With the holiday season right around the corner, social media channels will go from busy to bubbling with activity in just a few months time. According to location-based marketing firm Reveal Mobile, of the 260 small to medium business owners and managers surveyed, more than 36% of the respondents candidly hinted at spending a major portion of their ad money on social media marketing.
The survey further stated that the majority of the ad spend will be, specifically, directed toward top two major social media platforms, namely Facebook and Instagram. And, almost, 84% percent of small business advertisers will be using it. This is a little surprising, considering Facebook’s backlash and low user activity, recently.
Even so, Facebook’s ease of use has kept the social media platform front and center of several SMBs.
What’s exactly is working in favor of both these platforms:
In fact, the geo-fencing feature is known to resonate well with retailers and businesses as it takes the guesswork out of audience targeting.
In fact, 28 percent of businesses and advertisers will be supposedly using geo-fencing in each of their campaigns during the holidays. So, the tool is gonna definitely come in handy during the holidays.
Here, I walk you through 5 best ways to make the best use of these two major social media platforms, along with the additional tips, for the upcoming holidays.
Go live this Christmas season with Facebook Live! For this, first off, you need to set up a Facebook event on your business page and then put in a request to your friends and fans to like the page. You could even think of announcing special offers and giveaways during the event, in addition to displaying behind-the-scene events of your Christmas preparations.
Plus, you could also organize a live Q&A on holiday-themed subjects and gift ideas. Even if you are planning to host an in-person event, let that go live on Facebook Live as well.
Try using Instagram and Facebook stories to show off your brand’s fun and festive side. Go behind-the-scenes to display lightings, Christmas tree decorations, gifts, and all. It could also be a great medium to announce special offers and fun polls. In fact, Instagram has introduced a poll feature that lets you ask a question and then allows your friends and followers to vote.
Facebook Pixels is the best bet, especially, when it comes to retargeting customers. The tool helps display ads on the feeds of people who may have visited your site, but for some reasons haven’t converted. You could even use it to retarget your regular customers by offering them special offers, better value items and more.
For more ideas on Facebook advertising, you could directly consult top advertising companies, and get your Facebook campaign rolling in, in no time.
Post best of your product images on Instagram’s shoppable post to sell products within the app. Yes, the customers can complete their entire product journey – from discovery to checkout – without leaving the app. So, try Instagram’s Shoppable posts feature for a change and see for yourself, how it positively builds your business.
According to Kinetic Social, a social marketing tech firm, multi-image carousel ads are 10 times better over static single image posts when it comes to getting people to click through. And this is applicable to both Facebook and Instagram Carousal ads.
As per a Facebook case study, an app brand LOVOO reported a 72% higher click-through rate on their carousel ads over their single image ads. So, without fail, work out some ideas to create engaging carousal posts on Facebook and Instagram, this holiday season.
Additional things to bear in mind for your social media postings during holidays:
For all the exciting things you get to do during holidays, things do get hectic during that time. So, if you think you could squeeze in some time for your social media postings for your Facebook and Instagram pages, forget it. The best way to ensure that social media posts are taken care of is to schedule content ahead of time.
For this, you could use top social media management tools such as Buffer, Hootsuite and more. In fact, these tools could be used to manage multiple social media accounts and monitor everything via your app.
Generally speaking, the oncoming traffic on your Facebook and Instagram pages could be directed towards your website as well, especially during the holiday season. Think about it! However, to ensure that the directed traffic stays on your site, you need to create dedicated landing pages with a festive look announcing special offers, gift ideas, wishlists, hampers and more.
You could even think of customizing these pages as per customers’ needs and wants. For better customization of your landing pages, speak to top website design companies, without much ado.
It goes without saying, selecting gifts for your friends and family is tedious and time-consuming. Nonetheless, you could make the gifting process a lot easier by creating a gift wishlist for different audience segments, namely business owners, working moms, kids and more.
Creating gift wishlist for different audience segments could prove more successful rather than the one with no audience in mind. You could even take a cue from the Secret Santa Campaign run by Pinterest and take your wishlist idea a notch higher by recommending gift ideas based on what your friends and family recommend.
If your business supports a cause or intends to support one, go ahead and post about the same. It could be spending quality time with the orphans or old people, or even sponsoring a charitable cause to drive away hunger. Think about it if you haven’t so far.
If the cause is able to strike-a-perfect-chord with your employees, customers, and followers, be assured, your company is gonna go places. However, don’t forget to include relevant hashtags in your post.
No matter whether you are running a start-up or a brick or mortar store, you need to keep Facebook and Instagram, front and center, for their holiday ads. Plus, without fail, they need to schedule their social media posts well, in advance. Also, make use of the geo-fencing feature offered both by Facebook and Instagram to create custom audiences for your products. What else? Share your ideas on how to make Facebook and Instagram holiday messaging more lively and fun in the comment section.
Author Bio: This is Jennifer Warren, staff writer at GoodFirms – a review and research platform for top e-commerce development companies, digital marketing companies, web development companies among many others. A bookworm at heart, I have successfully guest blogged for top sites such as Crazyegg, Semrush, Searchenginepeople, Sitepronews, Volusion.com, Socialnomics, jeffbullas, mediapost among others.
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