St Patricks Day is coming!
(No Ratings Yet)
Loading ...
I’ll be honest – I kind of like leprechauns. And so, I especially think the St Patricks day promotions are funny.
original image
But we’re going to talk a little about St Patrick’s Day and the markets it serves.
St Patricks Day is the national holiday of the Irish. It is celebrated formally and informally in most English-speaking countries.
The Biggest St Patricks Day Parade is in Savannah, Georgia with 750,000 celebrants. There are many large St Patricks Day festivals around the country.
For whatever reason, St Patricks Day is associated with drinking alcohol. Its really a Catholic religious holiday (the feast day of St. Patrick) so some people are offended by the commercialization of the holiday, particularly the undignifed image it presents.
Ok, so a big event celebrated with bars and parades. What does that mean? Ha Ha! It means Blinkies! It means Beads! SO stock up on St Patricks Day Merchandise
But, don’t just buy products and leave them lying there. You have to get after it. If your business is online, there’s a few things you want to do to take advantage of the opportunity.
1. When people are shopping for holiday merchandise, it is more likely to be based around the idea of holding to a certain budget. It’s better overall to create holiday themed sections like “Gifts Under $10″ that emphasize meeting a budget.
2. Any holiday is an appropriate time for giving. You can absolutely increase sales by associating your products with a good cause. You should avoid patting yourself on the back when you go to sleep at night but its still a good thing you are doing. Here are some tips on maximizing the publicity value of your efforts. The tips come from this great article about small business charitable giving.
Publicize your donations of goods or services to charities by sending press releases and photos to the local media.
Include your charitable involvement in your marketing materials such as newsletters, brochures, signs, displays, advertisements, and commercials.
Get involved with high-profile causes that attract the media’s attention.
If you have given significant support to a program, ask that it be named after you or the name of your business.Give away information about your charity as a part of your business transactions such as placing pamphlets in your retail outlets, having employees wear clothing or pins and buttons publicizing your charity, or placing charity information with your product when it ships.
Lastly, be sure to ask your charity to recognize your support in their publicity efforts.
3. Shipping cutoff dates for holidays. Add it to your order page, add it to your template so its on every page.
If you are really interested in making the holidays work more effectively for your business. Here is a great video with an extensive Q&A and tons of ideas. It’s 45 minutes but highly recommended.
This is WHY you go to this effort: because the holiday itself is what we call an opportunity. But, its more than that it is also
It’s fellowship. Drunken fellowship, but fellowship nonetheless. You have staff. You have coworkers. Make the extra effort of every holiday you promote pay off for coworkers and staff with fun and festivities. Tie the effort to the reward, and its a win acros the board for you, your company and your customers.
Thanks for the link! Those are interesting St.Patty’s Cush Balls
My pleasure, Linda! I had not run across your ecommerce blog at getelastic.com — I was impressed by the diversity and usefulness of the content, and I added it to my feed reader.
Good tone and tips on “philanthropic marketing” … as we hated PR types call it. Tho it’s not at all related to St. Paddy’s Day, a really good local Dollar Store and Off-Price philanthropy move — with lotsa built-in publicity value — is EMPLOYMENT INTERVIEW events or PERSONAL MAKEOVER events.
Any retailer of personal care products or discount clothing can set up a giveaway to help selected low-income recipients get a make-over, in store, for an upcoming job interview, etc. Works even better if the Dollar Store outlet teams up with nearby hair cutters, who are often involved in Locks for Love philanthropy (that’s donated cut human hair to childhood cancer support groups; they make custom wigs for kids undergoing chemo and radiation therapy).
Oh … as a longtime resident of the city with biggest concentration of Irish outside of Ireland — Boston — I’m gonna have to take issue with that Savannah GA has the biggest St. Pat’s Day Parade nonsense. Are you sure?? Them barkeeps at the Black Rose in downtown Beantown were reputed to be collecting their own philanthropic funds (for the IRA back in the day). And windy ChicagoLand might have a bone to pick with you too. They actually food-color dyed the Michigan River GREEN … till animal protection groups got after their rabid green-ness. Georgia. Well, I never …