Last Minute Father's Day Promo Ideas For Your Business
Father’s Day falls in the middle of June (18th June 2023 on this occasion), so many retailers and restaurants will already have prepared their offers for Dad’s special day. But that doesn’t mean you can’t run a promotion too! The good news is that there’s still time to cash in with an unmissable offer that will please Dad and the diner or last-minute shop-dasher that’s paying for the day - meaning extra money in your business.
Whether you’re hunting for some extra inspiration to run alongside your current promotions or just looking for a last-minute, easy-to-run deal for the day, this blog has got you covered. We’ve split our blog into two sides - with ideas for retail businesses, followed by more ideas for hospitality businesses, and then a few ways you could quickly share your new promotions.
Top tip: If you want to keep things simple, or you're running super late, your Epos Now system will remember the promotion you ran last year.
With one click of a button, you can reinstate the promotion and your prices on the relevant products. To automatically roll out the promotion you used a year ago, follow these instructions in our Support Centre. (Just remember to advertise that you’ve got a deal running!)
Father’s Day promotions for retail
It’s traditional for most children to buy Dad a little something to show their appreciation, and every family does gift-giving a little differently. So here are a few ideas for retailers to win sales and do customer’s a favour by selling some great presents at even better prices:
🔨Set up a special display
Displays don’t all have to be floor-to-ceiling, multi-colour extravaganzas. They can be small, simple, and functional shelves that can be set up in a few minutes to hold a similarly small selection of specially chosen products.
Fathers aren’t always that complicated. If you have a licence to sell alcohol, a promo on some drinks could be all you need. Choose a few spirits for your display and a four-pack for the beer-drinkers, some tasty snacks to go with them, and you’re good to go.
Alternatively, while not every dad does DIY, if you’re a specialist shop, tools and traditionally functional items are favourite gifts for many fathers. Even a straightforward 10% off on a line of products preferred by your male customers could lead to an uptick in sales.
Dad’s come in all shapes and sizes, with tastes as varied as any other group. Even if you run a flower shop, there will be fathers that appreciate your products, especially if they come as gifts from their children. So set up your display to show encouragement to those choosing a present for their Dad.
🎁 Offer small product bundles and stock up on gift bags to cross-sell!
There are many ways of offering value and convenience to your customers. Bundling a selection of smaller products together in a gift bag can make for an innovative and unique way of putting together a Father’s Day offer.
Product combos often piece themselves together, like a cheese selection and a bottle of wine, or a nice pair of socks with a mug (add a slogan or novelty-size to add some colour, perhaps?).
Product bundles are a classic win-win for retailers and customers alike. Both get better value. By selling two or three products instead of one, your business gets an extra sale; at the same time, your customer gets better value on all products they buy. Product bundles keep everybody happy!
In this case, you may be able to get some suitable bundles together (keeping the target market in mind). If not - gift bags and cards are the answer! Rather than wrapping the gifts, offering the customer the chance to put both together in a nice (and reusable) gift bag is a practical, easy way for the son or daughter to prepare the gift for handing over to their father – and adds another sale to your transaction. Make sure to keep the gift paper, bags and cards right by the register to prompt those impulse combo purchases.
All of a sudden, one sale has become three. What a result!
🧧 Bonus tip for retail stores: get the vouchers ready!
Don’t have any dad-appropriate items right this minute? Don’t panic - offer a voucher instead! People love choice, so offering a voucher to your customers can be a very effective way of offering a gift that still allows Dad to find something he loves. (And caters for the hesitant buyer who may be struggling to get dad a gift!) If you already offer vouchers, give them a spruce up to highlight them as a great Father’s Day gift option in-store, on your website and on emails.
(And if you’re feeling fun, you could even run a promotion the day after Father’s Day, with a “Did you forget about Father’s Day too?” slogan, offering vouchers or gifts for customers who forgot the day!)
Father’s Day promotions for hospitality
The hospitality industry has every bit as much to gain from Father’s Day as retailers. Come Sunday, families everywhere will be popping out for lunch to spend some quality time together and to celebrate the fathers (often several generations of them) in the family.
So how can your pub, bar, or restaurant take advantage of the big day? Here are our best recommendations:
🆓 Fathers get a free meal or a free drink
The simplest way of bringing families through the door is offering dads the chance to eat or drink free. A free drink comes at relatively little expense to the business, which can be made up on the rest of the dad’s meal and his guests, such as family members.
If you want to go the extra mile, a free mains in a multi-course meal will bring many diners to the table. With starters, desserts, and/or drinks making much of that money back, you then offer families excellent value while profiting off all the extra diners that come out to eat with Dad.
🍽️ Put a special Dad’s dish on the menu
If you’re offering food or drinks, putting together a special offer designed to cater to the average Dad can be an effective way of bringing in the families on Father’s Day.
Your special Father’s Day offering could be a variation on a product you already offer. For instance, it could be your most popular dish among adult men in a larger portion, or it could be an existing dish with extra meat, or even be a challenge (such as “extra spicy”).
But pubs and restaurants that order in a cask of a new beer or ale for dads to try can liven up the day with a novelty that stands out on the specials menu (combined with a dad’s discount, this makes an irresistible offer few Fathers will want to turn down).
🎼 Bonus tip for hospitality businesses: put on your best “Dad rock” playlist
Even with a special offer put together to entice families and children to bring their fathers to your business, creating an atmosphere that helps them enjoy the day might mean adjusting the surroundings, both visual and aural.
If you want a restaurant to suit adult men, in their 30s and older, then playing the usual chart hits might not be your best bet. Putting together a playlist of slightly older pieces, leaning towards rock music and 20th-century hits is likely to change the tone of your business to fit the taste of the day’s clientele.
3 places to quickly share your promotions
You know your customers best, so take this list as ‘ideas only’ for where you could advertise your Father’s Day promotions. The main thing is to get your message out clearly, quickly, and consistently, to the channels that you get the most success on. Below are three suggestions you can action pretty quickly:
1. Share your promotion on social media - Create a quick graphic in Canva or other graphic software, using your brand colours. It can be as simple as ‘Father’s Day discount:’ followed by your offer, a discount code, or photos of the gifts available. Share this in your social media stories each day until the 18th June 2023, as well as a post, to try and gain traction.
Top Tip: Remember to add this as a post to your Google Business profile (previously Google My Business) listing too! It’s a great way for anyone who may be searching for your industry to be alerted to your deal, when they come across your profile. You can add it as an update, or as a photo.
2. Add your promotion to your website - Update your homepage (or any landing pages on your website that get a lot of traffic) to include your promotion. Whether that’s adding text or a graphic, make sure it’s very obvious to customers when they land on your website, with a clear call-to-action on how they can get in on your promotion.
3. Send a tailored email - We hope you’ve asked customers to sign up for marketing emails, because this is a great time to send them a well-written email, highlighting your promotion. (This can be a great incentive to get subscriber sign-ups in store too). It’s up to you if you want to target your promotion, such as loyalty programme members or a subscriber-exclusive offer. You’ll need to make sure your subject is super catchy and clear, and make it very obvious how a customer can cash in on your deal in the email. Look at sites like really good emails for email writing and layout inspiration.
Of course, if you have a physical store or location, make sure to label your discounts or deals too!
Our best tip here is to use multiple channels to sync up your messages, and make sure your team knows how to accept any discounts or run any promotions on your POS system.
Don’t miss out: put something on offer for Father’s Day
Even if your offers only last the weekend, promoting the right products can turn a bad day of trade into a good one, so it’s always worth the trouble. Your customers also love to see you making changes, spicing things up, and putting offers on.
When people visit your business and your shelves or menu looks a little different, it lets them know they’re in for something fun and new every time they come. That makes special occasions like Father’s Day perfect for offering something a little different.
It’s also great to let everyone know that you appreciate the important role fathers play in all of our lives. So show your love to fathers everywhere on this wonderful, sunny weekend with a great promotion, and if you’re still in doubt, take a look at some of our other marketing blogs to find some fresh ideas!
