The holiday season is easily one of the biggest retail sales opportunities of the year. It’s no surprise that nailing down a solid e-commerce holiday strategy on social media can greatly increase your annual sales. However, figuring out your approach, and the marketing message that you want to convey through social media marketing can be a challenge. We hope that the following tips will help in the creation of your holiday e-commerce strategy, and make this upcoming season lucrative and successful for your business.
1. Learn from Last Year
There’s always a chance to learn from both success and failure. Looking back on your last years in business, how have your holidays campaigns faired? Did you reach your goals? If you fell short, do you know why? Your results will also show which social media platforms gave you the best ROI. From this, you can choose which platforms you’d like to continue using this year.
2. Map it Out
Clear and measurable goals – something every successful campaign must have. It may seem obvious, but most holiday campaigns focus on making sales. However, are there specific products you’re hoping to sell via social? Or perhaps your goal is to use social media platforms to drive targeted traffic to your website? Whatever your goals are, quantify and document them, before going any further.
3. Use Your Time Wisely
With a goal in mind, you now need to figure out the scheduling and execution of this plan. How long will your campaign run? For your product or service, when are sales most likely to occur? Will it work to your advantage to create a sense of urgency? I.e. ‘Limited time offer!’ When is the optimal time to launch your e-commerce strategy on social media? If all of these moving parts are well-thought-out ahead of time, you’ll be left with more time and space to get creative and really nail this social media campaign.
4. Pick your Platforms & Create Your Strategy
Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and YouTube are just some of your options. Choose which will work best for your industry and then get strategizing. Keep in mind, social media marketing is slightly different on every platform and your approach may need to be tweaked, depending on where you focus your attention. If your holiday marketing strategy involves multiple platforms, then logically, your approach will need to be customized accordingly.
5. Cue Creativity
Now it’s time to decide what your campaign will look like. One of the easiest ways to get started is by brainstorming. Toss around ideas and build off of others until you’ve got a visual style and core message for each campaign. After that, you can iron out the fine details.
It’s important to keep your core messaging and creative direction consistent. Your campaign should be linked through every post.
6. Bring it to Life
So you’ve got your creative ideas, now you need to prepare and execute. This part involves a lot of work, so make sure you’ve got enough time to get everything done. Create all of the photos, videos, GIFs, graphics and anything else you plan to share on social media. A social media content calendar is an easy way to organize all of your content for each of the social platforms that you’ll be using.
7. Wait & Watch
Monitoring how well your current campaign is doing is essential to success. Mid-campaign tweaks and adjustments are a necessity, especially when data shows that one approach or platform may be fairing better than another. Analytics and insights are great tools to measure how well your goals are converting.
Executing a strong e-commerce strategy on social media can greatly affect the success of your holiday sales. While the process can feel overwhelming, there are digital marketing teams that can help you through the process. Reach out to learn more!