Valentine’s Day is one of my favorite holidays of the year because it’s where you can think out of the box with your offers and creative copy.
Not only that, but it’s super easy to segment your audience using Facebook’s relationships interests.
In this article, I’ll reveal five Valentine’s Day targeting hacks you can use on Facebook this February.
1. Split your entire sales funnel into two
However you’ve set up your Facebook funnel, when running Valentine’s related content, you need to split your funnel into two.
The first segment is anyone who is single. You do this by simply choosing the single interest.
Then you segment everyone else who is in some sort of relationship.
Facebook also lets you target people who are separated, divorced, or who have marked their relationship status as “complicated.” I would avoid these interests as you could end up annoying them, as these are pretty sensitive segments.
You need to segment your audience into single or in a relationship, as this ensures the offer each audience sees is relevant to them.
2. Beat the competition and add urgency
Valentine’s Day is an industry.
It was estimated that in 2017, $18.2 billion was spent in sales.
You need to start early and add urgency.
How early? Well you’ll have to test that for yourself, but any time after the 10th of January is a good place to start testing.
When you run ads early for a holiday, consumers don’t give them much attention and usually think:
“Oh it’s way too early to be thinking about that holiday. I have too much on my plate right now.”
If you’re going to run ads early (which I suggest you do), add urgency to your copy.
Create sensitive offers that force them to make a choice right now. Take action and save money, or have the fear of missing out (FOMO).
If you do not add urgency to your copy but run ads early in January, you won’t get as good engagement.
Tip: use offer ads with 24-hour expiry windows when running such offers.
3. Don’t be scared to go away from your brand’s colors
What color is synonymous with Valentine’s Day?
Don’t be scared to overuse the color red in your creatives, even if it goes against your branding.
The color red is a subconscious trigger in our minds for love, and it will have a big impact on your CTR if you theme your ads to match the holiday.
However, avoid temporarily changing your brand’s Facebook profile picture to a Valentine’s Day theme if you’re spending thousands per day in ads, as they won’t match up with your non-Valentine’s content and impact them negatively.
For your Valentine’s content, include the color red, hearts, and cupid even if you’ve never used that type of material before.
These are all eye triggers that will get people to engage with your ads.
4. Messaging to use for singles and couples
The key to really crushing it on Valentine’s Day is to target singles and people in a relationship.
Targeting people in a relationship is super easy on Facebook as they let you segment people in a relationship by how long they have been together.
You can target by how long couples have been engaged or married by selecting the ‘parents with children’ demographic.
For example, if you run a restaurant you could target parents with a promotion for Valentine’s Day to bring the whole family to celebrate together.
You have a lot of space to get creative with offers and messaging because Facebook lets you segment couples based on time spent together.
Now, targeting singles is much harder and requires you to be more creative.
If your brand has the vibe, I like using humor in ad copy to get this group to engage.
Make a playful joke about how they are single because they want to be and offer them the best suitable offer for a single person.
For example, if you run an online retail store you might want to use some copy like, “Not got a date for Valentine’s Day? We can change that with 20% off all menswear for the next 48 hours.”
Test your copy and, most importantly, keep an eye on comments – an ill-written joke can lead to a lot of negative comments.
5. 1.5 billion Facebook users are in unspecified relationships
Yes, over half of all Facebook users have not selected their relationship status.
This audience is bigger than all other relationship statuses combined, and it’s not to be ignored.
Here’s what I suggest you do.
Create two types of video content: one targeting singles and another for couples.
Create six videos in total, three for each segment (you can do more depending on your ad spend). Make it CLEAR within the first few seconds whether the video is for singles or couples.
Make each video around 25 seconds long and then retarget anyone who watched 75% or more of any video.
What you’re doing here is using video to segment the unspecified Facebook users into one of two groups.
Anyone who watched 75% or more of your couple’s video is probably in a relationship.
Anyone who watched 75% or more of your single’s video is probably single.
Once segmented, you can serve them the right offer.
You may find Facebook’s preset relationship interest cannot be scaled and reaches audience saturation after just a few days. If that happens, then you should use the method above.
Your turn
These are just a few tips I regularly use when running Facebook ads during Valentine’s Day.
The two biggest factors to crushing Valentine’s Day ads is to be able to correctly segment your audience and serve them the right personalized messaging.
How are you running Facebook ads for Valentine’s Day?