Preparation is the key to a successful holiday season for your business, especially if your brand is on social media. (Who isn’t these days?!) If you’re waiting until November to share your holiday marketing campaigns and offerings, you’re missing out on a huge opportunity. You’re also probably stressed to the max trying to piece it all together. Not to worry, friend! We’re here to help you prepare the right way.
Set Your Holiday Season Goals
First things first, you should be deciding on what goals you’d like to achieve for the last quarter of the year. Do you have a new product and/or service launching that you’d like to promote? Are you launching a new course? Want more email subscribers? Write down every goal you have for this holiday season. We like to use a project management tool like Trello or Asana to keep track of all campaigns!
Build A Holiday Social Calendar
However you choose to manage your holiday marketing campaigns, you’ll need a calendar to keep post and email in order. If you’ve already planned out your regular, evergreen-style social media posts, you’ll want to fill in (or possibly replace) some posts with holiday-themed content. You’ll want to start planning and outlining your calendar no later than the beginning of October—sooner if you’re creating Halloween offers.
Create Holiday Themed Content
As soon as you’ve built your social calendar outlining all social posts, it’s time to start batching the content. You’ll want to make a list of all the products, people, and props you’ll need for the content, as well as a list of locations (if that applies to your calendar). If you’re having a hard time collecting props, try the infamous dollar bins of Target, dollar stores or your local Walmart. If there’s something special you need, make sure to order it ahead of time so you have everything needed available on content creation day.
Pro Tip: During the holiday season, keep the call to actions on your social posts simple. This ensures your audience is clear on the one thing you want them to do. The holidays are busy for your target audience, so take any chance you have to make their lives easier!
Ensure Facebook Pixel Is Installed + Working Correctly
If you haven’t set up the Facebook Pixel on your website yet, it’s time to get on board! Simply put, the Pixel measures the effectiveness of your marketing by monitoring the actions people are taking on your ads and website. It also can help make sure your ads are shown to the right people! It’s fairly easy to set up, especially if your website is on a partner platform like Shopify. After you’ve added the Pixel to your site, you’ll want to make sure it’s working correctly by testing out the events. There’s nothing worse than events not firing in the midst of a Black Friday sale!
Work With Influencers To Promote Your Products/Services
If you’re looking to reach a wider audience with holiday marketing, working with influencers can help you raise brand awareness and sell more products. The key is to find the right influencers within your niche, and within your desired geographic area if you’d like to see more local foot traffic. We recommend starting your search for influencers a couple months before the holiday season, as vetting them, outlining contracts, and sending out products can take time to complete. Check out this article from Later on How To Find Instagram Influencers For Your Next Campaign.
Set Aside Extra Resources For Customer Service
It’s long been established that brands on social media need to have a customer service aspect to their strategy. As more and more customers are sending DMs and asking questions in the comments—this couldn’t be more true. This type of engagement is almost guaranteed to increase during the holiday season. That means dedicating extra resources to customer service is a great idea! This may look like creating a holiday FAQ sheet and sharing it on your Instagram Highlights, working with your Social Media Manager to make sure customer service policies are in place, and setting up auto-replies so if you’re tied up you can let the customer know you’ve seen their message and you’ll get back to them ASAP.
Snag our FREE Holiday Marketing Checklist to ensure your biz is set up for success this season!
