8 Tips for Gearing Up for the Holidays

8 Tips for Gearing Up for the Holidays

The holidays are just around the corner, and it’s more important than ever to get your holiday marketing plan together and start creating social posts that will create great engagement. Because, well, great engagement means conversions. Here are eight helpful tips to gear up for a successful holiday social marketing season.

Start Your Social Campaign Now

Unless you’re talking about people in my immediate family, the vast majority of consumers avoid last-minute shopping. Probably, even today, you’re seeing sales and promotions geared toward holiday shoppers. A quarter of consumers start holiday shopping before they buy Halloween candy. By Black Friday, lots of people are doing the very last bit of their shopping. It’s best to start your campaign now, to get the most conversions possible.

This Halloween post template is just one of many others crafted and ready to be posted templates, PromoRepublic’s team of professional designers and copywriters prepares for this holiday season. Dive into viral and lead generating posts for Halloween, Thanksgiving Day, Black Friday and many others:

Get Up Close and Personal – Literally

You can target ads and boosted posts or sponsored Tweets to a certain geographic area. You know that. But did you know that doing that can bring more people into your brick and mortar location? Nearly 90% of shoppers are more likely to shop in a local store that provides a coupon or discount that is specifically for them. Geo targeting your message can provide that type of personalized message without you having to mine emails and physical addresses for an expensive postal mailing or hard-to-execute email campaign.

Offer a Promotion That Zings

Digging more into my last point, a promotion or coupon that doesn’t speak to a consumer’s shopping needs does you no good in a social marketing campaign. To get them in the door with their wallets open, you have to offer something that’s worth shutting down the computer and getting in the car. Or, if you’re an ecommerce kind of company, something that incentivizes them to buy from YOU, rather than your competitor. This is where your buyer persona comes in handy – knowing what your customers want and when they want it is the key to running a successful promotion.

Make Your Social Posts Extra Special

I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. Visual posts get far more attention than straight text posts. Every time. You can offer coupons, check in deals, free money, or whatever, but if the post doesn’t catch someone’s eye, nobody is going to use it. Visual posts that contain great graphics are the key to a consumer’s eyes, and heart. And, you don’t have to spend a ton of money on a graphic designer or expensive stock photos to create your social posts. PromoRepublic has everything you need right in our layered content calendar. You can turn out professionally designed visual posts in seconds. Which is good, since your time is short (see point 1).

Don’t Spend Hours and Hours Creating Posts

Your holiday campaign doesn’t have to take up all your time. Especially when you have PromoRepublic on your side. In addition to a fully stocked event and content calendar, you have access to loads of holiday templates, professionally designed and packed with great content, that will aid you in a smart, quick, holiday campaign. You can pick templates that are holiday specific, and you can even go through the categories to find industry-specific holiday posts. We make it so easy.

Want to try PromoRepublic for free to get you through this holiday season? Click here to sign up for a free trial and see all that the new layer of content marketing has to offer:

Make Your Social Posts Even More Special

While great graphics and gripping visuals are important to a social post that converts, it’s nothing without a good message. Again, this is where your Buyer Persona comes into play. Use your demographic research, your buyer persona, and all the other data you can find to target messaging right to your core audience. You have the power, through your research, to reach people and impact them emotionally. That’s the power of contextual marketing. If you deliver the right post, to the right person, at the right time, you have yourself one heck of a good campaign.

Know Your Audience For Real

I’ve mentioned Buyer Personas twice already, and I’ll mention them again. Your demographic is so important to your social message. If you know that your product or service is most popular with millenials, for instance, you have to target them where they live and breathe. Relevant Facebook posts, the right Instagram campaign – these things are the keys to reaching the people who will buy what you’re selling. The millennials want to shop online, so let them. Baby Boomers want to shop in store, so give them a good reason to. Generation X wants a specialty store or a customized experience. If needed, create several targeted campaigns for the best results.

Don’t Do Anything You Wouldn’t Normally Do

In any comprehensive list of tips, I’m going to give you a couple of don’ts along with the do’s. Don’t ever do anything on social media that defies your existing brand identity, puts your employees at risk, or offends your customers. Nordstrom took a big leap when they announced that they wouldn’t start decorating for Christmas until after Thanksgiving, but luckily they knew their customers well enough to know it would work. Keep your messaging brand-friendly and remain true to who you are as a company.