The holiday season is huge for e-commerce businesses with Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday around.
The US expects 30% of all retail sales to happen on digital channels and through e-commerce this year!
Ready to get in on the action? This is the right time to get creative with your holiday marketing ideas!
In this article, we highlight 6 ideas for holiday marketing to help you cut through the social media noise and stand out from other brands:
#1: An Instagram Giveaway with the theme of holidays
Hosting a giveaway on Instagram is an excellent way to boost brand awareness, generate more followers, and promotions – plus, they are really simple to set up (and even easier to participate in).
Proper planning is necessary to run a successful giveaway – you’ll want to define the purpose and goals of your giveaway well before you dive in.
For example, if you are planning to launch a new product this season, you could tie your giveaway to larger goals such as marketing, raising awareness around the product launch.
Or your goal could be as simple as increasing Instagram audience or getting more follower base – there’s no wrong answer! Just keep in mind that your goals or ideas will influence the type of giveaway you run.
Once you decide your goals or purpose, you can begin to design or strategize how to best accomplish them with your rules, giveaway theme, and structure.
For example, if you want to grow your brand awareness, this will inform things like the type of prize you pick, the rules for participation, and your long-term plan for keeping new followers engaged with your content.
Many brands get as much traction and as many new followers as possible using giveaways. In order to enter, participants are asked to follow their accounts (along with two others) with the option to get more entries by re-sharing posts on their Instagram Stories.
Partnering up with another brand or an Instagram influencer with a similar target market and the audience is a great way to get more traction – you get to reach hundreds or thousands of potential new customers and followers… all from just one Instagram post!
Many different segment brands (like wellness) did this recently to promote their giveaway.
Even though these brands are all within different spaces, they have a similar target audience (young, design-conscious consumers), which is why it’s such an effective partnership.
You should be looking for exactly this kind of brand collaboration – one that has a similar target market and an audience that would be interested in your products.
#2: Campaign to appreciate audience
The holidays are all about showing love and respect for the people around you, and as a digital brand, this includes your followers and social media family.
So why not run a customer appreciation campaign?
You can present your caring and appreciation to your followers in many ways – for example, some brands use UGC (user-generated content) to give their customers a virtual shout-out.
These customer appreciation campaigns also act as a “soft promotion” for businesses and products like done by a skincare brand Curology.
This strategy also leads to more engagement of your brand with your customers and followers. Followers start tagging you in their Instagram Stories or regularly use your branded hashtag in their posts.
With us, you can use our Collect features to view all the Instagram posts that you’re mentioned or tagged in one easy dashboard, and then add your favorites to your media library.
This makes finding high-quality UGC for your customer appreciation campaign easy!
To show your appreciation you can also give a promo code specifically for your Instagram followers. Many brands frequently launch offers for short time on Instagram for their followers.
If you want to increase your reach to more Instagram users and want to get them involved in your promotion, you can share your promo code on Instagram Reels. Since Reels are shared a lot on the Instagram Explore Page, you can potentially reach many new users.
And finally, you can simply say thanks!
What’s great is that this doesn’t require a huge campaign or a big budget. A simple acknowledgment can go a long way.
Also read – 25 Social Media Content Ideas To Level Up Your Strategy
#3: Launch a New Product
The holiday season is an e-commerce frenzy, so why not take the opportunity to launch a new holiday-inspired product?
Of course, as you probably know a lot of strategy and work goes into launching a new product on Instagram, so it’s important to start planning early.
Depending on your business space, you may need a lead time (few weeks or even a few months) for product development, launch strategy, creating your launch assets, working with influencers and team, and a lot more.
But if you can work out all of these details in time for the holiday season, it’s worth it!
Cruelty-free cosmetic brand Lush is a great example. Every year in a specific season (fall and winter), they launch a series of new holiday-inspired products.
On Instagram, even with a light budget, you can make a huge impact just by creativity. Your online store can generate tons of traffic and conversions even by a small pre-planned campaign.
#4: Help the needy
The festive seasons are about much more than consumption
– they’re also about giving back to those in need.
That’s why a lot of brands are deciding to opt-out of holidays like Black Friday and Cyber Monday. Instead they do something a little more social and meaningful .
The reality is that many consumers don’t expect special promo codes or discounts. They just want to know that your business aligns with their values.
You can benefit from showing your core values in action just by associating your brand with a charity or social cause. This is something that modern consumers care more and more about.
In fact, according to Unilever in a report, 33% of consumers buying today are now choosing brands; they believe are doing social or environmental good. And when given a chance to choose between two brands of equal quality and price; 90% of US shoppers are likely to select a cause branded product.
A great option is to support a charity or cause that reflects your business’s vision and role in your community – check out how millennial clothing brand MadHappy launched a donation portal to raise proceeds for charities they felt passionate about.
Using the donation sticker for Instagram Stories you can get your Instagram audience involved too.
With just a few options, Users can support their charity of choice, or help spread the word to collect donations from their followers.
Another way is to donate a portion of your season sales, fees, or profits to a charity or social cause. For example, while launching a new product this holiday season, you can use this strategy promotionally.
Ethical clothing brand Kotn does this every year. In place of running a Black Friday campaign, they use the holiday to raise proceeds to build schools in the Nile Delta, a region of Egypt where they source the cotton for their products.
These are just some simple ways to give back to society during the holiday season. At the end of the day, it’s all about finding the rise cause and keeping your audience informed (and hopefully inspired!) about the work you’re doing to make the world a little bit better.
#5: Marketing Campaign with Influencers
If you’re looking to make acquire a large piece audience this season; it might be a good idea to outsource some of the promotional work to influencers.
Introducing your business through Instagram influencers is a great way to develop new audiences. It creates brand awareness and gets your customers into the buying spirit during the holidays.
In e-commerce businesses, holidays are one of the most lucrative times. But they can also be one of the most competitive.
With the help of Influencer marketing, one can easily break through all the clutter . Thus, one can get their brand (and products) noticed.
Of course, to make all the influencer marketing campaigns work, it’s important to go into a partnership with a clear idea of what you want to achieve; including the potential customers you’re hoping to make, how you want your product to be featured, and more.
Keep in mind that most influencers are getting flooded with pitches this time of year. So your pitch must be as clear and concise as possible. The simpler you make it for your partners; the more likely they will be to respond.
And always do thorough research to find the right influencers for your campaign! Promoting your product through Influencer is all about reaching a niche and engaged audience; who would be interested in it. And this only happens when there’s an authentic match between yourself and your influencer partner.
Once you’ve found the perfect fit for your holiday campaign, it’s time to let your creativity fly!
To engage potential customers, it’s important to showcase to them what’s unique about your product and why it belongs on their shopping list.
By using a trusted, authentic, and famous voice to deliver your message, your business has the opportunity to create a connection. It makes sense for both your brand and resonates with your influencer’s audience.
#6: Share a resource for free
Even if you are/aren’t an e-commerce brand, the holiday season still presents a huge opportunity to gain an audience and spread brand awareness. One way to do this easily is by giving a free downloadable resource and using it to gather basic data.
Once you have someone’s email, you can send those promotions or messages. They help drive conversions for your products and services.
Think about your ideal customer or client. What can you offer them special? This is your “lead magnet” and it should be something that they wouldn’t think twice about signing up for.
Some examples include:
- free download or worksheet
- challenge
- mini-course
- free sample
- exclusive offer for subscribers
When the followers tap a link in your bio, they are brought to a clickable, optimized landing page. Then they can be redirected to a download page where they are asked to submit their email address ; to download the resource.
Without much complications, these holiday campaigns can be very valuable to your business.
Whether you apply a few simple things to “dress up” your brand for the holidays or commit to an exclusive campaign; follow our holiday marketing tips to get the most out of this busy season!
Also read – Social Media Business Strategies
