April Fools’ Day is a cultural holiday that is often overlooked by businesses. Most business owners know that promoting your business around holidays is a fantastic way to increase sales. The most recognized holidays are Christmas, New Year, Easter, Fourth of July and Black Friday. But all holidays and celebrations are an excellent opportunity to show customers what you do and get some sales by the end of the day. Here are five ways to make a business impact on April Fools’ Day.
1. Send customers a funny e-card
Find a great e-card with a hilarious picture or video and send it to your contacts, along with a tasteful joke to brighten their day. There’s no need for shameless promotion, sales offering or pitch in the greeting. Just add your contact details. Be sure that your e-card receiver will see who sent the funny greeting.
2. Update your Twitter feed or Facebook status with a joke
Think of an appropriate joke for your Twitter feed or Facebook status. You can easily write something witty if you give it some thought. If you can’t think of anything, find a joke somewhere that you think is amusing. The objective is to get interaction and comments. Feel free to advertise a one-day sale, however, or an April Fools’ Day discount on orders.
3. Send a text message with a joke to your clients
Our clients may be so used to our serious, professional demeanor that it will be a pleasant surprise for them to read a text message with a joke. We tend to overlook the value of brightening someone’s day and yet this is a subtle but extremely significant part of the client experience. Just be sure that you have permission to text the people who will receive messages. Some people don’t appreciate receiving unsolicited texts and/or may get billed for text messaging.
4. Start an April Fools’ Day contest on Twitter
An enjoyable way to promote your services is to launch a Twitter contest for April Fools’ Day. For example, you can ask people to tweet the best jokes or pranks they did. Just create a hash tag for the contest and ask participants to include it in their posts. From the hash tag, everyone can get to you as a business owner. From mentions of the hash tag, loads of Twitter followers will be exposed to your contest. Reward the contest winner (or winners) with a gift card, prize or special discount.
5. Play an innocent prank on customers
By now your day should have started exceptionally well, with laughs and shared joy with others. Now comes time for a prank. Call a couple of customers from your contact list. Let them know that they’ve won the grand prize in a Customer Appreciation Contest. When they come into the store to collect the prize, act like you don’t know what they’re talking about and claim that it must be a hoax. As soon as you see the look of disappointment on their faces, say “April Fools!” and explain that you were joking, then double the prize. If the customers laugh and walk away happy, they will tell everyone they know about the experience, which promotes your business via word-of-mouth advertising.