As a company or brand, you may be thinking that it is too early to carry out Christmas campaigns within your marketing strategy. However, according to a Google study , people look forward up to 7 weeks to look for inspiration for seasonal shopping at the end of the year, so now is the best time to start planning your Christmas social media campaigns .
- Steps to plan your Christmas campaigns
- 9 ideas for Christmas campaigns on social networks
The pandemic has changed users’ consumption habits and there are fewer and fewer people willing to wait in line at establishments. In this paradigm shift, users prefer to make a large part of their purchases through their smartphones or computers. In fact, the weight of eCommerce has doubled since 2019 and is expected to continue growing until 2025.
But how do these more digitalized buyers behave? According to a study by Bazaarvoice , 76% of users claim to be influenced by social networks when purchasing. Of these, 65% use them to inspire their purchases, and 61% say they make purchases directly through merchant feeds and stories.
YouTube or Pinterest are reference platforms for seeking inspiration for purchases, while Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and TikTok are the main driving forces for purchases, which happen spontaneously.
There are more and more competitors in the market, which makes the need to boost your brand awareness during this festive season really important to increase your sales and attract new customers . In this article you will learn how to plan your campaigns with the best Christmas marketing ideas to achieve your objectives and stand out from your competitors.
Steps to plan your Christmas campaigns
1. Understand your audience
The first and most important thing is to understand who your audience or target audience is . Knowing who your buyer persona is and what objective they are pursuing will allow you to correctly define the messages and content of your campaigns.
It is key to your strategy that you identify what type of content you like, what channels you use to consume information and what formats you consume most frequently. For example, Instagram and TikTok are the favorite platforms of users between 16 and 24 years old, while users over 35 years old use Facebook much more frequently.
2. Define the objective of your campaigns
Secondly, you will have to define what you want to achieve with your campaigns .
Is your main objective to increase your sales? Or maybe you need to increase your number of followers? Whatever your goal is, it is important that you do it by setting SMART or intelligent goals . That is, your objectives must be specific (S), measurable (M), achievable (A), realistic (R) and time-bound (T). For example, achieving X sales of a specific product category, or increasing the number of followers on your Instagram profile by X%.
Additionally, it will be key that you define a KPI or performance meter to analyze whether your campaign was successful or not in achieving the set objective.
3. Create your campaigns
Time to unleash your creativity! It is time to start collecting ideas that can help you achieve the goals you have set for yourself. In the next section we leave you 9 Christmas campaign ideas. Get inspired to see which one can best fit your objectives and buyer persona!
From here, it’s time to get to work to bring your ideas down to earth. Assess what tools and personnel you will need to prepare everything: graphic designs, advertising writing, configuration of paid campaigns, etc.
4. Promote your campaign
It’s time to share your campaign with your audience. Here you must evaluate whether you want to promote your campaign organically, paid, or with a combination of both.
Choosing one option or another will depend on your objective and available budget, but in general it is best to combine an organic strategy with a paid one to take advantage of the advantages of both.
You will need to create a schedule or editorial calendar that encompasses all your Christmas campaigns. It will allow you to have a global vision of your entire strategy and track its completion in real time. In it, you must indicate:
- Social networks in which it will be published
- Publication date and time
- Visual content (photo or video) and copy of the publication
- Links and tags that the publication should include
TIP: Schedule your organic posts and campaigns to free up your time and ensure campaigns are published when they are due.
9 ideas for Christmas campaigns on social networks
Christmas is one of the most celebrated holidays around the world and more and more companies are adapting their social media content to this occasion. In this context, creativity is a key point for your campaigns to be infallible, since you must draw attention to all the publications made on those dates.
Below, you will find 9 ideas to inspire you to create the best Christmas campaigns:
1. Customize your profiles with festive motifs
To convey the Christmas spirit you can personalize your social media profiles with Christmas motifs. Get creative with the use of traditional Christmas colors and shapes!
Of course, before making any changes, first assess whether the personality of your brand or company is in line with this contagion of the Christmas spirit. It is possible that it is a more serious brand that, due to branding issues, does not allow a change of this type.
2. Video campaign
It has been proven that videos capture users’ attention very effectively: they make the message easier to remember and allow for more engagement as it is easier to express emotions.
Taking this into account, it is not surprising that big brands like Apple make use of videos in their Christmas campaigns.
While it is true that not all brands have a large budget to be able to afford highly produced videos, the important thing for your video to be a success will be creativity when transmitting the message in it.
Today there are many templates or programs that allow you to create attractive videos easily, without the need for a large investment to create a video. The important thing here is to know how to adapt the message well to your brand personality and communicate a message that is related to your objective (creating a video to generate brand recognition is not the same as creating sales directly). Don’t forget to add Christmas music in the background to give it a more special touch!
3. Countdown or Advent calendar
What would Christmas be without Advent calendars? Taking an action of this type will allow you to increase engagement with your social networks while keeping your followers updated on the countdown in a fun way.
There are many ways to adapt this concept to a Christmas campaign. Here some of them:
- Make a daily challenge and offer a final or daily prize for the winners.
- Offer an incentive every day, whether it’s a giveaway or a discount.
- Take advantage of the Stories format to give voice to the countdown.
- Create a stylish patterncheckerboard” on your Instagram profile announcing the countdown.
4. Encourage UGC
Invite your followers or potential followers to participate in your social media strategy through content generation. This will not only help you generate content for free , but it will also offer you greater exposure and give more authenticity to your brand.
You can ask users to post a photo using your product in a creative way and create a specific hashtag to encourage more people to join the movement and promote your brand. For example, in 2016 Starbucks created the hashtag #RedCupArt to encourage users to buy coffee in its establishments to get one of its red cups and thus be able to create a work of art in them. Some of the posts users made were so good that they shared the post on their own profile:
Another great example was #TedsElfie by TedBaker in 2015. Users had to find the 7 missing elves by participating in the “Choose your own adventure” style game. The only test was the “Elfie” taken by Santa, and there were 3 weeks to find the elves and win prizes along the way.
You can also create a social wall. This is a great way to bring your UGC together in one place, as it allows you to live-aggregate all posts containing your holiday campaign hashtag across all social networks. To do this, you will need to use social aggregation tools like Onstipe or Walls.io .
5. Contests
If you want to promote your brand or business on social media, organizing a holiday photo contest is an excellent way to do it. It can also be part of your strategy to encourage UGC.
This action will allow you to generate greater engagement and visibility , in addition to helping you attract new users. Instead of doing a drawing with a random winner, you reward the person who posts the best photo following the guidelines you have set. Of course, make sure everything is aligned with your brand personality and meets your objectives. Are you looking to expand your community or simply make your brand known?
Following the same example that we have seen before from Starbucks, the company could have decided to reward those posts with the most likes.
6. Giveaways
Who doesn’t like awards? If your budget allows it and the idea is in line with your brand or business, take advantage of the holidays to launch a giveaway.
You don’t have to do the typical giveaway in which it is necessary to tag a user in the comments to participate, but you can go much further. For example, you can prepare a wish list of your products and have users comment on which ones they prefer, like this case of Brintons At Home. Not only will you generate more engagement, but you will also obtain insights about the popularity of your articles among the public
You can also encourage sharing Christmas anecdotes in the comments section like this case from HotelTonight :
In any case, you should be careful when planning your giveaway . I recommend you take into account the following points:
- Offer a prize that is attractive to your audience. For example, a discount, or a gift.
- Make the dates and rules of the contest clear.
- Use a reliable tool to manage the contest to avoid fraud. Some of them are Easypromos , Piqora or Iconosquare .
- They generally require quick responses, so it is ideal to have someone in charge of the promotion.
7. Generate seasonal content
Surely you have noticed that many companies change the packaging of their products during the Christmas holidays to make them more festive and attractive. Why not do the same with your content? Of course, just as we have mentioned that personalizing your profile with Christmas motifs is not for all companies, the same applies in this case.
You can create anything from posts with tips for creating Christmas recipes to gift guides or Christmas decoration ideas. For example, a company in the fashion industry can share images and videos with tutorials and ideas to achieve the best looks at Christmas. Accompany these informative posts with Christmas images or videos that reflect your brand personality.
If you’re posting on Instagram, be sure to use shoppable posts in case your products appear in the posts. This way, users will be able to buy them more easily.
If your goal is to pursue an inbound strategy , a very good idea would be to create a lead magnet with a Christmas theme. Some examples:
- If you have a kitchen utensils business, one option would be to publish an ebook with the best recipes for Christmas meals.
- If you have a sports clothing store, you can make an infographic with an exercise challenge to stay in line between Christmas binges.
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8. Campaigns with influencers or local businesses
With the rise of companies and new products on the market, it is increasingly difficult to get attention on social networks. This is why influencer marketing is taking on great importance, since consumers perceive them as experts in their niches and greatly appreciate their recommendations.
If done correctly and creatively, doing this type of action can generate great benefits for your brand:
- Greater awareness
- Ability to reach niche audiences effectively
- Brand humanization
- Boost sales
- Diversify your content strategy
There are multiple actions that you can use with this type of campaign, but the most popular and those that generate the most effective results are giveaways , special discounts , and sponsored content .
9. Paid campaigns
Organic reach is increasingly limited, so if you have the budget, I recommend investing in paid social campaigns to promote those campaigns that will help you the most to achieve your goal.
For example, if you have put efforts into creating a contest or giveaway to make your brand more visible, create an ad or promote the post to give it more visibility and reach quickly .
I recommend waiting until the Christmas date or the end date of the action is close. Here it will be very important that you pay attention when creating the segmentation of your campaign to ensure that you can meet your objective in the most effective way possible.
For example, if you have a physical store and want to increase its attendance, geolocate your campaigns to impact only those people who can travel there. On the other hand, if you have an e-commerce, you can segment by country or city more broadly, narrowing it down by interests or by URL or lists to reach the appropriate target.
Now it’s your turn!
Building relationships with clients can be much easier during specific seasons like Christmas. If you plan and execute your strategy successfully, you will not only achieve greater visibility for your brand, but you will also increase your positive impression and brand loyalty.
Try all those ideas that are well aligned with your strategy and brand values. Try to evoke positive emotions, organize your content correctly and plan your campaigns correctly to reach your objectives. And most importantly: do it with ingenuity and creativity to stand out significantly in the face of high competitiveness.
