The holidays are quickly approaching - here’s what you need to know about running a holiday campaign
As the hustle and bustle of the holidays is getting near, businesses should be thinking ahead about the campaigns they want to run. The end of the year means a lot of sales for many companies. A shocking 20 to 40 percent of yearly sales for small and mid-sized retailers take place within the last two months of the year (National Retail Federation). A holiday campaign is an essential part of keeping up with holiday sales, as well as offers your business a chance to send out some Christmas cheer.
You first need to decide where your campaign will be held. This should be the place where the majority of your audience hangs out. For many this may be Facebook, because for most businesses Facebook holds the most people who can engage with the campaign. However, evaluate this for your own business. Where does most of your audience hang out or which audience is most important for you to capture? Decide which platform you will host your campaign based on these kinds of questions.
Next, define what your campaign will be. If you are an E-Commerce store, it could be something along the lines of free shipping or a percentage off. If you’re looking for something a bit more heartfelt, how about donating a portion of every order? Whatever your offer campaign is based around, think of your audience first. What would motivate them?
You can always look to well-known campaigns for inspiration. Many bigger brands use their holiday campaigns as a way to invoke the Christmas spirit and the heartstrings. The most successful of these companies place the message first and the product second. What message do you want to promote with your campaign?
Now decide the medium of the message. Will it be based on text, photos, videos, or a combination of all three? Regardless of your primary medium, remember to incorporate other occasionally too. This keeps your content from getting stale.
How to drive engagement
There are many ways to drive engagement to your holiday campaign.
Check out these engagement-drivers:
Create a timeline contest:
- Use heartfelt messages and create the feeling of Christmas with images
- Use your team
- Share others content or user generated content (like photo contests)
- Use hashtags
Use Media Rich content:
- Videos - animoto.com
- Create albums on Facebook
- Create holiday albums on Pinterest
- Tag your products/service in images - Here’s a guide
Use Exclusivity and Special Offers:
- Pin offers to top of pages
- Use Facebook Notes to list out deals
- Collaborate with others
- Use Facebook Events for special time slots
- Set up expiring posts
Incorporate Lead Ads
Lead Ads make it a lot easier to run a lead generation campaign on Facebook. It allows people to express interest in a business’s product or service. An interested party just has to fill out a form with their details which lets your business follow up with them.
All you have to do is set up a lead ad. Once someone clicks on the ad, a form will open. The form will be auto-populated with information the person has already shared with Facebook, including their name and email address. This makes it really easy for the individual who is interested in you product or services, expressing interest in as little as two taps: once to open the form and once again to submit it.
You can also enhance your budget by running Facebook Ads and tieing them back to your products.
Whatever campaign you choose to do, remember to keep it simple and keep the message going. Keep posting, but use different images, videos, posts, etc. Lastly, analyze what is working and what isn’t. That way you know what to continue to do and what to stop doing.
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