Campaigns
Labor Day Marketing Ideas

Labor Day Marketing Ideas

6 Labor Day Marketing Ideas You Can Use to Drive More Sales

Create a sales-driving Labor Day marketing campaign this year. We’ve got six examples of real-life campaigns for inspiring you as well as ready-to-use Labor Day marketing templates to get you started today.

Most Labor Day marketing campaigns revolve around offering reduced prices. But, you don’t have to take the generic route.

Instead, try something more innovative to stand out from the sea of price cuts—like running a giveaway competition, tiered discounts, or offering a “buy-one-get-one” deal.

In this post, let’s walk you through six winning Labor Day marketing examples that are worth replicating. We’ve also got customizable marketing templates for you so you’re ready to crush your Labor Day sales goals.

Labor Day marketing best practices 

Keep the following pointers in mind as you plan your Labor Day marketing campaign:

  • Review your target audience. This is key to creating relatable marketing campaigns. If you’re targeting mothers, for example, you can create memes about how they work so hard for raising their kids. 
  • Know the correct dates. Labor Day is a much bigger event in North America than in Europe. The UK has Labour Day (AKA International Workers’ Day) on May 1st which coincides with the early May bank holiday, whereas the US and Canada have it on the first Monday in September. Having a strong grip on who your audience is and keeping a retail marketing calendar handy helps here. 
  • Build urgency. Triggering the fear-of-missing-out (FOMO) in your marketing campaigns will encourage shoppers to buy right away—growing your sales. So be sure to inform them about how long the offer will last, set a countdown timer, create a limited-edition collection, and so on. 
  • Look for coinciding events or holidays to grow sales further. In the US, for example, Labor Day comes around the same time as the Back to School event. Create a long-running campaign or offer big discounts if both these events are important to your target audience.  

What is the best time to start Labor Day marketing? 

In the US, searches for “Labor Day” kick-off from around mid-August and peak between September 5th to September 11 according to Google Trends.

US Labor Day search trends data

Remember that Labor Day was on September 6th in the above data for 2021, but the date is different each year as it always falls on the Monday. Your campaign start and end times will need to be adjusted accordingly.

The continued searches after the day itself suggests that people also expect shopping deals and campaigns to run on into the following week after Labor Day has come and gone.

On the other hand, searches for “International Workers’ Day” in the UK pick up from April 17 and peak between May 1 to May 7.

UK Labor Day search trends data

The search trends leave a clear takeaway: you need to start marketing at least two weeks before Labor Day—whether you’re in the UK or US.

Labor Day marketing ideas & examples

Let’s now look at six of the best Labor Day marketing examples to try for yourself:

1. Create a Labor Day special discount

This Labor Day marketing idea is a no-brainer. Offer X% off and you’re likely to grow your sales. Except, the key to making your discount uber-successful is to make it easy for buyers to shop.

How? By creating a landing page as Macy’s did, curating all the discounted products with reduced pricing:

Labor Day Marketing Ideas: Macy's
See full page

Bonus points for creating limited-time offers by adding notes like “limited-time special” or “only X pieces left” as it’s an effective strategy for instilling FOMO. 

2. Offer a BOGO deal

A "buy-one-get-one" deal is a great option to stand out against all the common Labor Day reduced prices campaigns. 

Take it from The Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf brand that offered this deal:

It doesn't have to be giving away stuff for free, though.

You can also try different combinations if offering a straight BOGO doesn’t fit with your unit economics—like buying one to get one half price or needing to buy two items to get one free. But be sure to alert visitors of your Labor Day weekend deal using a slide-in site message

3. Offer a sale after fixed-amount shopping 

Another idea for Labor Day marketing is to get your customers to shop for a certain amount to receive X% off. 

Candle Delirium offered this—giving 15% off on every $100 spent:

Labor Day Marketing Ideas: Candle Delirium

Two more things worth noting here include the luxury candle store sharing last-minute reminders on social media and subtly promoting their products in their visuals. 

So what does that mean for you? Three things:

  1. Begin by prepping your site for the discount. Position a timed popup to announce the sale, for example.
  2. Don’t set and forget. Keep reminding your buyers of the discount campaign. Use email, exit-intent popups, and social media to this end.
  3. Create social media and home page images that show your product. Instead of featuring your product alone though, show it in action. Candle Delirium, for example, creates a relaxing environment to show its products in action.

4. Host a Labor Day weekend giveaway 

You can also host a giveaway of your own products or pair up with another store or two to create a giveaway hamper. 

For Labor Day, the Freehand brand partnered with The Fillmore to give two free tickets to Lilly Allen’s show and a copy of her album:

Labor Day Marketing Ideas: Freehand
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But to make sure no one misses your offer, create a giveaway landing page—complete with a countdown timer to mark the time left for participation.

5. Give back to your community 

Jones Road Beauty took a unique approach to its Labor Day marketing by donating a slice of its sales to a non-profit:

Labor Day Marketing Ideas: Jones Road Beauty

Essentially, Jones Road Beauty took into account the prevailing events—something we recommended above—and realized it could do something invaluable for the survivors of Hurricane Ida. 

So the makeup brand donated to Baby2Baby that was sending emergency supplies to affected families.

You can try something similar. Take a stock of what’s happening around you and what your audience values. Then create a plan to contribute to it.

Let’s say your target buyers are teens heading back to school. In that case, a good campaign idea is to donate sales from Labor Day to an educational non-profit organization.

6. Offer free gifts 

Nectar Sleep made its Labor Day discounts irresistible by giving away $399 in free gifts on top of the reduced mattress prices ($400 off):

Labor Day Marketing Ideas: Nectar Sleep
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What’s noteworthy is that Nectar Sleep specifies precisely what they’re giving away for free (in this case, a cooling pillow, sheet set, and mattress protector).

And they provide social proof (look at the 4.5-star review on the top right of the landing page). To top it all, there are countdown timers that trigger FOMO.

For creating a Labor Day campaign similar to this, you’ll also need a specific landing page sharing social proof, what you’re giving free, and specifying shipping details. Don't forget to add a countdown timer 😉

SEE MORE: How to Craft Compelling (& Profitable) Offers That Your Website Visitors Can’t Resist

Labor Day marketing templates

Finally, for the templates we promised. 

We have DIY templates for popups, landing pages, sticky bars, and more.

All you need to do is to log in to ConvertFlow and customize these templates. Replace the placeholder text with your marketing copy and tweak the colors and fonts as required. That’s all—you’re good to go, no waiting on developers required. 

Here are some templates you can customize to make use of this Labor Day:

About the author
Masooma Memon
Contributor, ConvertFlow
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Masooma is a B2B writer for SaaS who has worked with awesome publications like Hootsuite, Vimeo, Trello, Sendinblue, and Databox among others. You’ll usually find her writing in-depth content, making to-do lists, or reading a fantasy novel.