You may feel a bit lost staring into the dark abyss that exists until the holidays start to pick up after summer vacations come to a close. However, there are hundreds of creative dates and holidays that you can spin into promotions and sales all year-round, whether you are a brick-and-mortar retailer, online retailer, or home-party business owner.
The month of April alone celebrates a huge amount of social media holidays that should not be overlooked, including National Lingerie Day, Couple’s Appreciation Month and more. April is ripe for all business models, as long as you are willing to get creative with it!
Relying on traditional marketing holidays may keep you afloat, but how are you attracting the eyes of new consumers?
Whether you choose to spotlight individual product manufacturers or product categories, you’ll find some gems in these random (and at times, obscure) “holidays” that will appeal to a vast array of consumers.
A few examples include:
- Celebrate Diversity Month
- Couple’s Appreciation Month
- Earth Month
- National Cannabis Awareness Month
- National STD Awareness Month
- Sexual Assault Awareness Month
- Stress Awareness Month
- Women’s Health Care Month
Taking advantage of these holidays is as easy as grouping correlating products together and either offering a sale, or simply creating a dedicated section to pique consumer interest. For online retailers, that would entail an dedicated product category page, with a flashy homepage banner ad for good measure. For brick-and-mortar retailers, you can carve out a small section of your store with festive decorations, or create a Ladies Night to increase foot traffic. Cross-merchandising items based on a creative category not only shows that you pay attention to detail, but it allows customers to explore the diversity in your product selection.
For home-party owners, Couple’s Appreciation Month and Women’s Healthcare Month are two major opportunities that would especially appeal to mainstream demographics. In addition to booking up your calendar with parties, connect with local businesses and inquire about potential partnerships that could benefit both of your target consumers. For example, a salon or spa might be the perfect location for a Women’s Healthcare night, where you incorporate sexual wellness education with any special after-hours salon services. Loyal customers patronize small businesses because they likely know and trust the owner(s). If the owner is open to the idea of collaborating, you can end up attracting new customers by reaching an entirely new group of women by making the crossover into lifestyle stores.
Depending on the location, you could even niche it down so far as to market to women going through menopause, or those who may suffer from endometriosis by showcasing dilator sets (Femintimate by Adrien Lastic; Dr. Laura Berman line by CalExotics), body-safe lubricants (Good Clean Love; Sliquid; Aloe Cadabra) and/or more approachable pleasure products for beginners (The WaterSlyde; crystal yoni eggs and massage wands by Chakrubs).
Here are a few special dates observed during the month of April:
April 1: April Fool’s Day
April 3: Find a Rainbow Day
April 7: World Health Day
April 7: National Beer Day
April 9: National Unicorn Day
April 10: National Youth/HIV Awareness Day
April 12: National Day of Silence (LGBTQ+)
April 14: Cake and Cunnilingus Day
April 14: Ex-Spouse Day (Divorce party)
April 18: Anal sex day (The world is your oyster today.)
April 18: 4/20
April 21: Easter
April 22: Earth Day
April 23: Lover’s Day
April 24: National Lingerie Day
April 26: Lesbian Visibility Day
April 28 Kiss Your Mate Day
Statistics show that consumers have to see something seven times before they make a purchasing decision, which means that your creative marketing efforts need to remain consistent. This is particularly true for online marketing — specifically Instagram. Additionally, content versatility is key, because customers can pick up on bland sales posts that really aim to achieve nothing other than selling a product.
If you are using Instagram to market your business (since Facebook is out of the question), here are some tips on getting the most out of your posts.
- Be extremely cautious of Instagram’s new community guideline policies. This includes NO advertising sex toys — and that includes sex education memes in addition to product photos. If you continue to post graphic product photos, know that having your account completely suspended is only a matter of time.
- Always tag your city location for local exposure (vs. your store location) — this applies to all retailers.
- Review the list of banned hashtags. #sextoy, #sextoys are the big ones! You can simply search a hashtag in the ‘”search” field. If there are no results, that hashtag has been removed from Instagram.
- Using tags that are not banned (yet) — including #sexhealth #sexualwellness, #sexpositive — will cause the algorithms to hide your posts from the max audience, decreasing visibility. Get creative, while also being mindful of who may come across your posts.
- Always use the allotted 30 hashtags allowed, and switch them up frequently to cross-pollinate your posts into different markets
Relying on traditional marketing holidays may keep you afloat, but how are you attracting the eyes of new consumers? In the vast and competitive world of online retailers and Amazon, how are you positioning yourself as a unique and progressive retailer?
There is so much to be said for making connections outside of your realm. Aside from potential exposure for your business, a multitude of women and couples will benefit from receiving sexual health education in a place where they would not have expected it. With that said, you are doing your part to expand the sexual wellness dialogue within your community, and beyond. By doing so, you give others the permission and confidence to prioritize their pleasure — and that is what will change the world.
