A company’s social media presence can have a huge impact on holiday shoppers final decisions. Nearly 1 in 5 shoppers state that a brands social media effort has an influence on their holiday purchasing decisions.
With huge growth projected for the 2017 holiday season, you should be leveraging every available avenue to market your business.
Here are 7 tips for using social media this holiday season.
1. Be Festive – Holiday Content
The holidays are a perfect time to dress up your social media posts. Creating content with festive imagery is a great way to show your customers that you are in the holiday spirit, and keep them reminded that it’s gift buying time.
For example, we are all familiar with CocaCola’s holiday commercials – but they are also using social media to deliver familiar holiday imagery. During the 2016 holiday season they created several Instagram posts with festive imagery and corresponding text:
Holiday Instragram Post from CocaCola
The holidays are a perfect time to dress up your social media posts. Creating content with festive imagery is a great way to show your customers that you are in the holiday spirit, and keep them reminded that it’s gift buying time.
For example, we are all familiar with CocaCola’s holiday commercials – but they are also using social media to deliver familiar holiday imagery. During the 2016 holiday season they created several Instagram posts with festive imagery and corresponding text:
Clever Dollar Shave Club holiday ad on Instragram
2. Offer Deals & Exclusives
Holiday shopping is often synonymous with exclusive seasonal products and deals. There is no better time to offer exclusive deals or promote exclusive product sets to your social media followers than for the holidays. Promoting exclusive deals through social media is a great way to give a gift to your current followers and incentivize new followers to your social profiles.
You don’t have to create entirely new deals or promotions from what you may already have running on your store, but find a way to make it special for your social media followers. For example, you could put all of the previews for new product sets exclusively on your Facebook before they are announced anywhere else, or you could set up a special discount code to be used for a percentage off that is only posted on your Instagram.
For example, clothing brand Sew Much Love exclusively posts first on their social media when their store will have new products available to order:
Clothing company Sew Much Love giving a product teaser on their Facebook
3. Engage
Social media is a great avenue to engage with customers all year – however, this becomes especially true around the holidays.
Use your social media platforms as a way to interact with your customers. For example, you could create a post asking your followers a question that they would then respond to – i.e. “Who is your most difficult family member to shop for?” and then respond to your customer’s comments with a link to a holiday gift guide you’ve created with your products (See #4 for creating Pinterest gift guides!).
Social media is also one of the key places that customers reach out to when they have a question. You may find this happening at a higher rate during the holidays when more people are shopping. Use your platforms to answer questions and respond to customers quickly.
4. Pin It
31% of holiday shoppers stated that they turn to Pinterest for holiday shopping tips and suggestions. Deciding which gifts to get for loved ones during the holidays can be a tricky decision, consider setting up special holiday gift giving guides for your brand to help your customers see their options and make a decision.
For example, jewelry retailer Tiffany and Co regularly creates holiday gift giving guides for nearly every holiday on their Pinterest:
Tiffany and Co holiday gift guide on Pinterest
People also use Pinterest to look for things related to their lifestyle – think about creating boards that appeal to your customer’s lifestyles that include your products rather than simply creating product boards.
For instance, Urban Outfitters creates many different boards that display their products in the context of a lifestyle:
Different lifestyle related Pinterest boards that include products that fit with that lifestyle
Also consider adding “Pin It Now” buttons to your product pages, so that customers can easily pin products they like from your site onto their own Pinterest boards.
5. Support a Cause
Nearly everyone can get behind a business that supports a charitable cause. Supporting an altruistic cause is a great way to increase the perceived value of your product or brand. This is especially true around the holidays, which seem to inspire an increase in kindness, sharing, compassion, and feelings of good cheer. Giving is a central theme of the holiday season, and supporting a cause on social media is a great way to get the word out and publicly show customers that you are giving back as well.
6. Reminders
Social media can be a great place to send out reminders to your customer base, especially around the holidays. You may want to consider creating posts reminding customers how many days they have left to order by and receive their orders by Dec. 24th since shipping is one of the biggest sources of customer stress around this time of year. This sort of strategy is a great way to create urgency.
7. Utilize Video
It’s no secret that video marketing is the hottest trend to hit social media in the last year. 50% of consumers state that they look for a video of the product they want to buy before going to the eCommerce store to buy it. Video can be an extremely effective way to get your customers to take action – in this case, to make a purchase with your store.
For the holiday 2016 season, Lagavulin whiskey created a 45 minute “Yule Log” video of actor Nick Offerman sitting in a leather armchair, gazing at the camera, silently sipping their product by a fire – a video that quickly went viral. This video created a conversation among viewers and got a lot of different people talking about the brand.
You may also want to consider utilizing other video posting options such as Facebook Live, Instagram Live, Instagram Stories, or Snapchat depending on where your brand is most often active and your audience hangs out.
For example, Martha Stewart often utilizes Facebook Live streaming to show fans tutorials, recipes, and behind the scenes into her life. During the holidays, she often streams festive videos. In this Facebook Live video, Martha gives fans some of her favorite indoor decorating tips for the holidays, a clever way to give customers useful content while still promoting her products and where to buy them.
Closing Thoughts
The holidays are quickly approaching. Social media marketing is a huge opportunity for merchants to increase their brand awareness at a minimal cost. Social media is one of the quickest ways to connect with your customer base – don’t miss out on this powerful marketing tool to increase your sales this holiday season.
Looking for other information on how to make this your most successful holiday season yet? Check out these 8 tips to get started with your holiday marketing, tips to keep up with holiday shipping demands, and learn how to get started with email marketing this holiday season.
Want to know how you can optimize your Magento eCommerce store to increase sales this quarter? Talk with a member of our strategy team and start reaching your eCommerce goals.
About Kelly Mason
Kelly is a Marketing Assistant at Customer Paradigm. She loves creating engaging and educational content and connecting with the community through social media. Outside of the office, she can be found eating her way through Colorado one brunch at a time and hiking in Rocky Mountain National Park.