December is around the corner - cue the season of holiday
campaigns. As you can imagine, this is a busy time for small and big brands
that look to increase sales and engage with audiences before the year ends. Yet
with traffic spikes on social media increasing by
73% over the holidays , and customer expectations set to an
all-time high, how will you prepare your team and outshine your competition
during the holiday season on social media?
Holiday campaigns take
a lot of planning and analysis to get right.
Take a look at our 7 ways your brand can prepare for
this holiday season on social media .
1. Prepare your content calendar
Make sure your content
calendars are planned out ahead of time. Start by creating an editorial
calendar, building out holiday-related content, and optimizing it before
launching it. This way when the timing is right for content to go live, it is
available and optimized.
2. Produce all
marketing materials and start scheduling
Once the season
starts, the last thing you’ll want to think about is getting graphics and
content for your posts. Identify the channels you’re using (Facebook, Twitter,
Instagram - whatever works best for your brand), prepare your graphics and
copy, and schedule it for publication over the course of November and December.
This will help save time when time is precious.
Also, when creating
content keep in mind of holidays like Small Business Saturday, Black Friday,
Free Shipping Day and Cyber Monday.
3. Plan your holiday campaigns well in advance
During the holiday
season, most companies have at least one promotional campaign. Whether it’s
highlighting discounts and sales or incorporating specials just for the
holidays, customer delight should be at the forefront of your marketing
efforts.
As you think about the
goals for your campaign, think about how you can make sure you are delighting
your customers. If you can revolve your campaign to show your
appreciation for your customers , do it.
4. Think Mobile
Screen shopping is the
new window shopping. In 2016 Mobile
conversions have for the first time ever outperformed desktop
globally, with 53% of conversions coming from a mobile device.
To capitalize on this
growing opportunity think about mobile when planning your graphics and content
for holiday social campaigns and advertisements. People expect a seamless
mobilefriendly shopping experience from seeing the advertisement online to the
checkout on your website.
5. Prepare an
advertising budget, and stick to it.
Social media advertising
is a cost-effective way to magnify your message during your holiday campaign
while reaching as many people as possible.
But be aware when
budgeting your campaigns, know that your social media advertising costs will
increase (averaging up to
70%) as you approach the major holidays. Prices start to rise
after American Thanksgiving, so you’ll need to increase your bids on ad space.
6. Have staff on hand
From Thanksgiving to
the New Year is arguably the most important time of the year for social teams.
Customers will often use social media to contact you with questions or
feedback. In fact,42% of social
media users who contact a brand via social media expect a response
within a 60 minute window.
Make sure your social
team is prepared to monitor channels over the holidays. If you’re struggling
with holiday coverage of your website and social channels, we’re always here to
help. Learn what icuc
social can do while your team is enjoying a stress-free, work-free
holiday.
7. Learn from the past
Take time to look into
the performances of past holiday campaigns. What were your goals? How did your
promotions do? Did people join the conversation? What content and medium
performed well and what didn’t work? All of this valuable information should be
the baseline of your next holiday campaign and will help save time when
developing your strategy.
There you have it. These 7 tips will help build a strong foundation to a successful holiday campaign. Don't forget to develop goals that you can measure, and make sure you measure them afterwards.
Happy planning!
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