Memorial Day marketing ideas for your business

This article was updated on February 2, 2022

As a small business owner, holidays are a chance to do something special or unique with your sales and local marketing strategies. By keeping track of these upcoming events, you can prepare ahead of time so that you're ready to hit the ground running.

Read on for ideas on how to prepare promotional or marketing campaigns for the last Memorial Day.

Memorial Day Means Something More

Before we dive into the memorial day marketing strategies, it's important to take a step back and remember what the day represents. Yes, it's a time to gather with friends and family and to enjoy a day in the sun. But neither of those is what the day truly stands for.

Memorial Day is an opportunity for every American to show gratitude and respect for the women and men who served to protect the United States. It's a day to honor their sacrifice and legacy.

As you go about crafting your Memorial Day promotions and campaigns, keep in mind its importance.

Memorial Day marketing ideas for your small business

How you plan for Memorial Day will depend largely on your business and location. Even if you're in the same industry, a clothing store in Florida will be able to do more in-person promotions due to eased COVID restrictions. In contrast, a store in California will likely still be limited primarily to online sales.

Knowing this, here are some general ideas that you may be able to take advantage of:

Honor the Vets

Ideally, a Memorial Day event should have some tie-in with the members of the military family. You can honor the fallen soldiers, the vets, and the active duty service members. Ways you can do this include:

Highlight team members who served - In the lead-up to Memorial Day, use your brand's social channels and your small business website as a medium to highlight those within your network who served. If you have veteran employees, it's also a chance to thank them and sing their praises.
Run a donation campaign - In addition to telling their stories, you could also run a Memorial Day sale campaign where a percentage of the proceeds go to their families or a veterans group. For instance, you could offer 15% of all the memorial day weekend's proceeds to the Wounded Warriors Project.
Highlight issues impacting vets - Many soldiers who have seen combat return home without the support and infrastructure needed to deal with trauma and PTSD. Tragically, this can lead to homelessness, drug addiction, and suicide. Memorial Day could be an opportunity to partner with a veteran support group to highlight their work and donate a portion of memorial day sales to in-need vets.
Give military members a deal - Consider running a promotion that provides military members and their families an impactful discount on your brand's goods or services. By creating an offer that's exclusive to them, you can help them feel appreciated.
Feed the troops - Local restaurants can offer meal deals where veterans either eat free or at a significant discount.
Host an event - Depending on your state's COVID guidelines, you may consider hosting an outdoor event where you partner with other local businesses and restaurants to gather, celebrate, and sell, with a portion of proceeds going to a local veterans support organization. This can also provide an opportunity to cross-promote the event and build long-lasting relationships with these partnering businesses.
Create a product for the vets - In 2015, Homefront Brewing created and sponsored its Hops for Heroes' 2015 Homefront IPA program, raising more than $200,000 for military-focused charities. Whether you have a meal, a drink, a clothing line, or a product, you could consider following their lead and creating something special just for the holiday weekend.

Offer a Memorial Day Promotion

Depending on your business, you could employ several different types of campaigns and strategies for Memorial Day. These include:

Time-sensitive event - One of the most common holiday sales tactics, these promotions are only available for a specific amount of time to create a sense of urgency where you have to act fast or miss out. A message might look like this: "Ready for Memorial Day? We are! And to celebrate, we're running a 15% off sale this Memorial Day Weekend with 5% of all proceeds going to Wounded Warrior."
Tap into the summer excitement - Memorial Day is often considered one of the summer kick-off events. You can use this month to get people excited and highlight your summer-related products and services using a combination of physical and digital marketing tactics. For example, if you were a small retail or clothing boutique, you may want to display and highlight your summer dresses, v-neck t-shirts, bathing suits, shorts, and rompers.
Target local customers with Nextdoor - Want to reach potential customers who live close by with an in-person Memorial Day deal? Use your Nextdoor Business Page to hone in on your neighbors in the community. Whether you're a restaurant, landscaper, or clothing retailer, you can post about your local Memorial Day deal to get the excitement started.
Highlight patriotic products - Do you have products that are red, white, or blue? What about jewelry with stars? You can run a "red, white, and save" promotion that gives a discount on certain clothing and accessories that pair perfectly with both Memorial Day and the Fourth of July.
Memorial Day promo code - If you have an online store, you could create a special promo to be used for your Memorial Day sales. Advertise the event both on your website and social media channels to create buzz.
Offer free shipping - Who doesn't like something when it's free? Free shipping may not be the same thing as free stuff, but it can definitely be a convincing factor for customers. In a Wharton podcast, marketing professor David Bell says, "Approximately 60% of online retailers cite 'free shipping with conditions' as their most successful marketing tool." Use this to your advantage this Memorial Day and beyond.
Run a whisper code - Whisper codes are when a customer tells the cashier a codeword that is tied to a Memorial Day promotion. So, for instance, a local donut shop could run a promotion that goes out to its newsletter subscribers where they get a free donut for whispering "veteran" during checkout. While this takes a bit more effort to generate enough promotional hype, doing so creates word-of-mouth marketing.
Create Memorial Day bundles - Do you have products that could be paired together in a Memorial Day theme? Bundle them up and create promotional materials around them. If you don't have all the supplies you want for that perfect bundle, this is another opportunity to partner with other small local businesses and cross-promote.
Run a happy hour - A holiday-specific happy hour can help drive the crowds into your bar or restaurant. Be sure to hype it up on your social media channels in the weeks running up to Memorial Day.

General Memorial Day tips and best practices

As you prepare to run your memorial day marketing campaigns, keep the following in mind:

Have the deal go throughout the week - Memorial Day weekend runs Saturday through Monday, but since it's a travel weekend, you may be better off letting it run from Friday to the next Sunday. That way, your customers have a week to take advantage of your deal or utilize a promotion.
Prepare staff for the rush - Holidays tend to be big sales days. If you have in-person shopping or dining, you may want to schedule extra team members to handle the rush or even hire a few part-time helpers.
Increase your ad spend - A limited-time ad splurge on your social media channels, Google Adwords, and your Nextdoor page (in the form of Local Deals ) can help you drive traffic to your shop during a time when you know customers are primed to purchase.
Stay on top of your social media game - It's hard to build a buzz if you only post about your deal, promotion, or Memorial Day event the night before it happens. Instead, start planting the seeds now so that by the time the end of the month rolls around, your customers are ready and excited.
Utilize all of your marketing channels - Don't limit your promotions to in-store signage or social media postings. Instead, use everything. That includes emails, SMS, social, content, and more.

Start planning for the big day

Memorial Day is a special holiday. For your business, it's a chance to memorialize those who sacrificed and served our country and show your appreciation. It's also an opportunity to market your services and share deals with your local community.

As you prepare your plan for your memorial day marketing campaign, remember to start early, be creative, and focus on what this day is really about. That's a recipe for a winning holiday.

Sources:

History. 8 Things You May Not Know About Memorial Day. https://www.history.com/news/8-things-you-may-not-know-about-memorial-day

Crown Cork. Crown Beverage Packaging Supplies Cans To Craft Brewers Participating In Hops For Heroes’ 2015 Homefront IPA Release.
https://www.crowncork.com/news/press-room/crown-beverage-packaging-supplies-cans-craft-brewers-participating-hops-heroes-2015

Wharton. How the Offer of ‘Free Shipping’ Affects On-line Shopping. https://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/how-the-offer-of-free-shipping-affects-on-line-shopping/

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