve set up their Google Ads and organic search results. See the mix of gift-related headlines?
Note how everything is about gifting, but the headlines are unique to appeal to different shoppers and shopping stages.
- The main one lets searchers know Teak & Twine has a variety of gifts that may work for the searcher any time of the year
- The second one appeals to searchers who are looking for personalized, unique, customizable gifts
- The next few headlines focus on a type of gift – gift boxes. This has become a popular item across many brands and industries, as these are often a mix of small items that provide a sense of variety and though that single-item gifts may not. What’s smart here is that Teak & Twine set up their headlines to appeal to anyone; to corporate businesses (employers are often looking for small, affordable gifts to give to employees, agency partners or customers during the holidays); and lastly to cost-conscious shoppers who are looking for something great on a budget.
The key takeaway is to have a mix of strong messages that drive to different destinations where you have products highlighted to fit the season and gifter’s need.
