The end-of-year holiday season is an exciting time for shoppers intent on finding the perfect gifts for family and friends, while taking advantage of discounts and deals. The same goes for retailers looking to boost their annual profits with spikes in sales. The problem is the competition for consumer dollars.
If you haven’t yet considered a holiday-centric social media campaign, you may miss out on a big opportunity to influence shoppers. Lately, consumers are turning to mobile devices and social media to browse and shop. You can’t afford to ignore this shift in shopping trends, if you want to capitalize on the massive spending that occurs in the weeks leading up to the holidays.
Whether you’re on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, or all the above, you need to integrate a social media push as part of your overall marketing campaign. Here are just a few ways to start a holiday marketing campaign on social media, or improve upon efforts from previous years.
1. Exhibit the Holiday Spirit
During the holidays, many businesses go out of their way to decorate to attract customers, and elicit an emotional reaction. If you have a brick-and-mortar location, you’ll likely display the hallmarks of the season. This includes strings of lights, evergreen garlands and wreaths, ornaments, and even holiday-specific fare, like a decorated Christmas tree, or a menorah.
You should also consider hiring a custom website design professional to update your site with colorful, season-appropriate graphics and themes. You also need to portray the holiday spirit in a variety of ways through your social media accounts.
On Pinterest, you could post photos of in-store holiday preparations or holiday displays within the community. You can even put up photos of employees engaged in charity, or creating their own holiday memories with family and friends outside of work. Use your Facebook and Twitter feeds to promote holiday specials, but also to post feel-good news stories with a holiday theme.
Don’t forget that many shoppers using social media want to see products, specials, product reviews, and trusted referrals. You also have opportunity to make suggestions based on past purchases, browsing history, push targeted ads, or re-marketing.
2. Push Shareable Content
Sharing infers a form of social currency upon those able to educate and entertain their social media contacts. Everyone wants to be first to share incredible deals with family members, and hilarious memes or videos with friends.
If you can create shareable content with a holiday theme, you stand to gain recognition, boost lead generation, increase followers, and drive sales during the holiday season. Consider how best to make your content shareable. Don’t forget to embed links, include CTAs, and encourage liking and sharing.
3. Incentivize and Engage
There is no shortage of discounts and deals during the holidays. How can you be heard above the din, so to speak? You could create member exclusives in addition to standard deals as consumer incentives to follow you on social media, or sign up for membership.
Engage consumers by hosting social media contests and giveaways. You can make them easy to enter via social media. For example, you could automatically enter followers who like, share, or post comments or reviews on your accounts.
Utilize targeted marketing services to promote your contests or giveaways. This increases followers, membership, and overall customer engagement.
4. Team with Charities
This the season of giving. Many people are interested in making charitable contributions during the holidays. Most are not averse to getting something for themselves in the process.
Team up with charities during the holidays, such as donating a percentage of proceeds from sales of specific items. This is a strong opportunity for holiday marketing via social media channels, a chance to bump sales, and of course, the ability to work with customers to contribute to those in need.
5. Cross-platform Promotion
The most successful marketing efforts include using elements such as premium SEO services, online advertising, and real-world marketing campaigns. If you are going to include social media, you will find that a similar approach yields the best results.
In other words, you need to cross-promote any holiday discounts, deals, contests, giveaways, or other seasonal campaigns across multiple social media accounts. Make sure to test, track, and analyze to ensure the greatest ROI.