Merry Marketing: 6 Tips For Mastering Social Media Campaigns Over The Holidays

December typically entails some last-minute Christmas shopping, finalizing plans to see family and friends, and – for the marketers – breaking through all that hassle in the effort to reach out to customers.

From Christmas to New Years, there’s a lot going on and you need to maximize your brand’s potential during this time. Consider the following 6 tips for mastering Social Media Campaigns over the holidays.

1. Leverage Emotions

The holiday season is emotionally charged on so many different levels. Words that come to mind when thinking about the consumer mindset during the holiday season are generosity, family, reflection, giving, and positivity. As a marketer, you need to think about how you can tap into these feelings and use them to your advantage.

For example, in the weeks leading up to and after New Years, many people try to stay motivated and focus on their goals and resolutions. A good way for your brand to connect with these customers is to offer gentle encouragement in the form of clever GIFs, video clips, and memes. While you may not be directly marketing your products, you’re positioning your brand as caring and thoughtful.

2. Schedule Posts in Advance

Let’s be honest, the holidays can get a little crazy. Even if you aren’t planning to take a lot of time off from work, you’ll inevitably be pulled away at unanticipated times. That’s why it’s smart to go ahead and schedule posts in advance. This ensures that your social profiles don’t wane when things get chaotic.

You also shouldn’t be afraid of repurposing social posts across multiple channels. However, remember that many of your customers follow you on multiple social platforms. You don’t want to simply copy and paste posts from one channel to another. Put a unique spin on the content each time you post.

3. Make Logos More Festive

You don’t want to go overboard and completely redesign your social profiles to reflect the holiday season, but a little festive cheer is certainly encouraged. Something as simple as putting a red bow on your logo or incorporating some holiday lights into your cover photo is a nice way to show followers that you’re enjoying the season as much as they are.

4. Look again at how you approach Facebook ads

Facebook knows that retail advertisers come to it to drive business goals, such an in-store traffic and website clicks, so it recently changed the definition of cost per click (CPC) to only include clicks to websites and apps meaning you don’t need to pay for ‘likes’, shares and comments.

The change will help retailers better understand how Facebook ads are delivering on their goals.

But bear in mind that social clicks can increase engagement and help future sales, so, dependent on your overall aims, brands should look at both sales and engagement clicks when it comes to Facebook advertising.

5. In paid search, start by looking back, then adapt

Shopping patterns can be unpredictable, so start with a paid search strategy based on analysis of historical seasonal data.

But don’t be afraid to adapt it as the season goes on in order to produce more optimal results.

Adjust bids to target emerging opportunities – whether from market trends, external events such as bad weather driving shoppers online (the weathermen are predicting one of the coldest winters on record) or activity by rivals.

At the same time there will be heavy competition on key dates, so set aside sufficient budget to ensure you are visible on these.

6. Integrate search and social

Understanding the links between consumer activity on social and paid search is a proven method of delivering results.

Running campaigns in tandem has been shown to increase ROI, while analysis of what is working on social advertising can be used to expand your paid search keyword targets.

At the same time you can use search intent data to refine your social advertising, for example, by using Facebook Custom Audiences to retarget consumers who click on paid search ads.

If you’re already promoting visual images of your products via Google Product Listing Ads (PLAs) to stimulate higher engagement in searches, you can then re-use the most successful PLAs by repurposing them as Facebook ads, spreading your resources wider.

As you see, just because your office is closed for the holidays, doesn’t mean your customers are instantly disconnected too. Holiday season is time not only for family, friends, food, but also for… Social Media and Online Marketing. Merry Marketing!