5 St. Patrick’s Day Marketing Ideas to Drive Engagement

Holidays can infuse some green into your business ledger — but this time of year it’s not only about luck. It’s also about strategy. The right St. Patrick’s Day marketing ideas have the ability to drive engagement and help you meet your business goals. But you have to be smart, targeted, and willing to have fun — and your audience will love you for it.

Here are five St. Patrick’s Day marketing ideas to drive engagement:

1. Offer a Green-Themed Discount or Special Buy

Do you sell clothes, jewelry, or accessories? How about eco-friendly personal care items? There are many ways to incorporate the color green or the theme of green into a promotional idea. Whether you offer 10% off on selected best-selling items or even a BOGO on inventory you need to move, this is THE time of year to target green-colored shirts, bracelets, and other items.

If you have organic, sustainable, and/or recycled materials in your products, phrase promotional content where you intertwine St. Patrick’s Day with your environmentally-friendly offerings. Some potential examples can include: “We’re green on St. Patrick’s Day – and all year long!”; “We celebrate being green today — and every day.”

2. Launch a Contest on Social Media

Engage your audience with a fun, celebratory contest on your social media channels. Instagram is prime territory, but other channels will work too. Challenge your audience to post fun/unusual/silly St. Patrick’s Day-themed photos of themselves, their children, or their pets. Offer an attractive prize for the winner and make sure to publicize it well in the weeks coming up to St. Patrick’s Day.

Make sure to keep a close eye on the entries and engage, comment, and share the best posts. Contests are a wonderful way to take advantage of the power of user-generated content. Just make sure they know you are paying attention.

3. Develop a Unique Item for a Limited Time Offer (LTO)

Another one of the most effective St. Patrick’s marketing ideas to engage your audience is to develop a unique LTO item. Evaluate your current offerings and provide an accompanying version with shamrocks, a cute (or drunken) leprechaun, or a pot of gold with a rainbow. From lucky T-shirts and yummy pet treats to candles and cupcakes, marketing an LTO with St. Patrick’s Day graphics, packaging, or themed content can increase clicks and boost sales.

4. Host a St. Patrick’s Day Celebration

This is the time of year that “everyone can be Irish.” With parades across the United States and large city celebrations, it is a banner time to host your own. But you don’t have to hold a beer or liquor license to attract interest. You can still make it fun with themed decorations, traditional Irish music, and sweet treats decorated with green frosting.

Supporting your community by offering added value is an integral part of a comprehensive marketing strategy. But if you happen to be an online-only business or many of your customers are in distant places, you can still party. Create a live broadcast on YouTube or Facebook where you showcase relevant products while playing Irish music, reciting Irish poetry, having a leprechaun dress-up party with your staff, or having other fun, creative ideas. Personal interaction can be very powerful — but always maintain consistency with your brand.

5. Ask St. Patrick’s Day Themed Questions on Social Media

A St. Patrick’s Day marketing idea that can create a lot of engagement is to ask fun, open-ended questions of your followers. Heading up the posts with dynamic photos is key to attracting attention. Go vivid. Go humorous with your images. Time it on your calendar about a week out from the actual holiday and pose a question each day to keep them coming back again and again. Some ideas to promote conversation and interaction:

• Have you had the luck o’ the Irish? What happened?
• What is your favorite Irish drink?
• What is your favorite green (or Irish) food?
• What is the funniest thing you have seen at a St. Patrick’s Day celebration?

Utilize memes and gifs with your posts and even ask followers to respond to questions with them too. People love finding just the right response. Like and share your favs. It’s okay to intersperse your social media questions with promotional links to products too, but make sure there is a balance for maximum impact, engagement, and audience interaction.

Be Strategic and Start Engaging

The best St. Patrick’s Day marketing ideas are in the spirit of the holiday — having fun together. It’s different from Valentine’s Day which is meant as a very personal one-on-one holiday with the one you love.

St. Patrick’s Day is perfect for big, bold, ideas that cater to community, collaboration, and coming together to have a good time. With some strategic efforts and a little luck, you can engage a large audience, make big steps toward your sales goals, and create loyal customers for the long haul.

“Sláinte!”