Holidays are always a good opportunity to show your creativity and (try to) stand out with innovative marketing campaigns. Christmas, Easter, National Day and Halloween give inspiration to B2B marketers. But for Valentine’s Day, it’s slightly different.

First, because people are in the holiday’s mood and are probably more concerned with either their date or their family holidays with the kids (and the romantic evening they might still get). What could possibly be a better opportunity for B2C companies to tell a tale of love between their brand and customers or to show how they’re here even in the most personal moments?

So what’s left for B2B marketers?

Pros & Cons

Celebrating Valentine’s Day is not mandatory for B2B companies. Here are the main pros and cons to help you decide:

Pros	Cons
You stay connected to your audience	It can be perceived as intrusive
You can get creative	It might feel out of place
It makes you look human and fun – and helps stay on people’s mind	There’s a growing base of Valentine’s Day bashers
It improves customer loyalty	It (probably) won’t generate sales

Tips to efficiency

Pros overcome cons? Then remember a few tips:

Keep it cool

Logically, playing the over-doing-it card is not very likely to work in B2B. While Christmas, for example, can be an overwhelming theme that you may completely embrace, keeping some distance with Valentine’s Day is more appropriate.

Make it visual

If you are going to make something emotional for Valentine’s Day, the best option is a video. Nothing shares affection more than a short animated story with the right moments and the right music (and remember YouTube should be a part of your marketing strategy).
The option of promoting your own content is of course still available. As a B2B marketing blog, we could, for example, create a series of themed articles showing the eternal love between Content Marketing and social media, content and SEO, etc.

Don’t hope to sell

You’re not offering a deal on chocolates or a nice dress; you are promoting a product or service to another company. Purchasing cycles are longer and chances are, the decision-makers are OOF. That’s why creating a Valentine’s Day campaign should not take too much effort from you.

Instead, aim at building a relationship

Share your love for your customers and/or make a video that’s heart-warming. If it’s not going to sell, it’s at least going to make you look human (and that’s what you should aim for). Create a moment for your audience and stay on their mind.

Your communication channels

There’s a choice to make regarding the communication channels to use for promotion – whether it’d be a video or whatever format you chose.

In such campaign, emailing should definitely be used:

• It’s effective in B2B
• It can address lots of people
• It’s not too intrusive
• You can easily send whatever format you chose – whether it’d be a video or a card or a graphic or an invitation to receive a gift

The second communication channel(s) to use is social media. In this scenario, Twitter could be particularly appropriate to share your content even though LinkedIn and Facebook are also relevant. Sharing a video on social networks is very efficient and tends to make people react.

Focus your efforts on emailing and social media while still leveraging your other channels.

We wish you a happy Valentine’s Day!