Social media marketing presents exciting opportunities year-round, and the holidays are one of the best times to be active online. People start looking for ways to save early, and brands can leverage the excitement for the season to drive traffic, generate more leads, convert more customers and boost revenue throughout the holiday season.
If you’re looking for ways to market your business for the holidays, fall is the prime time to start developing a strategy.
What Is Social Media Marketing?
Social media marketing is using social media platforms to create content that promotes your business offerings to your audience. It can be free or paid, and most brands use a combination of organic (unpaid) posts with paid advertisements to reach their audience.
Tips for Advertising on Social Media During the Holidays
Here are the top tips for using social media to improve holiday sales. These can be particularly helpful if you’re a business that struggles during the winter.
Create Holiday Sales
Holiday says are limited by nature, meaning they help fuel buyer motivation due to fear of missing out (FOMO). No one wants to find out that an item they had their eyes on was 40% off last week. Build anticipation a week or several days before a major holiday sale to generate interest. You can also use a pre-holiday promotional campaign to capture emails and build a mailing list that will help you continue to market to consumers throughout the year.
Consider Flash Sales
Flash sales are fun because they’re a quick way to drive instant traffic. Consumers love feeling like they’ve snagged something exclusive, and companies can benefit from the short-term nature of the discount to maximize profitability without losing too much on discounted items.
To make flash sales successful, make sure you have an audience that’s already engaged, or prepare to boost your visibility through paid ads on social media. High-quality visuals and eye-catching advertisements are key here. Make sure the product and discount people stand to gain are on full display, according to each platform’s advertising guidelines.
Make Your Marketing Festive
People want to feel in the spirit during the holiday season, so have fun with holiday-themed content, promotional posts and jingles in your videos that play into the atmosphere. You can also go a step further and use brand colors to craft holiday advertisements that are both festive and unique.
Remember, this time of year is meant to be fun and exciting. Try to cultivate that same enthusiasm you have during the holidays for your consumers. Look to your own favorite brands for inspiration. What about their holiday campaigns gets you feeling holly and jolly?
Remember to Give Back
People are motivated more than ever to support charitable contributions during the holidays. Your company can show that they are also invested in paying it forward by creating a charity drive linked to sales. Allow customers to make a difference in others’ lives while checking off items on their shopping lists. For example, you could run a drive that collects a percentage of each sale to help you reach a goal of $500 or more.
Create a Holiday Contest
Get your audience in on the festive fun with a holiday-themed contest. You could have them design a product ad, showcase how they used a certain product or put a holiday spin on one of your best-selling items. Whatever you choose, make sure you leverage hashtags to make the content easily trackable. The goal is to not only boost brand awareness but enhance audience engagement and customer participation.
You should also leverage historical sales data to determine what prizes would most encourage someone to participate in your contest.
Make Your Content Entertaining
People don’t just want to be sold to online. They’re looking for meaningful, entertaining experiences that help them form a personal relationship with a brand. Get creative by brainstorming ways you could use social media this holiday season to make an impact. Maybe you have a montage showing how customers used your brand’s products to give back this holiday season. Or perhaps you partner with some UGC creators to come up with gift ideas you can promote on your page.
Social Media Marketing Mistakes to Avoid During the Holidays
When you’re planning your content strategy for the holiday season, make sure you avoid these social media mistakes:
– Taking a heavy sales approach that doesn’t focus on customer’s feelings or emotions.
– Not paying attention to audience engagement.
– Only promoting one holiday (remember, people celebrate more than Christmas)
– Over-using hashtags
– Not adapting your content to suit different audiences on various platforms
Remember, social media is meant to be engaging and open a two-way conversation between businesses and their customers. With this in mind, you can take advantage of this exciting sales season to foster deeper connections with your audience that will help you fuel revenue.
