An Easy Father’s Day Advertising Strategy for Online Sellers

If you’re looking for a Father’s Day advertising strategy that won’t cost a ton in time or effort, you’ve come to the right place! We put together a foolproof strategy that will help you get more leads, traffic, and sales at your online store or e-commerce site this Father’s Day and beyond.

6-Step Father’s Day Advertising Strategy

Whether your target audience is pet dads or human dads — or just father figures in general — we’ve got the actionable tips you need to boost sales this June. Father’s Day is June 18 — so let’s get started!

1. Bundle It Up

Your first order of business is an easy one: Take a look at what you sell and decide what you can bundle together to make an enticing, ready-made gift idea.

This makes shopping easy for your customers and allows you to sell more items. Bunde up a couple (or a few) related products and market them to Father’s Day shoppers.

For example, if you sell custom portrait gifts, you could bundle a framed portrait and a mug with the same design. Offer your bundle at a slight discount than if a customer purchased each item separately. You could promote this bundle to anyone buying a gift for a dad: father figures, dads, step-dads, and pet dads, which enables you to reach a much wider audience.

However, you will want to switch up messaging when you promote your bundles (if you’re able to segment your audience) to ensure your offer is as compelling as possible.

Here are a few examples, but tailor your messaging to your specific target market:

• What do you get the cat dad who has it all? How about our Purrfect Father’s Day bundle with a custom portrait of his favorite furry friend — and a mug to boot! Even better? Use promo code DAD to get 10% off this deal right meow.
• Want to be Dad’s favorite this year? Give him a gift he’ll keep forever — a hand-drawn portrait of his kids and a mug featuring the same design. Click the link to shop now.
• Celebrate the father figure in your life with a custom hand-drawn portrait and matching mug. Simply send us your favorite picture and choose a background color, and we’ll handle the rest. Use promo code THOUGHTFUL for 15% off today only.

2. Create a Gift Guide

Next up in our Father’s Day advertising strategy is an essential one: a gift guide! Not only will this provide you with endless promotional opportunities — you can promote it via email, social media, paid ads, and more — you can also optimize it so it comes up when people are searching for Father’s Day gifts — genius! (Just publish your gift guide a few months before Father’s Day to ensure you have enough time for it to rank).

The easiest way to create a gift guide (unless you have design skills) is through your blog.

Here’s how to make a gift guide on your blog:

• Choose your top dad-related products (the more you choose, the more likely a reader will find something they like. And be sure to include any bundles you create!)
• Add a new post to your blog.
• Give your post a compelling headline so readers know it’s a gift guide like “35 Father’s Day Gift Ideas for Every Type of Dad” or “Find the Perfect Gift for Dad in the Ultimate Father’s Day Gift Guide.”
• Follow this hierarchy for adding products: H2 that describes the product > product photo > product description > CTA with product link.
• Add a keyword like “Father’s Day gift guide, ” which currently gets 1,300 searches per month with low competition.
• Use your keyword in your URL, H1, meta title and description, and throughout your article naturally, including with the first 100 words of your introduction and the last 100 words of your article. (Read this SEO basics guide if you need help.)
• Use engaging subheads to describe each product you’re including: “The Shaving Set Dad’s Been Dreaming Of.”
• Use only top-notch photos of your products (be gone, pixelated, blurry, crappy product photos!)
• Write a short, descriptive blurb about each product you’re featuring: “Dad will flip for this shaving set that features five of our best-selling handcrafted products, including…”
• Add a CTA after each product description to encourage readers to buy like “Buy Now” or “Shop Now.”
• Link each photo and each CTA to your e-commerce site or online store (link the individual product) where customers can purchase these items.
• Use a great (free!) stock photo from Unsplash or Shopify Burst as the main image, and link it to your site or online store too!
• Promote the heck out of it!

Don’t have a blog? OK, that’s no problem.

Here’s how to make a gift guide using a user-friendly design program:

Use PicMonkey or Canva to create a fun collage of the Father’s Day products you want to feature and share it on your social accounts and through email marketing. Be sure to include links where people can buy the products.

3. Offer Free Shipping 

Did you know that 66% of consumers expect free shipping no matter how much they spend, and a whopping 80% expect it when ordering a certain dollar amount? If it’s such a significant purchasing factor for so many consumers, why not give it a whirl and see if it increases your sales?

You can promote your deal through email, social media, your website, paid ads, and more:

• Get free shipping on all of our Father’s Day gifts right now!
• Father’s Day is fast approaching — get a great gift + free shipping now through X date
• Free shipping and 10% off gifts for Dad. Shop now!

See how compelling that is? Whether you build the cost of shipping into your product prices or set a minimum order amount, it will definitely be a sales driver for you — and it’s worth considering as one of your top Father’s Day advertising ideas.

4. Use Better Email Subject Lines 

If you email your customers — and you should — one of the most important elements is your email subject line. And you need to be strategic if you want it to get any opens.

And although an open is only the first step toward getting the customer to take the action you desire, it’s crucial.

Here are a few best practices when it comes to crafting better subject lines:

• Keep it short: It’s best to pack a quick punch into as few words as possible to ensure all users will see your subject line in full, including on mobile. In fact, aim for no more than nine words and 60 characters, says Mailchimp.
• A hook is better than wittiness: You might have an idea for the funniest/wittiest subject line ever, but if it doesn’t show the reader specific details or benefits, you may not get as many opens — this is especially true if you are not using a pre-header. If you use a pre-header, you can go with that witty/funny subject line and follow up with details in the pre.
• Convey urgency: You’ve got a great deal, but it’s not going to go on forever, so make sure you convey urgency with your subject line.
• Check for spelling errors: We saw an email come through last week where the subject line actually said, “Save moeny Today.” That blatant spelling error and the random capitalization made us sad. But even worse, it made us wonder about the credibility of this business. Yeah, everyone makes mistakes, but do your best to minimize them by throwing your subject lines in a spell-checker before sending them out to your customers. Or install the free Grammarly extension, which will alert you to errors before you hit “send.”

Here are a few subject line ideas for you:

• The ultimate gift guide for dad
• 20% off Father’s Day gifts today only!
• Handmade gifts for dad on sale now!
• New Father’s Day gift baskets ready to ship today!
• Spend $50 on Dad and get free shipping June 1-10
• Father’s Day gifts he’ll love ❤
• This isn’t a bad dad joke — FREE shipping!

P.S. if you want to try emojis in your subject lines, take them from a site like this one to ensure you’re using ones that will show up on all devices.

5. Hold a Virtual Shopping Event 

Looking for Father’s Day advertising ideas for your online store or e-commerce site? Try holding a virtual shopping event — it offers a personal touch and is great for last-minute shoppers too.

You can do this on Facebook Live or by going live on an Instagram Story to show shoppers the items you have for Father’s Day while encouraging them to ask questions you can answer in real-time. You might even offer an exclusive discount code for those who attend to encourage sales.

Here are a couple more ideas:

• Appeal to procrastinators by holding your event a week or less before Father’s Day (depending on your shipping options) by saying something like the following: “Still haven’t gotten a gift for Dad? Stop stressing and come to our virtual Father’s Day Shopping Extravaganza for Procrastinators! You’ll get 10% off your total purchase, and a *$5 gift card for yourself! *Return visit only.”
• Create a Facebook event in advance so attendees don’t forget it’s coming up. (Facebook does a lovely job of reminding people about events for you.) Plus, whenever someone says they’re attending or interested in attending, it will show up in their streams, expanding your reach.
• Promote your virtual event heavily through social media, email marketing, and paid advertising, and tell your followers why it’ll be worth attending: an exclusive 25% off code for attendees, BOGO offers, free gift wrap for orders placed during the event, a $50 gift card raffles, etc.

6. Create a Father’s Day Giveaway 

Pick one of your best-selling products and create a Father’s Day giveaway. Requiring an email address to enter will allow you to build up your email subscriber list long-term and enable you to target the non-winners with a tempting offer that just may turn them into customers too.

For example, “Thanks for entering our Father’s Day giveaway! You weren’t our grand-prize winner, but here’s a $10 gift card toward your next purchase from us.”

Clearly state your rules for entry in the social media post or anywhere else you promote the giveaway. Try a tool like Woobox to help help you set up and manage your giveaway, collect email addresses, and turn each entry into a promotional opportunity.

Fire Up Sales for Father’s Day

Use these affordable Father’s Day advertising ideas to reach shoppers at an optimal time — when they’re actively looking to purchase.

And keep in mind that, with a few simple tweaks, all of these Father’s Day marketing ideas can be applied to any holiday to help you increase sales. From Mother’s Day marketing to Valentine’s Day advertising, take advantage of holidays and seasonal events to get more customers and keep your business thriving all year long.