Holiday marketing campaigns are a great way to boost sales and increase exposure. And social media plays a big part in making your holiday campaign a success or a flop. As we have preached lately, social media is a powerful player in today’s marketing sphere. People flock to social media during the holidays to review products, research companies and read reviews before buying gifts. If you’re not using social to help market your brand or product, you aren’t helping your business grow to the best of its ability.
As of this year, almost one-third of shoppers made purchase decisions based directly on social media interactions, according to a MarketLive survey. And these direct purchase decisions based on social media experiences are expected to continue growing substantially.
But just how can you incorporate your social media marketing to your holiday campaigns? Well, for starters you need to remember to ALWAYS incorporate any marketing campaigns into your social media marketing. Social is where you can organically spread the word about your brand and product and encourage your followers to share your campaign with their friends.
Stemming off that point, when developing your holiday campaign for social media, make sure that your campaign is responsive. What does that means? It means that your campaign is accessible on both mobile devices AND desktop. As we have predicted for 2016, mobile is overtaking desktop at an unbelievable speed, and soon will be the main source of internet surfing, putting desktop computers in the dust.
So, make your campaign available on both mobile and desktop computers. Along with this, many social media channels have a “buy” button now that enables users to simply click on their Facebook or Twitter page to buy a product. This is extremely useful because you are taking the product straight to them. Alleviating the hassle of going on your website to shop gives the user a much easier shopping experience- straight from social media.
Some handy social media campaigns:
Content-generated contests and giveaway
Many users enjoy seeing user-generated content. This means developing campaigns that make use of user photos, reviews and voting contests. By allowing users to share their own content, it creates a deeper sense of value for the campaign.
Loyalty Discounts
As people get on social media to research products, brands and reviews, reward your followers by giving them an exclusive social media discount or deal for following your brand on your social channels.
Social media advertising
Facebook offers extensive advertising services to help promote your brand and target your audience, but Facebook is not the only platform offering advertising services. Twitter and LinkedIn now have paid advertising that can help expand your campaign’s reach.
Time-Bound Holiday Campaigns
By creating a sense of urgency and exclusiveness, making a campaign that is only advertised on social media for a short time helps hype customers up to your deal. Also, offering a limited number of a product and “holiday discount” helps incite motivation to participate in your campaign.
Make sure your campaign is holiday-themed
This may sound obvious to some, but it’s a good reminder that if you want to attract holiday shoppers, you should make your campaign look and feel like a holiday offer.
There are plenty of ideas on the internet of good holiday campaigns, but the suggestions listed above are tried-and-true campaign ideas.
As marketers are all getting ready for the holiday deal dash, remember to find a unique selling point to your campaign. Focus on your target audience and figure out what kind of campaign may suit them best. Not all campaigns are created equal.
Something for all social media marketing campaigns to remember to do is to invoke engagement. Whether it is commenting on campaign post, or liking your page, make sure you are asking your followers to interact with your page somehow. This helps expand your post reach, which is now moderated by the new Facebook algorithm. Be the judge of how much you ask your followers to do though. If you give them a million tasks to complete before they are eligible for your giveaway/discount that may discourage them from entering at all.