This Article Will Help You Use Social Media Marketing for Holiday Shopping, Gift Buying, and More
Late November into December, it’s prime time to amp up social media marketing and eCommerce strategies to get consumers buying from your brand. Every year though, the noise out there on the Internet grows and the competition becomes fiercer.
As marketers ourselves, we don’t want to see any brand investing in strategies that don’t work or going down a path that isn’t going to lead to anywhere. So for this holiday season December through to January, here are some tips, tricks, and pointers in this ultimate guide to using social media marketing to sell more.
Start early
The best advice anyone can give for a successful holiday eCommerce marketing campaign or holiday digital marketing is to start as early as possible. Ideally, this should be around October 28-29. This then gives enough time for Halloween to pass and sets you up to attract as many gift buyers as possible throughout November to January. For this year, obviously, we are right in the heart of the holiday season so it’s late advice. For next year though, remember!
Plan objectives
For every social media marketing channel – Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, LinkedIn, etc. – have holiday objectives. Every brand is different, and there are pros and cons to each channel. Objectives for sales, engagement, and other key metrics provide clarity on how you intend to move forward with strategies and approaches.
Stay visible
New and existing social media followers will buy from brands that are visible. This type of visibility is what every brand strives for. You want your brand to be the first thing someone sees when they search out a Christmas gift in your category, or be the first thing that comes to mind when someone thinks of when they think of holiday shopping. It can be tough being visible without overwhelming your followers so be aware of how often and what you’re posting.
Holiday-themed social content
Your usual gamut of social media posts should be infused with Christmas cheer. When content isn’t in some way leaning on the holidays come December, brands can appear culturally tone-deaf. Even for those of us who don’t celebrate Christmas or certain holiday traditions, we likely participate in one way or another even if it’s just to capitalize on some premium gift buying.
Set up a schedule you stick with
Come holiday shopping time, you’ve got to be on the ball with social media marketing posts, ensuring a schedule’s maintained throughout the entirety of the month. Successful brands pre-arrange what they’re going to post when and they stay on top of reaching out to followers. Consider launching a few different strategies, whether that’s user-generated content, a social media photo contest, a week-long of sales, a prize-based contest, or something else. Give your brand enough time to roll these out and turn them around into something that sells for you.
Build out holiday-themed customer personas
If you don’t know who you’re selling to, you won’t sell – it’s pretty simple. Develop holiday-based customer personas that focus on what your customers are looking for this holiday season, the products they want to buy, who they’re buying for, and why they’re buying gifts. A high quality persona profile is also going to share their pain points, emotions, and needs. As you discover common personas that exist among your social media followers and buyers, you’ll come to understand the language, tone, and approach needed to pull on their heartstrings and maximize the holiday shopping season for your brand.
Influencers
The easiest way to cut through the noise come the holidays is to use influencers with built-in audiences. They can help get the word out on special offers or discounts and reach whole categories of social media users you may not otherwise have. Holiday influencer marketing promises big returns, if you choose the right partners for what you’re trying to accomplish.
Re-design your social media look!
Get in the mood for the holiday season by re-designing your social media avatars and banners. Holiday digital marketing should look like it. The hype will pull in customers, give your brand an optimum aesthetic for the time of year, and set you up to attract gift buyers in the spirit of giving!
It’s not all about selling!
The holidays are filled with brands promoting, promoting, and promoting! Content marketing excels most when it’s most educational, relevant, informational, or giving tips and insights. Opportunities to educate your audience on holiday gifts, how to use your products, and the specifications and benefits of certain products should be taken advantage of. This is high-value content that takes the pedal off trying to sell something and instead, you’re just having a conversation. For new social media followers, this can help build trust, authority, and convert prospective leads.
Show some humanity
During the holidays, a lot of us go to connect with our friends and family. There’s a lot of mixed emotions, of course. This is perhaps why the best holiday marketing campaigns are like the best Christmas movies – those with emotional resonance. Share human stories about you and your customers, share the humanity behind how you celebrate the holidays at your brand, and show off a human side. The better you tell your emotional-driven story, the more it will resonate with audience members.
Focus on remarketing
Come December, a lot of consumers are going to be buying from brands they already know. Focusing on new, unproven markets or target audiences is expensive. Ideally, you’ll want to go for remarketing as your primary targeting option on social media and reaching out to existing followers in an attempt to bring them back to the point of engagement.
Create a gift suggestions blog
On social media, no one wants purely promotional content. Everybody’s searching for gift suggestions in an effort to buy the right holiday gifts for their loved ones. Create a gift suggestions content marketing blog that showcases holiday-friendly products. It’ll give your social media followers some ideas on items that would make for the perfect gift. Don’t hesitate to write a thorough post outlining all your favourite recommendations.
User-generated social media campaign
Launch a holiday social media campaign where you ask your followers to share a post or post a video tagging your brand. This fosters high engagement among customers but will also potentially provide you with content to share on your website and to repost to your page. User-generated content solves the issue of not having enough meaningful content to share. Even better, you accomplish this without having to offer much in the form of sales or discounts.
Launch a Facebook Live video campaign
Holiday-themed live video streaming on Facebook generates social interactions and conversations around your brand. This is widely considered to be one of the most valuable marketing components on Facebook. Live videos get up to 6 times more interactions than non-live videos on Facebook. Your live video doesn’t have to be long and can show behind-the-scenes glimpses into how products are created, how your brand is celebrating the holidays, or sharing any promotions.
Encourage social media sharing
All the time you spend on retargeting and remarketing to your social media followers, encouraging social shares can get your message out beyond that network. An outreach campaign like this can do a lot of good in increasing sales and creating more brand awareness around the holiday season.
Social media isn’t the only digital marketing channel to capitalize on during Christmas and the holidays but it’s a very, very important one. Across platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and Pinterest, you have millions of people searching for gifts. By launching objective-driven digital campaigns on relevant platforms, you can outperform last year’s numbers in a major way. Join Unlimited Exposure today and make the most of your social media following before the month’s up!
