Leveraging social media for the holiday shopping season is an absolute must. Social media posting and running ads on social media have become primary strategies for ecommerce to drive traffic, revenue, and ROI. Here are some great ways to leverage social media into the holiday shopping season:
- Holiday-themed Sweepstakes or Photo/Video Contest – Sweepstakes are the most exciting and engaging type of thing you can do with your social media audience during the holidays. It’s also a great way to attract new targeted audiences to your pages. Example: “Win the NEW iPhone (or iWatch) Sweepstakes!” You can do an amazing Holiday Season Sweepstakes or Holiday Photo Contest to increase fans, email opt-ins, conversions, and viral sharing. Typical budget would range between $500-5000 for a contest or sweepstakes, depending on how big and exciting you wanted to go with the sweepstakes. Sweepstakes should be promoted on your website, on your Facebook page with Boosted Posts, Sponsored tweets, Facebook Ads to new audiences, and to your email databases. Not to mention, when the winners get their prize they can be asked to share a picture on your Facebook page holding their prize, which is promoted on Facebook and other social networks with ads to increase exposure and generate good PR. It’s great for PR in general posting the winners and has great engagement associated with it. Press releases can also be done for the sweepstakes to further market it and bring good PR. You can also run Facebook and Twitter ads to promote it, to new targeted audiences, and retarget website visitors to enter your sweepstakes. You can also add a “site link extension” in your Google paid search ads so it shows up in all of your search ads so people may click on the link and sign up for the sweepstakes as a data gathering method.
- Holiday-themed Facebook/Twitter Page Cover images – to be added in advance of all the main Holiday promotions. It’s good to keep cover images changing and fresh on your Facebook page, and Twitter as well. Be careful with with cover images for Facebook because on mobile the sides can be cut off so you have to keep the cover image content more or less centered and not near the edges of the images. Make sure to check your cover images to make sure they look good on mobile.
- Holiday-themed Fan Page Thumbnail – sure, why not add a holiday-themed company logo on your Facebook and Twitter pages. It can be a really nice touch.
- Facebook Fan Ads – consider allocating budget to advertise for more targeted fans (i.e. Page likes) on Facebook before and throughout the holidays so you can market deals to more targeted people with “Boosted Posts”. Then, using Facebook Offers and Facebook Boosted Posts to monetize your fans and track the ROI of your fan advertising. Make sure to track Facebook ad campaigns with dedicated coupon codes, Facebook’s tracking pixels, and dedicated toll free numbers for Facebook. PRO TIP: Inviting Facebook Ad Likers to Like Your Page – did you know you can invite all the people that like your Facebook ads to like your company page? Yep…Facebook will prompt you to do this from your ad notifications. It’s a great way to build your fan count for free.
- Twitter Ads – Ads can be run on Twitter to boost clicks, followers, and leads. Don’t forget about Twitter Ads this holiday season. I also really like running ads to your customer databases on Twitter (custom audiences), which typically have good ROI. Another winner on Twitter is to run retargeting ads to your previous website visitors that didn’t convert. So make sure not to neglect Twitter, especially in retargeting your website traffic and your previous customer email lists, with deals and/or to enter your holiday sweepstakes to build your email list.
- Instagram –You MUST be on Instagram with a company page and posting pictures and links to it, with hashtags to gain followers. Ramp up your Instagram strategy now to build your followers for the holidays. Now, when you advertise through Facebook, your ads will run on Instagram automatically, which is a beautiful thing. There are literally 18 different ad units and placements your Facebook/Instagram ads automatically when you run Facebook ads campaigns. If you need you Facebook/Instagram ad campaigns run properly, with a strategy, contact us to discuss.
- Holiday Videos – make sure to create and utilize videos in your holiday shopping advertising strategies. Videos tend to have higher rates of engagement that static ads. Videos can be created and utilized on your social networks, in your ads, on Youtube, in Google/Youtube ads, and other places as well. Videos are also great for using with Google Ads and Facebook Ads to retargeting/remarket to your website audience, previous customer file, and new targeted audiences (If you need inexpensive video creation services let us know). VIDEOS ARE A MUST!
- Pinterest Ads – Make sure you are pinning all your products from your site and blog to Pinterest in your company account. Create boards for your product categories to make it great. Sign-up for a Pinterest business account so you can run ads through Pinterest to targeted audiences for the holiday shopping season. If it’s going to work, it’s likely going to work during the holiday shopping season when your conversion rate is higher, so make sure to leverage it to the fullest. Pinterest can be a great way to drive traffic and sales.
There you have it! Some great social media strategies for driving traffic and sales during the holiday shopping season. If you need additional social media strategies or your social media strategies managed by a competent, effective digital agency, contact us for a free quote!
