Even though we are still in a pandemic world, and any plans to escape the city for a more relaxing and chill scenery over the Christmas and New Year break are becoming quite slim due to just about everywhere being booked out, that period of time is still a time of pause in our lives. We hang up high heels for Santa hats, and trade in our to-do lists for Christmas wish lists and new year goal setting. We aren't concerned to the slightest about what's happening business-wise and are focused on enjoying time with our family. It's understandable!
But even if you've got plans to completely switch off over Christmas, it's important that over the coming weeks in the lead up to the silly season, you maintain your online marketing efforts. This is the biggest and busiest time in business, pretty much no matter who you are and what type of business you run. It's important to not slack off on your social media marketing now than ever, and make your potential customers and clients highly aware of how your products or services could benefit them.
In this blog, we've compiled a short list of ideas that can keep your social media posts going for the month and bit to come, in ways that can also help you stand out during the festive season.
Run a Festive Giveaway!: Running a giveaway on social media is a great way to boost brand awareness, get more followers, and promote your products – plus, they’re really easy to set up (and even easier to participate in). The key to a successful giveaway is proper planning – you’ll want to define the purpose and goals of your giveaway well before you dive in. It's important to ensure what you are giving away to your audience, is relevant to your business, not just something that will gain you, followers! If you run a pet-care company, and you give away an iPad, that's not keeping in line with your brand and will draw in people who enter your giveaway for the sole purpose of winning the prize, not for following you and engaging with your account in the future. Once you have some clarity around your goals, you can begin to strategize how to best accomplish them with your giveaway theme, rules, and structure.
Run an Influencer or User-Generated Content Campaign: that's right, get real people involved in your brand! If you’re looking to make as big a mark as possible this season, it might be a good idea to outsource some of the promotional work to influencers. If you're looking to create more raw and relatable content, grab some user-generated content from loyal brand advocates. Use these pieces of content in a creative way, so that your brand can stand out from the clutter and saturation that sits across social media during the holiday season.
Share a free downloadable resource!: Even if you’re aren’t an e-commerce brand, the holiday season still presents a huge opportunity to gain more traction with your target audience. One way to do this by creating a free downloadable resource and using it to gather email addresses. Once you have someone’s email, you can send them value-packed messages that help drive conversions for your products and services. Think about your ideal customer or client. What can you offer them that they wouldn’t think twice about signing up for? This is your “lead magnet” and it should be something of value that relates to an end-result that your business offers. Some examples could include a free download or worksheet, a challenge, a mini-course, a free sample, or an exclusive offer.
But beyond all of these tips and advice, our number one piece of advice we can give you for how you use social media over the next month, is to stay active! Remain consistent in what you post and how often you post, and you'll be able to maintain your online growth and engagement successfully, and this is ultimately what you want. You want to stay in the forefront of people's minds with the hope they continue to engage with your business well into the new year.
Holiday marketing campaigns don’t have to be overly complicated and can deliver great benefits to your business. Whether you do a few simple things to “dress up” your brand for the holidays or commit to a full-on campaign, follow our holiday marketing ideas to get the most out of this busy season!