Social media is crucial for brand marketing now more than ever before. It’s of particular importance during the holiday season when people are actively looking to purchase items for themselves and their loved ones. The holiday season is both an opportunity and a challenge for brands as the competition is fierce at this time of the year.
Ad rates tend to be at their highest during the holiday season. Brands have to spend more to reach their intended audiences since most, if not all, of their competitors are also in the same race on the same social networks. It’s simply not a question of who’s got the biggest social media marketing budget.
An effective social media marketing campaign is never just about the budget. There are several other factors that play a crucial role in ensuring that the campaign is able to hit all of its goals, and the brand is able to achieve its desired ROAS. There’s a lot that brands can do ahead of the holiday season to ensure that they’re in a great position to push when the time comes.
Don’t fly blind into the 2022 holiday sales season
While it might sound amazing to just go guns blazing with your social media strategy for this holiday season, it would be better to take some time and study data from previous years to understand what worked and what didn’t.
Dive into the previous year’s data to see which campaigns delivered the intended results or didn’t. See which platforms saw the highest engagement for your content and where was the highest ROI achieved. Think of this data as the basis of your game plan for the 2022 holiday sales push.
For instance, it will make a lot of things clear, such as the platform where your most engaged audience is, what content and creatives have resonated with the audiences before, what sort of content to avoid this year, how customers responded to any offers and promotions, etc.
Once you’ve answered these and the many other questions that will come up when you’re going through the previous data, it’s time to get started with the preparation for this year’s holiday season.
Optimize your social media ahead of the 2022 holiday season
Start creating hype about your holiday deals
Some of the biggest brands in the world follow this strategy. They get into the groove much earlier than the crunch time. It gives them the opportunity to warm up their audiences so that they can be targeted more effectively during those crucial weeks.
Amazon is the perfect example of this. The online e-commerce juggernaut has its own online shopping event called Prime Day. Weeks before the actual event takes place, Amazon runs teaser deals and promotions to get customers excited for the main event.
Take a similar approach and start creating hype about your holiday deals. Give people an idea of what they can expect from the promotions that will be offered during those weeks. Give them the opportunity to take advantage of early deals. If they start buying from you ahead of the holiday season, chances are they will return to see your holiday deals when the time comes.
Launch an engaging hashtag campaign
Now is the right time to start elevating your brand profile, even if a lot of people already know about it. Remember, people are bombarded with ads and promotions during the holiday season. They may not be able to recall your brand. It’s better to start an engaging hashtag campaign ahead of the holiday season just to remind the audience about the brand and also to introduce it to new people.
The possibilities are endless with a hashtag campaign. For example, you can create a unique hashtag that invites people to share their best holiday memories with your product. This is a great way to get the ball rolling on user generated content.
Customers will share their experiences and memories with the hashtag, leading to increased exposure for the brand and renewed interest among customers when the holidays come around.
Get your social media profiles into holiday mode
The brand assets that you use on your social media profiles are what create the first impression for your audience. Running promotions for the holiday season when all of the content on your website hasn’t been updated since the summer will not inspire confidence among those who come across your brand for the very first time.
Now is the right time to start updating those brand assets gradually. This will also ease the audience into the festive mode and they’ll essentially be informed that they can expect holiday deals and promotions from the brand in just a few short weeks.
Start by changing elements such as the profile and cover photos, perhaps add a festive touch to the bio as well. It sets the stage nicely for what’s to come.
Ask your customers how you can do better
Taking action on customer feedback is a great way to set yourself up for success. Is there anything that your customers felt let down by during the previous holiday sales season? Would they have wanted you to do something differently?
Now is the right time to reach out and engage with those customers through your social media profiles. Ask them for suggestions and feedback that you can incorporate into your 2022 holiday sales plan to ensure that customers get the best possible experience.
This will help build trust and improve the overall relationship with your customers ahead of the lucrative shopping season. If they see the brand they like making a genuine effort to improve based on their feedback, it’s quite likely that they will continue to support it.
Adding new resources if required
More sales during the holiday season will result in an increase for customer support. The last thing you’d want to do is to leave people with a bad customer support experience when they’ve ordered something for a loved one and there has been a problem.
Given the mad rush that the holiday season tends to bring, adding new resources to the team is just as important as optimizing the entirety of your social media presence. Whether you need new customer service agents or community managers for your social media profiles, this is a necessary step.
Ensure that the people are in place and have been trained in accordance with your brand guidelines to ensure that they can provide excellent customer support during what is often one of the most stressful shopping periods for customers all year.
Take this momentum into the new year
Once you’ve got a good momentum going during the holiday sales season, there’s no point why it shouldn’t be carried into the new year. That provides its own set of opportunities to increase conversions through targeted campaigns and messaging.
The holiday sales push can be a tough nut to crack for brands, particularly smaller brands with limited budgets, but the incredible opportunity that it provides makes it well worth the effort. All it requires is a bit of creativity and consistency. Combine that with a product that customers are happy to spend their money on and you’ve got this in the bag.
