Cultivating more sales this spring — with peak occasions like Mother’s Day, graduation season, and Father’s Day — is more important than ever. Return from ad spending might be lower than usual, but your brand’s continual effort will yield more sales in the back half of the year.

With cities still on stay-at-home mandates and many businesses closed, the coronavirus will impact Mother’s Day quite a bit this year. Nevertheless, consumers are planning on spending just as much — if not more — on Mother’s Day than they have in years past. As a matter of fact, Mother’s Day has become the second biggest gift-giving holiday after Christmas.

Recognizing the potential, thousands of companies release creative marketing campaigns every year tailored toward Mother’s Day to compete for a share of consumer spending. Although this May 10 will differ from Mother’s Days in the past, marketing efforts will help many businesses stay afloat. In fact, the National Retail Federation (NRF) predicts that 8 in 10 consumers will celebrate Mother’s Day this year.

In this article, we discuss key attributes of successful Mother’s Day campaigns, how small businesses can reap the profits, and some creative campaigns from past years.

Attributes of a Successful Mother’s Day Campaign

For a holiday focused on showing love to strong women, Mother’s Day marketing is especially reliant on emotions and giving back. Inspiring, impactful stories have been behind some of the most successful Mother’s Day marketing campaigns.

Here are some specific attributes that can help you connect with consumers on an emotional level:

Nostalgia: There’s nothing quite like taking a trip down memory lane. Nostalgia marketing has the unique ability to pull on heartstrings, surfacing memories from years past — which can be particularly impactful to mothers.

Altruism: Brands that give back to other organizations and their consumers show they aren’t just concerned with profits, but that they truly care about the greater good of society.

Authenticity: Marketing that shows real people in real situations is what often drives decision making these days. More than that, this type of marketing offers something people can relate to.

Small Business, It’s Your Time to Shine

Small businesses shouldn’t shy away from this special day, especially since many consumers are looking for ways to support their favorite small business neighbors.

Here are some creative techniques that are helping small businesses stay afloat this Mother’s Day:

Partner With Larger Businesses

Forging a partnership with a larger, more profitable company is every small business owner’s dream — one that came true for Maddy & Maize founder, Brett Striker.

Maddy & Maize, a Minneapolis-based gourmet popcorn startup, recently landed a partnership with Edible Arrangements, the popular international franchise company specializing in edible bouquets and gifts.

With Edible Arrangements commercials airing frequently on CNN and other national broadcasts, Maddy & Maize has been gaining a lot of publicity from the partnership — allowing them to stay successful during the coronavirus pandemic. Edible Arrangements will roll out its Mother’s Day marketing campaign in the next few weeks, which features Maddy & Maize’s Raspberry Lemonade popcorn.

Partner with Other Small Businesses

Local businesses that generate Mother’s Day sales in normal circumstances can still find ways to survive — and combining forces with other small and local businesses is a great way to do so.

In Maryland, local restaurant Lib’s Grill is partnering with Blush Floral Design, a floral studio, and Rockfield Manor, an event venue, to bring people an immersive Mother’s Day experience in their own homes. Through this partnership, customers can pre-order a $70 or $100 dinner package complete that comes with a complimentary bouquet of flowers and a 20-minute family photoshoot at a later date.

The teaming of small businesses doesn’t stop there. A local jewelry store owner in Washington D.C., Mallory Shelter, has seen about a 40 percent drop in her business sales. To help her store and other small D.C. businesses cope, Shelter will be staging a Small Business Saturday — hoping it will help consumers think twice about where they spend online. This event will spotlight more than 100 D.C. small businesses and encourage Washingtonians to buy local goods leading up to Mother’s Day, graduations, and other occasions of the spring season.

Sell Gift Cards

Gift cards are universal, which makes them ideal gifts. According to an in-depth survey by Buygiftcards.com, nearly 65% of moms want gift cards this year — a statistic that can largely be attributed to the world's current climate where we are encouraged to stay indoors. Where preferences usually rank high in dining, department stores, and jewelry categories, the survey results show that more than 77% of moms would be happiest receiving gift cards from online retailers in 2020.

Many businesses are coming up with creative ways to market gift cards. For instance, Buygiftcards is offering curated gift card boxes featuring gift cards — and there’s a box to suit every type of mom:

Mom On The Go: Perfect for active moms, this gift box includes a $25 gift card to Athleta, Gap, or Old Navy, a stainless steel water bottle, and reusable ice sticks.
Toast To Mom: You can literally toast to Mom with a 16 oz stemless wine tumbler, Ghirardelli chocolate squares, and a $25 Target gift card.
Gardening Moms: To help Mom in her home garden, this box contains a $25 Home Depot gift card and a pair of weeding gloves.

Sell Greeting Cards

Cards are one of the most popular purchases on Mother’s Day. According to the NRF, 74% of Americans plan to buy them this year.

Elizabeth Sutton, NYC based artist and owner of The Sutton Collection, saw an opportunity to help her city of New York by creating downloadable Mother's Day coloring cards. Each card is $3.50, and 100% of the proceeds will be going to City Harvest, New York City's largest food rescue organization.

The five different cards offer something for every woman in your life — from child to mother, husband to wife, grandchild to grandmother, individual to a front-line worker, and a general card for a woman you love and appreciate.

This initiative shows how small businesses can alter their offerings to appeal to consumers this Mother’s Day — while also contributing to the greater good of the world.

Campaigns to Draw Inspiration From

Over the past few years, we’ve seen bigger brands in a variety of industries launch campaigns honoring moms for Mother’s Day.

We’ve compiled some of our favorite ad spots and promotions from past Mother’s Days to inspire your marketing efforts:

Teleflora: A Mother’s Love

The flower delivery company has always been known for its touching Mother’s Day ads, but this year, they took their gratitude for moms to a new level.

Featuring video clips from real families, the ad spot celebrates moms doing their best during this “new normal” we’ve been living in due to the coronavirus pandemic. It begins with footage of people walking and wearing face masks, and shifts to video clips of common quarantine activities — from birthday parades, to social distancing dance-offs, to uninterrupted family dinners. The commercial titled “A Mother’s Love” has already amassed over 7 million views since last Monday.

The best quality about this ad spot? It showed absolutely no intention to sell flowers, but simply give a shout out to the unsung heroes of these uncertain times: moms.

Budweiser: Call Your Mom

Last year, Budweiser encouraged fans to call their moms on Mother’s Day — a message that has become particularly important this year as we practice social distancing.

In their campaign dubbed #CallYourMom, the brand enlisted some of Major League Baseball’s biggest stars to show love to their moms for Mother’s Day. The 90-second ad spot showed MLB’s athletes calling their moms to celebrate huge accomplishments in their careers. This campaign was a brilliant effort on Budweiser’s part — it leveraged emotional appeal and delivered a compelling message expressing that everyone should give Mom a call.

Budweiser played the ad spot on in-stadium LED screens, and promoted the campaign on gate stickers and beer vendors in its partner stadiums.

Brawny: Once a Mother, Always a Giant

In honor of Mother’s Day, Brawny Paper Towels released a video spot showing what day-to-day life looks like from a child’s point of view. To create “Once a Mother, Always a Giant,” four mothers gave their children Snapchat Spectacles that captured ordinary moments in their lives — from spilling milk, to knocking over books, to scraping their legs. Each mom comes to their child’s rescue, showing how mothers are constantly there for their children.

Through this short film, Brawny highlighted not only a mother’s appearance as “giant”, but also the strength and resilience women have when it comes to motherhood.

Pandora: The Unique Connection

For Mother’s Day 2015, Pandora conducted an experiment of women’s uniqueness: they blindfolded children and asked them to identify their mothers by touch alone.

This heartwarming in-house spot celebrates the connection between mothers and their children. In the video, each blindfolded child approaches the six mothers in the line-up, analyzing their jewelry, clothing, facial structure, and hair. All children were successfully able to identify their mother, making Pandora’s test of “the unique connection” between a mother and child a success.

This campaign resonated with many consumers emotionally — showing that the connection between a mother and child can not only be seen, but felt as well.

Kraft: Mother’s Day Away

Kraft, the purveyor of boxed mac and cheese, wanted to help busy mothers take a break from mothering.

In their unconventional yet genius approach, Kraft announced it would foot the bill for the cost of hiring a babysitter on Mother’s Day. These generous payouts let mothers be free to indulge in some time for themselves.

Kraft’s Mother’s Day promotion is definitely untraditional: it doesn’t try to make sales, drive profits, or market their products in any way. It does, however, establish a positive rapport for Kraft as a giving brand. The idea itself was inspired by data from Care.com that found that what moms want most for Mother’s Day is me-time.

Although this is not something every business can afford to do, we can all take away a lesson of giving back to consumers from Kraft’s unique approach.

Time to Win Over Mom

The most popular Mother’s Day gifts may be jewelry, flowers, and cards, but brands everywhere agree that there are still plenty of creative ways to give back to mothers. While this year’s Mother’s Day may look a little different than years prior, consumers are nevertheless looking for ways to show Mom appreciation. For brands, use this day as a special occasion to grow your business and appeal to your consumers’ best interests.

Marketing Mom: Inspired Content For A Successful Campaign