Bank holidays provide businesses with a valuable opportunity to engage customers, increase visibility and generate additional sales or enquiries. Whether it’s Easter, the Early May Bank Holiday, Spring Bank Holiday or the August Bank Holiday, an extended weekend can significantly influence how people search, shop and spend their time online.
However, successful bank holiday marketing involves more than launching a last-minute discount. The best campaigns combine careful planning, relevant offers and coordinated activity across your digital marketing channels.
Here are some practical bank holiday marketing tips to help your business make the most of the next long weekend.
Planning ahead is one of the most important parts of a successful bank holiday marketing campaign. Leaving everything until a few days before the bank holiday can limit your options and leave little time to prepare advertising, landing pages, email campaigns, social media content and other promotional materials.
Include key UK bank holidays within your wider marketing calendar and identify which dates are most relevant to your business and customers. From there, you can establish what you want the campaign to achieve, which products or services you want to promote and whether a special offer or incentive would help encourage customers to take action.
You should also decide which marketing channels are most appropriate and set clear start and finish dates for your campaign. Planning these elements in advance gives you time to prepare and test everything properly, while ensuring your marketing activity works together consistently across different channels.
Not every bank holiday, or business, is the same.
Retail, ecommerce, hospitality, leisure and tourism businesses may experience increased demand as consumers have more free time. For some B2B companies, however, enquiries may temporarily decline because decision-makers are away from their desks.
Use your own website analytics, advertising data and previous sales figures to understand what typically happens to your business around bank holidays.
Your marketing strategy should be based on actual customer behaviour rather than assumptions.
Discounting is one of the most common approaches to bank holiday marketing, but reducing your prices isn’t the only way to encourage customers to take action. In some cases, providing additional value can be just as effective while helping to protect your margins.
Depending on your business, you could offer free delivery, product bundles, complimentary upgrades or a gift with qualifying purchases. You could also create an exclusive package or introduce a limited-time product or service specifically for the bank holiday period.
Whatever approach you choose, make sure the promotion is easy to understand. Customers should immediately know what the offer includes, how they qualify and when it ends. Creating a genuine sense of urgency can also encourage customers who are already considering a purchase to take action during the promotional period.
If you’re running a significant bank holiday campaign, consider creating a dedicated landing page rather than sending visitors to your homepage.
Your page should clearly explain the promotion and provide an obvious route towards purchasing or making an enquiry.
Include relevant products or services, important terms, strong calls to action, customer reviews where appropriate and clear information about when the promotion finishes.
For ecommerce websites, creating a dedicated bank holiday product collection can make it much easier for customers to browse everything included within your promotion.
Paid search can be particularly valuable for short-term campaigns because it allows businesses to reach customers who are actively searching for relevant products and services.
Depending on your business, this could include Google Search, Shopping, Performance Max and remarketing campaigns.
However, don’t automatically increase your advertising budget simply because it’s a bank holiday.
Review historical performance first. If previous bank holidays generated stronger conversion rates or increased demand for particular products, you can use this information to make better-informed budget decisions.
For ecommerce businesses, also check that product feeds accurately display current prices, availability, offers and delivery costs.
SEO is a longer-term strategy, but seasonal search behaviour can still create opportunities.
Rather than repeatedly creating thin Bank Holiday Sale pages, consider developing useful evergreen content that can be updated and reused.
Think about questions and topics that become particularly relevant to your customers around long weekends.
A garden retailer, for example, could publish seasonal gardening advice, while a hospitality business could create guides to local bank holiday activities.
Useful, original content based on genuine knowledge and experience also helps demonstrate the expertise and trust signals that should form part of a strong, people-first SEO strategy.
Your existing customers and subscribers can be one of your most valuable audiences during a bank holiday campaign.
Rather than sending one email at the last minute, consider a short sequence. You could announce your promotion beforehand, send a reminder when it begins and issue a final message shortly before it ends.
Where possible, segment your audience based on previous purchases, interests or engagement rather than sending exactly the same message to everybody.
Your employees probably want to enjoy their bank holiday too, so prepare and schedule social media content beforehand.
A simple campaign could combine promotional posts with product highlights, useful seasonal advice and a final reminder before an offer ends.
You don’t need to publish constantly. Concentrate on creating relevant content for the social platforms your customers actually use.
Customers may be away from their desks during a bank holiday, making mobile performance particularly important.
Before launching your campaign, test the complete customer journey on a smartphone.
Check page speed, promotional banners, navigation, forms, buttons and your checkout process. If you’re paying to generate additional traffic, you don’t want potential customers abandoning your website because it’s difficult to use on mobile.
If you operate from a physical location, make sure customers know whether you’re open.
Update your website and relevant online profiles, including your Google Business Profile, with accurate bank holiday opening hours.
If your office is closed but customers can still order online or submit enquiries through your website, make this clear too.
Accurate information helps customers plan and avoids unnecessary frustration.
Make sure your business can actually fulfil the demand your marketing campaign generates.
Check stock levels, staffing, customer service availability and fulfilment capacity before heavily promoting an offer.
Ecommerce businesses should pay particular attention to delivery times because bank holidays can affect courier collections and delivery schedules.
Setting realistic expectations before someone purchases is much better than dealing with a disappointed customer afterwards.
Once your bank holiday campaign has finished, take the time to analyse its performance. This will help you understand what worked, where improvements could be made and whether the campaign achieved its original objectives.
Review the metrics most relevant to your goals. These might include sales and revenue, leads or enquiries, conversion rates, website traffic, cost per acquisition, return on advertising spend and email engagement. For ecommerce campaigns, average order value and individual product performance can also provide useful insights.
Where possible, compare your results with normal trading periods and previous bank holidays. Look beyond the headline figures too. Understanding which offers, products, advertising messages and marketing channels generated the strongest response can provide valuable first-party data to help you plan more effective bank holiday campaigns in the future.
Bank holidays provide a natural opportunity to communicate with customers, but simply adding Bank Holiday to an advert isn’t a marketing strategy.
The most effective campaigns combine the right offer, audience, timing and marketing channels while providing a consistent customer experience from the initial advert or email through to your website.
By planning ahead, reviewing your own performance data and learning from each campaign, bank holidays can become a valuable part of your wider digital marketing strategy rather than simply another date on the calendar.
Contact our team of Digital Marketing Strategy specialists, who have the knowledge and expertise to fully optimise your social media and website, helping you increase the number of leads and conversions your business generates.
Call our team on 0121 439 5450; alternatively, fill out our contact form.
