Social Media Marketing Ideas for This Holiday Season

Active social media users’ statistics continue to hit new highs daily. Customers are on social media, and modern businesses can’t afford to ignore the rich user pool the platforms offer.

The best part is that businesses can leverage diverse low-budget social media marketing tips to reach and engage more potential customers. The cost-effectiveness and extensive reach that the channels facilitate make social media marketing a must for businesses regardless of their size, shape, and industry. Social media marketing is especially vital during the holiday season.

The festive season is approaching and 62% of holiday shoppers plan to buy gifts for their nearest and dearest online. Since people spend much time on social media and they discover products in-app, the demand for holiday marketing campaigns on social media has grown.

Still, doubting? Keep on reading!

The importance of social media marketing for the holiday season

A spike in shopping usually characterizes the holiday season. It is also the season when people are more engaged online, including on social media. This provides businesses an excellent opportunity to engage and tip more users in their favor. A strategic social media marketing plan during the holiday season can result in:

• An increased reach: People spend more time on social media during the holidays. They don’t just stay in touch with their loved ones on social media but also use the channels as a resource for their shopping quests. Social media marketing during the holidays helps drive more eyeballs to your brand. This extends your reach, improving brand awareness. The awareness helps generate more leads and potentially increase sales.
  
• More engagements: The festive mood during the holidays means social media users are likely to engage with your content. This is more so if it is helpful, such as providing them with holiday gift ideas and inspiration or holiday recipes, among other holiday-related aspects. For example, businesses expect an increase in messages during the holiday season:

The improved engagement can propel your brand awareness campaigns, meaning the results will last long after the holidays. The users find value in your brand, meaning you can easily retain their interest long after the holidays and grow a loyal customer base.

• Boost sales: Extensive reach and more engagements provide a great lead generation and conversion opportunity. Holiday deals attract massive sales, and social media marketing can help your business secure a piece of this pie.

Strategic holiday social media marketing lets you expose your offerings to a rich pool of ready buyers, which can significantly boost sales.

Social media marketing during the holiday season is necessary, but how can you improve the campaign’s success rate? You must develop a winning social media strategy for the holidays to realize notable results. Below are ten proven ideas to help supercharge your holiday social media marketing efforts.

1. Publish Holiday Visuals

Holiday-themed visuals like GIFs, videos, infographics, and images are great for social media marketing. Appealing visuals can easily capture the users' attention and drive them to your offers. Creative visuals distinguish you from the rest in the competitive arena. The visuals help catch the eye and keep the user engaged long enough to discover what your brand has to offer. This is critical considering the social media users’ short concentration span, especially during the holidays when they are bombarded with all sorts of marketing content.

2. Make an Advent Calendar

Leveraging an advent calendar can help you tap into social media users' holiday season anticipation. Counting down the days can be more fun and engaging, especially with creative gifts. For instance, you can offer exclusive promotions and discounts to users who fulfill a set requirement, like opening or sharing the advent calendar on a given day. This can boost your social media engagements, improve brand awareness, help generate more leads, and increase holiday sales.

Check out an example on how you can announce and promote your advent calendar:

3. Create and Share Gift Lists

Gifts are a huge part of the holiday shopping. Users don’t always have an easy time finding a perfect gift. This is where your business can come in, providing gift ideas that make their shopping more manageable. Sharable social media ideas for holiday gifts can drive more traffic to your store. This improves brand awareness, and as the holiday gift ideas include some of your products, you’ll easily generate leads and more sales.

4. Repost Seasonal User-Generated Content

Reposting seasonal User-generated content (UGC) won’t just help highlight previous experiences and successes that users can recreate. UGC is among the most valuable pieces of content that helps brands build trust as these images serve as reviews from customers. Leveraging UGC for your holiday social media marketing can easily win more followers and tip them in favor of your offers. This translates to increased sales and trust, which can help your business grow beyond the holiday season.

Doubtless, Starbucks is a pro in using UGC on its social media profiles. And when it comes to the holiday season, there's no exception, too:

5. Organize a Festive Giveaway

Giveaways are at the heart of social media marketing. The holiday season is an excellent opportunity to express your brand’s festive mood and give back. Giveaways, especially those that employ healthy contests, can significantly improve your social media reach. The main trick here is to ensure you offer giveaways worth the users’ time. Valuable gifts can tip the users to buy more from your business and stick around after the festive season.

6. Announce a Seasonal Collection

Announcing a seasonal collection is a smart social media holiday marketing move. It helps you build on the excitement and anticipation of the holiday season. Seasonal collection, especially an exclusive or limited edition, can generate massive excitement as you leverage FOMO (fear of missing out. This can enhance brand awareness, help your business generate more leads, and boost sales.

One of the best ways to announce a seasonal collection is to create a social media video that shows off its products, just like in the example from RiflePaperCo:

7. Offer Holiday DIY Ideas

Holidays are fun but can be equally overwhelming. Providing creative DIY ideas, such as holiday decorations, recipes, and crafts, can help make your followers’ holidays more productive. You can creatively include your products in those ideas, showing how they help. This can drive more traffic to your store and increase holiday sales.

8. Promote Gift Cards

Gift cards are valuable holiday gifts that can help customers save more money. Promoting gift cards during the holiday season can significantly improve sales. The users are already in a shopping spirit, which you tap into by offering gift cards.

Big companies like GAP offer a variety of gift cards to help holiday shoppers give a perfect present for their friends and families with ease. Plus, GAP promotes its gift cards on social media profiles:

Use measures such as relevant hashtags and influencer collaborations to ensure you increase the gift cards’ exposure. This can direct more traffic to your store and generate massive holiday sales.

9. Livestream Your Holiday Party

Humanizing your brand is a great way to create meaningful connections with users. Taking your followers behind the scenes works well. You can supercharge the strategy by live streaming the holiday party.

Live streaming the holiday party can make your target audience feel more connected to your brand. It’s also a chance for those who missed out to experience it, such as employees. This deeper connection makes improving employees’ productivity, generating leads, and winning more sales easier.

10. Support Charity Campaigns

Charity campaigns help improve your brand’s awareness and reputation. This is more so during the holiday season when more people are actively engaged in charity work.  Supporting charity campaigns can improve engagement and satisfaction rates. The support paints your brand in the best light, which can further help build a loyal customer base.

This is because active participation in charity campaigns shows social responsibility, which is among the top traits of a good corporate citizen. When it comes to holiday social media marketing, here are six charity ideas you can implement on your profile:

Conclusion

The holiday season and shopping go hand in hand. Nonetheless, it doesn’t mean all businesses enjoy massive holiday sales. It takes the right strategy to ensure your business attracts more interest and tips more buyers in your favor. Strategically positioning your brand to capture more eyeballs and drive qualified leads to your business is critical during the competitive holiday season.

Every retailer runs at least one form of holiday marketing campaign. Social media could be the answer when considering the best way to enhance your holiday marketing campaigns. The platforms can help you gain an edge and win a significant part of the holiday shopping trend.  Today, social media platforms are more than places where users have fun and stay in touch with their friends and relatives.

Social media platforms are continually becoming a primary part of modern lives. They are a go-to for information, products, and services for consumers. As such, running a social media marketing campaign can boost your holiday sales. Incorporating the tips discussed above will help you develop a winning social media holiday marketing campaign and realize a high return on investment.