It’s Never Too Early To Plan Christmas Social Media Campaigns
Plan ahead: It wasn’t raining when Noah built the ark. ~ Richard Cushing
If there’s one thing that is true for marketing, it’s that it is never too early to plan a social media campaign. We see Christmas or seasonal items appearing in shops much before the season arrives, the marketers are ready with campaigns and promotions in plenty of time before we decide to hit the shops.
Why? Because it allows our minds to think about their products and promotions for when we are ready to buy. If we’ve already seen an offer that we like, we’re more likely to purchase that item when the time comes rather than wondering around a dozen shops or websites to find what you’re looking for.
If marketers can make an impact in your mind, and make it convincing, appropriate and enticing, you’re more likely to buy from them.
The same goes for social media campaign.
And as we head towards the Christmas season, many people have started their Christmas shopping or have an idea of what they want to buy. They’ve already started to think about the people they need to buy for and what types of gifts they would like. This makes it easier for brands to sell as they have campaigns running on social media way before December that puts triggers in our minds, which brings us straight back to their product when we are ready to purchase.
Have you started your Christmas marketing campaigns?
Now is the time (if you haven’t started already) to get plans and strategy into place for your Christmas social media push. These can drip feed over the next few months, but now is a great time to get them out into the online world and where your brand can start to be noticed and recognised.
Christmas campaigns are about speaking directly to your audience, pleasing them and tailoring to their needs. Your bottom line shouldn’t be the main thought in this process – it’s about engaging with your customers.
Get noticed
Marketing campaigns are successful when a brand is recognised. So, creating social media content is about raising your brand awareness and letting people get to know who you are. The more you are known, and people start to notice you, the more successful you’ll be.
Do what it takes to get noticed, this may be by getting a little creative, eccentric, different from the norm, anything that allows your brand to stand out from the crowd.
Christmas is a busy time, it’s a season where every brand out there is pushing for attention and in order to get noticed your business needs to do something different, that other brands are not doing.
What could you do to spice up your Christmas marketing campaigns?
1) Get creative with your social media profiles
Spruce up your social headers and profiles with some festive graphics. You don’t have to be super talented in the graphics department, you can head over to Canva to create some free images, or if you don’t have time, ask a Virtual Assistant to help! Have fun with your social headers, make them memorable. If you create a theme or series, you could change them on a regular basis to gain a little more engagement from your audience.
Here’s a Facebook header example:
2) Utilise key festive dates
You may be focusing on Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Years day, but there are many more days out there that you could get creative with. We’ve got a few on our social media planner, including #CyberMonday #ChristmasJumperDay and a few more which could be interesting for your social media content. It’s all about creating engagement and excitement – jump on the trends and turn them around to suit your brand and audience. You may not be promoting your business or offers, but you’re getting people to interact with your content. They’ll start to know you and like you and will share your content with others – then when you do promote your products, you have a ready made audience to speak to.
Download our free 2020 Social Media Awareness Days calendar for key dates
3) Engage with your followers
This may be something that you’re already actively doing, but if it’s not, now is a great time to start. Bring a little Christmas cheer into the conversations, jump onto conversations that are happening where you can a) add value and b) have fun with it, both while raising your brand profile.
If you’re using any social listening tools, use these to discover people mentioning your brand as to not miss any opportunities that arise.
4) Run a giveaway or competition
Everyone loves a giveaway, especially around Christmas when people are already buying gifts for their family and friends. When you’re planning your giveaway, you want to think about what you’re trying to achieve by doing it – don’t make it a wasted exercise.
Are you looking to raise brand awareness? Are you looking to gain more followers? Do you want to grow your email list? Depending on your goal, gear your campaign around how to achieve the right outcome.
If you’re wanting to grow your email list, you’ll want to ask people to ‘sign up’ in order to be in with a chance of winning your prize. If you’re looking to raise your profile, ask people to comment and tag another person in their submissions, in order for more people to hear about you. If you simply want to gain more follows, ask people to like your page and share your posts. There are lots of outcomes and ways of achieving them but try to focus on one for each campaign, it will make it easier and less complicated to manage.
5) Create a festive offer
You may not want or have the means to do a giveaway so a festive offer could be an easier campaign to do. Christmas is one of the biggest times of the year for businesses to earn income. Campaigns that are planned and run well have a good chance of being taken seriously, whilst growing your audience and raising your brand awareness.
Use words like, one day left, Christmas countdown, buy-one-get-one-free – these are all appealing and give a sense or urgency to the buyer.
Get creative with your visuals but don’t make it too crowded, allow the offer wording to stand out, be bold and showcase what you are offering.
You could also offer free-shipping for a limited time or one day only and have a message that shouts about that particular day being important.
6) Create an event
Have you ever thought about holding an event to create excitement or awareness? This could be online or offline, meeting people face to face or holding a ‘live’ event online. People like to see the face behind the brand and to engage with real-life people. So much is automated in the world we live in that to physically see or hear a person that represents a brand is a novelty for many. Utilise that and build up momentum prior to the event. Use your email marketing to invite and remind your audience and use social media to promote it. The more momentum the better!
7) Create templates
When you’re creating your Christmas graphics, stick to a theme or a create a template where wording or images can be changed but that doesn’t give you a headache every time you want create a new one. Make your graphics simple, make them bold and make them effective. If people cannot recognise your brand from one image to the next, it’s not going to be as successful. Branding plays a big part in how your business is perceived and received.
Here’s a couple of examples:
8) Be joyful with your Christmas promotions
Christmas is a festive season and should be full of joy – your social media content needs to be social and engaging, where people can enjoy interacting with you and your followers. You want to get people excited about Christmas, about the holidays and of course about your brand!
You could do this by asking simple questions about their Christmas experiences or do they prefer X or Y product. This will not only give you great research into your audience but will help you market the products or services that are favoured.
When it comes to creating a marketing campaign, too early is always better than too late. The more preparation you can put in, research into your target audience and gain insights into what your customers want or would like to see and hear, the better the impact it has on your business.
Do you have any other ideas that you could use for Christmas promotions? What’s your favourite and most successful promotion you’ve done? We’d love to hear your comments below.
If you’d like get started in promoting your material for Christmas but just not sure how and where to begin, get in touch, we’d love to help!
For further reading, check out our post from last year about preparing early for Christmas social media marketing
