You might not have the reindeer to help you prepare the upcoming holidays for your business, but you have social media. During the festive season, social media holiday marketing takes on a whole new role and lets the brands create emotional connections with their consumers.
Perhaps you are the owner of F-commerce or maybe you run a small business using WooCommerce and you definitely have sales goals in your mind, but brand loyalty is something that you really need to be serious about.
And brand loyalty has always been primarily driven by emotion. That's why, during the holiday season, you won't just increase your revenue from social media, rather it's a great opportunity to create brand affinity among your consumers.
Since ours is a WordPress product company and one of our major products is a multi-vendor marketplace solution, so we see lots of small businesses are actually trying to push their business on social platforms and social media holiday marketing plans can make their marketing effort a bit easier!
The Clock is Ticking! Start Planning for Your Holiday Campaign
To help you get started, we are going to share the holiday campaign tips. Lets start-
- Start with Last Year's Campaign
- Set Clear, SMART Goals
- Know Your Audience
- Fix Your Goal & KPI
- Choose the Most Effective Social Media Channels
- Set a Timeline
- Create Attractive Holiday Creatives
- Choose a Memorable Campaign Hashtag
Lets see the details-
I. Start with Last Year's Campaign
Before you get started to work on your holiday marketing campaign, you need to visit the memory lane, walk through your previous campaign and your competitors' too!
Did you launch any campaign on social media during any previous holiday season? What did your competitors do that time? What was the social reach and engagement from those?
Here’s what to check:
- Campaign Reach and Engagement: Review the engagement metrics, including likes, shares, and comments.
- Conversion Rates: Were last year’s campaigns effective in turning followers into buyers?
- Audience Feedback: Look at the comments and reviews to see what resonated with your audience.
Find out the data and learn your lesson from that. It can greatly help you in reducing the cart abandonment rate.
II. Set Clear, SMART Goals
Based on your previous campaigns, set SMART goals (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) for this year. These goals could focus on increasing engagement, reaching new audiences, or generating leads. For example:
- Goal Example: Achieve a 25% increase in social media engagement compared to last year.
- Metric Example: Track new followers, clicks to your website, and direct conversions from social media.
III. Know Your Audience
To optimize your social media marketing, you need to set the potential target audience and which social networks they spend most of their time on.
Different platforms attract different demographics, so choose the right ones for your audience:
- Younger Audience: Snapchat, TikTok, or Instagram for food or fashion businesses.
- Professionals: LinkedIn if you’re targeting B2B audiences.
- Visual Inspiration: Pinterest is great for gift ideas and seasonal inspiration.
IV. Fix Your Goal & KPI
Using the outcomes from last year's campaign, set a realistic goal for this year's campaign. You need to decide what you want from it, either social engagement, social reach, or lead generation.
V. Choose the Most Effective Social Media Channels
Based on your target audience, you have to select the most preferable social channels for your holiday marketing campaign. For some businesses, it can be common ones like Facebook or Twitter, but for food or clothing businesses, Snapchat or even Pinterest campaigns could work like magic.
Here are some suggestions:
- Instagram and TikTok for visually compelling campaigns, like holiday decor and fashion ideas.
- Facebook and Twitter for broader audiences and community engagement.
- Pinterest for businesses focused on holiday inspiration, crafts, or gift ideas.
VI. Set a Timeline
You should set a clear timeline for your holiday marketing campaign including a start and end date. Also, you should prepare the schedule for sending the social media post/message.
VII. Create Attractive Holiday Creatives
You can easily enhance brand awareness and go closer to your audience with a visually attractive creative. Well, you might need a little bit of innovation and holiday flavor mixing up for doing so!
Think about using seasonal colors, like red, green, gold, and silver, and adding holiday-themed elements like snowflakes or gift icons. Ensure your creatives stand out with catchy captions and a clear call to action.
VIII. Choose a Memorable Campaign Hashtag
Even if you don't like hashtags, the truth is they are actually effective in order to create engagement as well as to track the conversation from your specific campaign. You need to create a hashtag that will represent your brand, content and of course the campaign.
P.S. You don't have to include your brand name all the time.
Social Media Tips to KickStart Your Holiday Campaign
So you collected the data from last year and took the preliminary steps before starting to plan the main campaign idea? Great. Now we are ready to move forward.
To be honest, creating a holiday marketing campaign for social media is not that hard. Anybody can do it with a few Google searches! Since you are reading this blog, you have already figured out that the hard part is creating a creative and strategic marketing plan!
But we are here to help you to inject creativity and launch a unique holiday marketing plan for your social media followers. Something that will ensure your brand gets noticed around the social platforms and fulfill your marketing goals for the upcoming holiday!
Check out the social media holiday plans that we have come up with and feel free to mix-up the ideas and create your own unique one.
a) Create Exclusive Social Media Content
Don't you want to make your social media audience feel special during this holiday? This is your chance, mate! Apart from social media, you definitely have other marketing plans for this holiday. No, you don't always need to align everything, not all the time. You can walk through the same path but sometimes you need to explore sideways too!
It could be exclusive rewards, discounts or giveaways only for your social media followers. To pull it off uniquely, resonate the holiday flavour in it and create the announcement post mentioning that you care and value about your social media audience!
b) Show Behind-the-Scenes Holiday Prep
If your holiday campaign goal is generating engagement and get connected to the followers, then its specially for you! You can just share a few snaps of how the company is preparing for Christmas or thanksgiving and ask them to share their stories.
If you can use ‘behind-the-scene' content right way, then it can genuinely create brand affinity.
For creating behind-the-scene content during this holiday season, you might need to choose the social platform wisely. For example, Instagram or Snapchat is great for showcasing your fun side but don't share a funny image on LinkedIn.
c) Host a Social Media Holiday Contest
Social media contest is one of the popular ways to generate community engagement. To include a giveaway with it, you can get the most out of your holiday campaign.
You can make the giveaway innovative using a few tricks! Like you can ask them to share their holiday inspiration, snap, selfie, quotes with you and by uploading the content on your page, they will eligible to get the giveaway.
You can provide a giveaway with every purchase they make during the holiday season. Even you can create custom intentive which will be spiced up with that holiday theme and make people interested to participate in the content. Again, please keep in mind that a visually attractive post will always get more engagement than a blunt one!
d) Show Customer Appreciation with Special Rewards
You can show customers your thankfulness during these holidays by arranging a customer appreciation campaign. If you run an e-commerce website or any other customer service business, then you should take this chance to present gratitude through a holiday campaign. You can do that by the following ways:
- Start A loyalty program during this holiday
- Offer them to visit & spend with your brand
- Spotlight customers on this special season
- Send a gift to a most engaged customer
- Offer them to visit & spend with your brand
- Throw a party & invite your loyal customer on social media
e) Track and Use Data for Next Year
For social media, the holiday is a season for frenzy. To cut through the social media noise and actually engage with your targeted audience, a holiday hashtag campaign could be the easiest and most effective idea. You can easily track the engagement and generate brand awareness too.
Wrapping up the Holiday Social Media Marketing Campaign
Try out these holiday marketing ideas for your social media channel. Get the best out of your marketing effort by trying to be creative about it, add elements that resonate with your brand or help your audience to connect with you!
Let us know, what are your favorite holiday Social Media campaigns and how was the outcome from it. Happy Holiday!