The holiday season is approaching! This means you need to start working on your holiday marketing campaign right away if you want enough time to plan and develop your creative assets. This can seem overwhelming, even for experienced brands that have been doing this for a while. However, it doesn’t have to be like this every year.
In this article, you’ll learn some essential steps to bring your holiday marketing to life in a way that’s easy and enjoyable. That way, you can create a campaign that delivers results and resonates with your online audience.
Your guide to holiday marketing on social media
To get started on your holiday campaign, simply follow these steps:
1. Start planning early
When it comes to your holiday marketing campaigns, you don’t want to wait until the last minute to get started. They require a lot of time and effort to bring them to life. And if you procrastinate, you’ll be scrambling to get everything together before it’s too late. This is the last thing anyone should be dealing with when they just want to enjoy their vacation.
By planning your campaign early, you can outline realistic timelines for developing, editing and scheduling all creative assets. This ensures that nothing feels rushed. But instead, it gives you the opportunity to pour your heart and soul into everything you create. Your audience will surely appreciate all your hard work once the campaign goes live.
Plus, for those who are part of a larger team, you may need approval from above before anything is created and published. It is imperative that you have enough time to go through each stage of the process, so schedule accordingly.
Related: How to Create a Social Media Content Calendar
2. Set goals for your campaign
As with any marketing campaign you create, it’s important to have clear objectives so you know what you’re working towards. So what are you hoping to accomplish with your holiday marketing efforts? Do you simply want to generate more brand awareness? Or do you want to drive additional sales before the end of the year?
Whatever you want to achieve, make sure your goals are measurable. This will ensure you know what metrics to track and can clearly monitor your success during and after the campaign. For example, you might want to look at social media growth, clicks, leads, and conversions.
Related: 5 Important Twitter Metrics You Should Track
3. Understand what your audience wants
An essential element of any successful campaign is creating something that will resonate with your target audience. If it doesn’t pique their interest, they’ll just keep moving. This means you’ll miss out on the engagement and sales you want. Before you start strategizing, think about who your target audience is and what would grab their attention.
This is why it is so important to conduct market research so that you can learn about your audience on a deeper level. Not only will this help with your holiday marketing, but it’s essential for content created throughout the year. If you aren’t already, consider sending a survey to your email list as a way to find out more about them.
4. Review what has worked in the past
Part of knowing what your audience wants is doing a deep dive into your analytics. This will reveal a lot of useful information about what has resonated with your audience in the past. You can then use this data to shape your holiday campaigns. Iterate on what worked well for you before and remove what didn’t. But also, don’t be afraid to try something new!
If you’ve never run a holiday campaign in the past, don’t worry. Review your analytics for content created over the past year. You can also reach out to your competitors in a situation like this. Take a look at the content they’ve posted during previous holidays to see what generates the most engagement from their audience. Mark the one that seems to work best. Then, you can let it inspire you to create something completely new and unique.
During this stage, you’ll want to consider the topics your content covers, as well as the content formats you use. Does your audience respond better to photos or videos, for example? You should focus on creating more of what they like.
5. Be a valuable resource
As you’re brainstorming content ideas for your campaign, there’s one thing you want to keep in mind… Always position yourself as a valuable resource to your audience. This means sharing high quality content and being of service and focusing less on your sales pitch.
This can be difficult for many brands to hear. After all, everyone wants to make sales, right? Well, you can absolutely do that. However, that simply cannot be what every single social media post is about. You want to provide value first before you start asking people to buy your product or service. This is essential for building trust and growing your relationship.
So what kind of tips and tricks can you offer? Sometimes it’s value-focused content, rather than “salesy” content, that brings in the most revenue.
Related: How to Master Social Selling Without Selling Out
6. Offer special discounts and sales
While it’s great to offer discounts and sales all year round, it’s even more special during the holidays. This time of year can be expensive with parties and gifts, so providing people with a way to save some money is much appreciated.
Consider having a sale or offering a limited-time discount code for Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday. It’s a surefire way to increase sales as your audience will feel compelled to treat themselves or a loved one to a special gift.
Related: How to Develop a Black Friday Social Media Strategy
7. Organize a gift as a thank you
This is the perfect time of year to give, so you may want to include a giveaway in your holiday marketing campaign. The opportunity to win your product or service will certainly attract attention and generate awareness of your brand.
Plus, you can ask for various tasks to be completed so that people can earn entry to the giveaway. For example, by following you on social media or subscribing to your email list. Great for increasing your presence!
If you want to take things to the next level, you can partner with several other business owners for a massive giveaway. It’s perfect for getting more exposure for everyone involved.
Related: How to Thank Your Twitter Followers
8. Review the data at the end of the campaign
After the holidays are over and you’re back in the office, you’ll want to take some time to review your analysis. This will tell you if you have been successful in achieving your goals. If you were, great! Note what performed well so you can replicate it with future holiday marketing campaigns. If you have not achieved your goals, there is no need to worry. You can still learn from this experience to do better in the future.
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