Every year, the holidays somehow arrive sooner than expected. One minute, you’re recovering from a Halloween-induced sugar hangover. The next, you’re surrounded by tinsel and Christmas carols.
Consumers are more than familiar with last-minute holiday shopping. But if you’re a business owner, panic sets in around mid-to-late November. That’s when you suddenly realize that you forgot a key component of your holiday marketing game plan.
Thankfully, the digital age has made it easier than ever to build out a holiday marketing strategy on the fly. Social media, in particular, is an excellent venue for seasonal marketing, especially if you’re working with a reduced time-frame or a small budget.
If you’re making last-minute adjustments to your social media strategy for the holidays, we’ve collected four tips to help you make the most of the season.
Spruce Up Your Page for the Season
Most brick-and-mortar businesses decorate their physical location for the holiday season. If you haven’t already done the same thing for your social media pages, you should.
These spaces are virtual homes for your business, and they deserve the same treatment as a physical location. If you want your customers to associate your business with holiday cheer, your online presence should reflect the spirit of the season.
While you’re giving your social media feeds a holiday-themed makeover, it’s a good idea to do a little virtual housekeeping. Many holiday shoppers spend a lot of time researching their purchases, and they are inclined to visit your social media page as part of the research process. Make sure that your business information — your address, hours, and contact info — are all prominently displayed and up-to-date.
Help Customers Find the Perfect Gift
Programmatic advertising delivers exceptional ROI all year round, and the holiday season is no exception. During the holidays, when customers are primed to purchase, but are also bombarded by offers and deals, targeted and retargeted ads can be especially effective.
Whether you’re targeting shoppers who are researching your competitors or retargeting users who recently visited your website, social media is an ideal venue for programmatic ads in the lead-up to Christmas.
Shoppers not only browse social media feeds for holiday deals, but in the lead up to the holidays, many are using sites like Facebook and Instagram to connect with family and share photos of seasonal events. This makes social media the ideal place to find holiday customers.
Deck Your Feed with Holiday Deals
During the holidays, consumers are not only attracted to deals. They’re actively seeking them out. Social media is the ideal space to announce holiday-themed sales, discounts, and special offers. Many shoppers actively look for deals through social media, while others are attracted to hot offers that pop up in their newsfeed.
It’s important to keep in mind that the internet is flooded with deals in the month between Black Friday and Christmas. To attract clicks, brands need to stand out from the pack.
Unsure how to market deals and discounts this holiday season? Here are four concepts that you might want to consider:
- Create an advent-type calendar of deals, with a new deal revealed every day in your feed.
- Share holiday-themed promo codes via social media that customers can use in-store.
- Design a seasonal discount for customers who create and share content on social media.
- In the week before Christmas, share last-minute gift deals for late shoppers.
Spread Some Holiday Cheer
Social media is a great venue for holiday marketing, but brands should be cautious not to overwhelm shoppers with too many sales-heavy posts. Users expect a combination of non-promotional and promotional posts from brands. Most brands find they get the best results with a 2:1 or 3:1 ratio of non-promotional to promotional content.
So, take advantage of the Christmas season to spread some holiday cheer. One of the best ways to approach social media at this time of year is to adopt a spirit of giving. You can use your social media feed as a platform to promote your vendors, your customers, or local organizations that you support.
These kinds of promotions are a great source of holiday content. They’re also a great way to boost engagement on your page, since the people or organizations that you’re promoting are inclined to share this content.
