Written by ContentPowered.com
Holidays always present an opportunity for businesses. Whether it’s the Christmas-New Years holiday season or smaller holidays, these are times when people spend money for gifts, travel, cooking, decorating and more. These are also times when people are feeling sociable and looking forward to connecting with friends and family members. There are many ways that marketers can tap into the holiday spirit using Facebook. Let’s look at some of the best Facebook holiday marketing strategies.
1. Post Targeted Holiday Images and Videos
Images are a powerful way to grab the attention of your Facebook friends and fans. Make sure you take advantage of this during your holiday promotions. While you can use some popular and familiar imagery surrounding the holidays, try to be a little different and creative. If possible, tie in the theme of the holiday with your business or product. For example, if you are marketing anything wearable such as shoes or clothes, you could have pictures of a holiday celebration with people wearing these items. In some cases, you may need some Photoshop skills to make the images relevant and targeted.
Videos are another area where you can tap into the holiday spirit and tie it in with your business. If you really want to get creative, you could make your own videos. You could wear a Santa hat or whatever holiday attire is appropriate. You could recruit some family members or employees to help. If you don’t want to do this, however, you can also create whiteboard videos, animated videos or Powerpoint videos that announce your promotion while staying within the spirit of the season. Videos should be posted not only on your Facebook page but also on your blog or website as well as YouTube and other video sharing sites.
2. Be Personal and Engaging in Your Holiday Posts
The challenge of holiday marketing is to stay in the holiday spirit while also doing everything possible to promote your business or products. Holidays are a good time to get personal and informal in some of your posts. While the purpose of your Facebook page may be to market your business, you can still reach out and connect with your audience in a more personal manner.
This could involve relating some anecdotes about your own family’s holiday experiences, some photos from a trip or holiday party or perhaps some favorite holiday recipes. Invite your business partners or employees to do the same. You can also tie in some of these posts with a marketing campaign, but do so in a way that’s natural and not too obvious. The most successful Facebook pages strike a good balance between socializing and marketing and it’s particularly important to do this for holidays.
3. Post Helpful Holiday Information
People appreciate useful advice pertaining to the holidays. This can include hints and tips regarding gift giving, travel, recipes, family gatherings or holiday fashions. You can probably find a way to tie in one or more of these themes with your business. At the same time, it’s best to focus on providing some genuinely helpful information. You could also curate some useful articles or videos from authority sites for your Facebook page. You could also repost some engaging holiday content from other sources on the internet, as long as it doesn’t compete with your promotions in any way. This type of post, even if it’s not directly connected to anything you’re selling, gives people a reason to return to your page and they may also want to find out more about any promotions you’re running.
4. Create a Contest or Sweepstakes
A holiday-themed contest is an effective way to generate interest in your Facebook page and business. You can create incentives for people to spread the word about the contest. For example, you could offer people additional chances to win for every person they refer. This requires you to come up with some compelling prizes, of course. On the other hand, if you give away items that you’re promoting anyway this is another chance to call attention to your products.
There are many types of contests that can be engaging for your readers. Photo contests are always fun, as people love to take pictures around the holidays. You could also have a video contest, though it takes a little more work for people to create videos. Either way, you can then post entries on your page. Other ideas for contests include recipes, essays, funny holiday stories and letters to Santa. Whether you’re dealing with images or text, anything pertaining to children, pets, family gatherings or travel is always appropriate for holiday contests.
5. Plan Far in Advance
One of the keys to a successful holiday marketing campaign is to plan as early as possible. You have probably noticed that stores as well as leading online retailers start advertising holiday related deals months ahead of time. There’s a good reason for this and you should adapt this practice for your own business.
There’s no downside to running holiday promotions early. Many people like to shop early for holidays. In addition, if you run a compelling promotion, you can motivate customers to get a head start on their holiday shopping. Remember also that some customers will purchase items for themselves whether it’s a holiday or not. If you’re offering a special discount, though, they’ll have a reason to take advantage of your offer. This means gathering your holiday designs and planning your special promotions as early as possible.
6. Leverage Facebook Advertising For Your Holiday Campaign
Holidays can be an opportune time to drive traffic to your Facebook page using paid ads. Sponsored posts are another possibility. Since Facebook advertising makes it possible to target your ads very precisely, you can focus on a particular demographic for each ad. This can be an effective way to get targeted traffic to a Facebook page, your company website or sales page. Research shows, however, that Facebook users are more comfortable clicking on links that keep them on Facebook.
Advertising can be used in conjunction with any other social media strategies you’re using. If you’re running a holiday contest, Facebook ads can be used to entice people to participate. If you made a video, you could drive traffic to it with your ad. While it’s always a good idea to track your results with any type of promotion, this is especially important with paid advertising. You may have to experiment with different headlines, ads and links to find the right combination. It’s essential to know how much ads are costing you per sale or lead. This information is valuable not only for the holidays, but also the rest of the year.
Facebook Can Help Your Holiday Marketing Efforts
Holidays are the perfect time to leverage Facebook traffic. People are already in the mood to connect with their friends and are thinking about gifts and celebrations. If you do it in a way that’s fun and engaging, you can drive traffic to your offers, contests or other holiday related promotions. When it comes to the holidays, you shouldn’t be afraid to publish some content that’s purely helpful, inspiring or fun. At the same time, don’t miss any opportunities to tell everyone about your special holiday deals.