Can you believe the holiday season is right around the corner?! That’s right, cue the holiday music every which way you turn! It also means that if you haven’t already, it’s time to get on those important holiday marketing campaigns! According to Facebook, 43% of shoppers did their holiday shopping in November or earlier. The holiday season offers businesses opportunities of all sorts! You will want to make sure you grab your audience’s attention amongst the noise and make a profit while you do so.
Fun fact: Instagram and Facebook are some of the most powerful social channels marketers can use during the holiday season. When used correctly, they can help your business grow in sales tremendously, during the short period of time. Don’t know where to begin when it comes to planning your holiday social campaign? No worries, we’ve decided to put together a list of 5 easy tips that’ll help your business sleigh your marketing holiday campaign this year.
1. Start Planning Early & Create a Budget
As in start planning your holiday Instagram campaign, yesterday. Most companies start planning holiday campaigns as early as August and September. The earlier you start strategizing, budgeting, creating, and content collecting, the more success you’ll have. Success, especially on Instagram and Facebook, always favors those who plan. Figure out what your goals are for the holidays and go from there. Also, advertising gets expensive during the season as everyone is fighting for a spot online, optimize your ads and make sure they are set up correctly.
Wasn’t you? Don’t fear, it’s not the end. We understand and know that many brands get overwhelmed with planning these things out. Also, you’re in luck! We created a free content planning sheet to help you plan and organize your content, coming to the shop soon!
2. Conduct Market Research
Market research is one major key to success, always, & the holiday season is no exception. Take a look at your competitors Instagram feeds, search up holiday campaigns on Google, & look at what they chose to do previously. Was it successful? Did it seem to engage with their demographic well? Ask yourself questions to help use their holiday campaign almost as a case study into what works, or what doesn’t work for seasonal content in a social scape. Looking at competitors will also help make sure you are coming up with ideas that are fresh, exciting, & have never been done before.
3. Tell A Story
Every successful holiday campaign shows a cohesive story to the audience. Let’s go back to the Coca Cola holiday commercials, especially the trucks! PRIME example of a campaign that has everyone in their feelings every holiday season. Their commercials associate hit’s one of the 3 E’s, emotion, and makes you want to have their products at your gatherings. Notice how we said SHOWS, not tells. The message behind your campaign should entertain, educate, or hit an emotion. Make sure your creative and copy all work together to tell the message you want to communicate. This means it’s extremely important that you are using the same colors, image style, filters, etc. to help your holiday campaign be clear, recognizable, & not confusing for followers.
4. Create Something your Followers Can Engage With
On social media, successful campaigns always encourage followers to be interactive and are fun! An example of this is the “Elf Yourself” by Office Depot (don’t tell us you haven’t done this before?). The campaign wasn’t necessarily to drive direct sales, but to bring brand awareness, which was their goal and they did a great job with it.
Social media is known for being engaging & truth be told, most holiday campaigns that don’t involve some sort of follower engagement, will probably just be ignored. If you create a holiday campaign that is just focused on promoting your services, or products, with no benefits or value to your followers, we can promise you won’t have optimal success. Or, a lot of brands are now using the power of messaging to fuel brand loyalty and as always, know-like-trust is the name of the game. Make sure messaging is something your business is on top of and make yourself available to your customers.
5. Utilize Basic Analytics and Be Consistent
Yes, analytics can be overwhelming, & often need an agency’s review for optimal success, but there are some basic analytics you can review to review your campaign’s success. For example, posting at the best time possible for your brand, your reach in increasing, there is engagement, increase in sales, etc. This will help you know what is working and what isn’t. This is key to improving your campaigns.
Also, consistency with posting matters. If you’re not consistently posting your campaign, on stories, and your feed, then you likely will have less success. Post daily or whatever works for your brand specifically, but be consistent with it, & we promise it’ll pay off. Also, make sure your posts on Instagram are shoppable and that your stories are too. 500 million accounts view and use stories daily, you’re leaving money on the table if you’re not tapping into it!If you’re wanting to chat about your holiday campaigns, set up a complimentary call with us here and we’ll be happy to assist you the best we can!
