Now that the holiday season is in full stride, most brands are putting their holiday ad campaigns into overdrive – and for good reason.
Planning and executing a perfect strategy during the holidays is an incredibly important task for brands, especially here in the U.S., where shoppers spend more money in one season than any other country on earth.
Over the holidays, Americans dish out about $830 billion on Christmas gifts, $3 billion on Thanksgiving dinners, $50 billion during Black Friday and more than $3 billion on Cyber Monday alone—and that’s not to mention the un-calculated revenue generated by 150 million Americans traveling throughout the country to visit loved ones during Thanksgiving and Christmas.
With so much cashola changing hands over this three-month span, and so much pressure for brands to produce with their campaigns over the holidays, we’re here to remind you to be with your customers throughout their shopping journey through social media.
Social media marketing is not only engaging and interactive, it’s also cost effective compared to traditional forms of advertising. One of the best way for brands to get the most bang for their buck over the holidays is to make their social media impressions count.
Having a presence in your customer’s daily lives through social media has its benefits…
In a July 2016 survey by digital marketing company, G/O Digital, about 56 percent of those surveyed said social media has a least some influence over their holiday purchasing decisions.
So what exactly should brands be doing to maximize their social media presence over the holidays?
It’s the season for giving…so give.
One of the surefire ways for brands to increase their social media interactions with consumers is a good ol’ fashioned
giveaway.
Your customers give you their patronage all year, so what better way for your brand to show appreciation than to give something back?
The best thing about social media giveaways is that they prompt people not only to engage, but to then share that engagement with their friends.
Simple social media CTA’s usually do the trick:
- “Tag a friend in the comments for a chance to win”
- “Retweet to enter our giveaway”
- “Share this post and you could win X”
Facebook, Twitter and Instagram are all great outlets for these giveaways, and for brands they’re win-win.
You show your appreciation for your patrons by giving them a chance to win something, and garnish more and more social media attention for your brand and your products with every time a person likes, share, comments, retweets or favorites your giveaway.
Be Holiday-centric
The reason why so much money gets spent over the holiday season is simple— people generally love the holidays.
They love the shopping, the traveling, the spending of time with their families, and eating too much food while watching too much TV.
So when it comes to managing social media over the holidays, one of the best things a brand can do is just to fully embrace the thing that so many consumers already love.
Brands can prompt their social media followers to engage with holiday-oriented material, participate in holiday games, sign up for holiday contests, or even just broadcast holiday content with no underlying advertisement at all.
Non-advertorial exposure— in the form of kind, informative, and genuine content— is a great way to stay continuously connected with followers throughout the duration of the holiday season.
At the end of the day, social media is all about interaction and providing value.
Encouraging followers to interact with your brand through contests, giveaways and holiday-themed content, is an incredible way for brands to maximize their exposure to the world’s most spend-ready market the holidays.
If you need to make sure your brand’s social media marketing campaign is on track to deliver ROI this holiday season or next, especially if you’re marketing to millennials, at Blue Bear Creative—social media marketing to millennials is big part of what we do.
Happy Holidays!
Blue Bear Creative is a Denver social media agency focused on helping food and beverage brands market to millennials.
