5 Must Incorporate Lunar New Year Marketing Strategies

Roaring high is the festive spirit of people celebrating the Lunar New Year (aka the Chinese New Year) across the world. After all this year is all about The Year of the Tiger. Knowing that the past few years have been tumultuous, The Year of Tiger reminds people to emerge stronger than before, come what may. Every year, the Lunar New Year festivity begins with the first new moon and ends on the first full moon of the lunar calendar which is why the holidays last for days and even weeks, especially in South East Asia regions like China, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, Taiwan, and Vietnam.

Retailers across the globe brace themselves for this festive bonanza and gear up for a positive start to the year with some grand in-store décor and incredible promotion campaigns. As with most holiday seasons across the globe, the Chinese New Year too is a huge opportunity for retailers to sell their goods and services using powerful marketing strategies. As we step into this auspicious period, let’s take a look at how some of the popular brands are celebrating the Chinese New Year and syncing it with innovative Lunar New Year strategies across the retail landscape.

5 Lunar New Year Marketing Strategies

1. Drive engagement with emotional loyalty

While incorporating Lunar New Year marketing campaigns to drive higher engagement, brands must also work on emotionally connecting with the people. The traditional Chinese New Year is high on people’s emotions. A reason why launching emotional loyalty programs specifically around this time of the year could be one of the strongest levers – True Loyalty is Earned not Bought. Place your bets on redeemers who often tend to shop more if emotionally engaged at the right time. Knowing that the Chinese New Year is also about gifting besides regular shopping, an effectively designed emotional loyalty program would eventually yield higher revenue and foster brand loyalty. Here is a quick guide to emotional loyalty programs.

2. Empower your offline marketing promotions with festive contests

Besides store décor resonating with the Chinese New Year celebration, special in-store promotions must be promoted a week or two leading up to the Lunar New Year. It is thus very important for a brand to time its offline promotions. Introducing QR codes in your store alleys for surprise offers or inviting your loyal customers for an advance preview of a new festive collection might just do the trick. Many brands also plan lucky draw contests with grand prizes to build enthusiasm around this time of the year.

3. Livestreaming in the Digital Era

Undoubtedly, live streaming has emerged as one of the most influential sales channels in China, witnessing a dramatic rise in popularity since 2020. Prestigious luxury brands are increasingly leveraging this platform, with giants from L’Oreal to Louis Vuitton showcasing their products in unprecedented ways on leading e-commerce sites across the region, integrating livestreaming into their broader brand marketing strategies. But is its impact confined to China alone? Not really! The live streaming industry is expected to hit $256.56 by 2032.

4. Building at-home surprises with experiential loyalty programs

The tradition of the Lunar New Year has always been about family. People come home and take off during this period to celebrate it with their families. Brands thus need to create similar experiences to sustain excitement by introducing campaigns like a food brand sharing online recipes, wellness brands opting for online fitness programs, or engaging audiences with gamified experiences like seasonal quizzes, mystery offers, etc. The traditional dine-at-home experience with loved ones must be leveraged by brands by building experiential strategies that focus on creating these experiences, even at home.

5. Multifold your social media interaction

Brands’ presence on social media is indispensable. Hence, brands need to be aggressively active across regular as well as regional social media channels like WeChat, Weibo, Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, etc. during this festive time. A Lunar New Year campaign idea could be creating videos on your app or website to launch a new product around the Lunar New Year which would definitely grab more eyeballs. In a digital-first world, it is imperative for brands to connect with customers on the right channel to reap maximum benefits.

With the Lunar New Year approaching soon, brands and businesses are scaling up to capitalize on this opportunity. You don’t always have to break the bank to gain benefits from the festive season, implementing a Lunar New Year campaign facilitated by seasoned experts will enable your enterprise to achieve all of this with minimum cost. Capillary’s comprehensive Loyalty Solutions will help you achieve just that. Book a demo with our Loyalty Experts to know more.

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Writer, traveler, and a cold coffee addict, precisely in that order, Aditi Jindal is a storyteller. Whether it is slicing brands and their content marketing strategies or dabbling different genres of book writing; her keen interest in finding the unique idea for brands to deliver compelling stories keeps her on her toes.