Did you know that you can double or even triple your sales during the holiday season just by honing your social media marketing? Yes, social media platforms are now that big when it comes to influencing buying decisions. Customers tend to log into different platforms looking for different things such as advice on how to shop online, guidance on how to buy or wrap gifts, new products or services in the market, safety tips during holidays, incredible shopping destinations, etc.
Well, this guide will take you through some of the best holiday social media marketing strategies that can help you to increase your online visibility and convert viewers to customers.
Have a Marketing Strategy
Generally, without a plan, you cannot move from one point to another. Whether selling products or services, you should know that there are numerous marketing Strategies and should, therefore, strive to understand the market, your business, and consumers, and choose the most suitable path.
While there is no standard way of arriving at a proper marketing strategy, there are crucial steps that you should follow, like; defining the marketing goal like increasing brand awareness, increasing sales, or improving the lead generation, the target audience, and the budget. After analyzing the sections and getting the answers, evaluate different marketing strategy, and choose the most suitable.
Secure Your Online Shop
Holidays are held so dearly in the heart, and it’s pretty much that time when people splash cash everywhere, and on different items. While this may seem like shopping is done haphazardly, it is not the case.
Customers are cautious of their financial security and wellness, which means they do not shop through unsecured websites. So, what should you do? One way is to secure the site with an SSL certificate to improve security and earn trust. SSL certificates ensure that third parties cannot access communication between your site’s server and the end consumer.
Upgrade Your Profile
This is straightforward, but some social media marketers ignore it. Since you are targeting sales during the holidays, you should show customers that you are in a festive mood. Simple and straightforward steps, such as uploading a picture or the logo to reflect the holiday and wishing customers well, can attract traffic to your pages.
You can create your graphics or even curate holiday-themed photos and edit to reflect your brand. If you aren’t very good at design work, then you can hire graphic designers for these services.
Provide Consistent Holiday-Themed Content
You should always craft content to match the times and do the posts consistently. Holidays are different, but they have standard features such as traveling, cooking, creating memories, conversations, and safety tips. This means that there are limitless topics that you can focus on.
For example, if you are targeting massive sales over the Christmas holidays, you can create visual or written content about decorating the house. You can make unique gifts with home-based products, wrapping presents, making a Christmas tree, short entertainment videos, e-books themed to accommodate the holiday.
Still, on the holiday-themed content, you should learn how to differentiate the content to fit in different social media platforms. For example, if you want to tell a long story revolving around the holiday, Facebook is an excellent platform because there is no limit to the word count.
If you are advertising your photography, make-up, décor, or event planning services, Instagram and Pinterest have proven over time that they are an excellent platform for photo lovers. If you are showing customers how to use products, a YouTube or a platform like TiKToK is the best fit. Focus on being a reliable source of information while also promoting your goods and services.
Advertise on different social media platforms
It is one thing to have a business account on social media and another to benefit from it. If you haven’t already, you will realize that there are hundreds of providers for products or services, which means that customers can forget about brands that they see browsing the social platforms. Advertising consistently and in different platforms increases visibility to all types of customers.
It would help if you also did some research on the market trends to find out the needs of different audiences, how to attract them, and how to sell, etc. While this may seem like a tough ask for small businesses, getting the right skills for social media marketing or finding a professional will makes it simple.
Be fearless online and let the world know about your brands, prices, and shopping destination. If you are yet to create an audience, influencers and marketing experts can help you to break the invisible wall and get close to clients.
Interact with Customers
How many times have you heard that communication is crucial for success in business?
Posting about your products and services is not enough; you should also go the extra mile and answer questions promptly, participate in discussion forums, give valuable information, and share jokes.
Why is this important? Customers are bombarded with hundreds of options, and as they navigate through the platforms, they may miss important information. In consequence, if valuable information is not provided on time, they can switch to another seller or brand. Your customers are not in one location. Therefore, diversify and hunt for them from multiple destinations.
Use Hashtags
Social media platforms are available for most consumers, which means you can create as much content as you desire for your brands, and on different platforms. On the flip side, it puts some brands at risk of falling into deep and bottomless holes.
You may have been told countless times to differentiate, but in some cases, you must join the caravan. Hashtags pull people who have interests together. You can initiate trends or follow the ongoing so that whenever customers use specific keywords, either for the holiday or local trends, they can see your brands.
Start Contests
Most top holidays are about spreading cheer, and starting a contest themed for a holiday may help you get the attention you desire. Contests are suitable for goods and services, and although options are infinite, at the very least, use call-to-action words, state the returns for different participants, the rules and regulations, and the duration.
You can tell the audience to share their holiday ideas, give reasons why they need your products or services, share the content and refer friends, frequently shop to get bonuses, submit photos or essays themed about the holiday.
Give Offers
In the spirit of spreading good vibes over holidays, you should tap into your creativity channels, like coming up with exciting offers that can create a buzz in online spaces. Special offers are not hard to come up with. You may provide discounts, free shipping, coupons, or buy-one-get-one-free. The time limit should be long enough to give customers time to get their finances in order but also short enough to encourage a quick response.
Show Credibility
Your products or services may be the best in the market, but what about your reputation of the business? It is true that social media influences buying decisions, but also that customers are careful when using their money. You can show credibility by building a personal brand alongside the business or advising customers to share their shopping experiences for others to see.
Gift the Shoppers
Everybody loves gifts, so why not create hampers that attract the audience to your brand? There are many ways that you can attract customers giving them gifts. You can collaborate with major brands and sell packages, initiate a meet-and-greet with celebrities, create virtual hampers such as premium shopping experience, and others.
Track the Impact of Your Efforts
The best way to improve social media marketing is by tracking the results of your efforts. Collect as much data as you can about site visits, engagements, and visibility and calculate the return on investments. At this point, you must be brutally honest with your efforts to get the full picture of your current situation, the effective and ineffective actions and craft ideas on what can be done differently.
For example, if the statistics show that many people are landing on the website and leaving after a few seconds, it may be a sign that something is amiss at the funnel. Tracking is essential because the holiday effect does not last for a day. Therefore, if the numbers are far from pleasing, you can take another path and increase sales before the effect dies.
Final Remarks:
Social media platforms connect the world and help sellers to access people they would not meet quickly in real life. As a result, it seems wise to know how to manipulate the online space for brand awareness and consistent income generation.
Featured Image Courtesy: Pixabay
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