If you’re looking to catch the eye of your customers this Christmas, you’ll need to get thinking about how to make your product or service sparkle. Here are our Ten Top Tips for a successful Festive Social Media Marketing Campaign…
- PLAN. Make a plan several weeks prior to the offer/event to give you plenty of time to promote the campaign. Allowing plenty of time for planning means you can be sure the offer/event is designed to target your potential customers as effectively as possible.
- CREATE. Build an enticing offer you know your customers will want, at a price they can afford. Maintaining your branding colours, fonts and styles, create a graphic that can be used across all media channels for consistency so people recognise it.
- DEVELOP. Using your offer, develop a Social Media campaign in line with your brand. Integrate your chosen Social channels to push out the promotion. This might include updating your cover images across channels, adding a festive touch to your profile picture or even pinning a post to the top of your channel so it’s the first post customers landing on your page see! You may also consider adding a landing page or offer to your website so people can be sent through from Social Media to take it up, or adding the offer itself onto Social Media! Once this is all set up you might consider integrating this with offline tools such as mailing out Christmas leaflets/menus/information, getting PR coverage in Christmas features in print, coverage on the radio or even TV!
- VALUE. Add value to the offer; don’t devalue your product/service by discounting the price. Instead, add more value for the customer. For example, offer a complimentary extra to your service/product, mince pies and Christmas crackers are always a nice touch at Christmas.
- BOOST. Get those posts seen! Using Social Media advertising is a great way to reach new potential customers in your area. Using Facebook and Instagram advertising will allow you to reach customers that may not see your posts otherwise, you can target them by demographics, geographical location, interests or even set up custom and lookalike audiences to retarget both people that have previously engaged with your business or similar audiences to those people! You can then to track the increase in traffic from Social Media to the chosen web page/event/offer by continually analysing your Google Analytics.
- SPREAD THE WORD. Using any data that you have collated you can then send out the offer via email or post as well as by targeting them through Social Media advertising, to make sure your loyal customers and potential customers know what is happening and why they should attend or buy. You could also consider creating a Social Media competition to engage users to share the message with their connections too, reaching new and potentially key customers! Using catchy, quirky subject lines or personalised direct mailers make it far more interesting and you’ll see more benefit!
- COMMUNICATE. Replying to queries online and offline in a timely matter is imperative to gain a competitive advantage during your campaign. People act ‘in the moment’ and if they have a question, they want the answer as soon as possible, or they will lose interest! So, manage your distribution channels to ensure all queries are answered. At Pick & Mix Marketing, we strive to respond to all Social Media queries within 12 hours and ensure clients respond to emails and phone calls within 12 hours as well, so all contact channels are covered during busy times.
- COUNTDOWN. As the date of the offer/event nears send out reminders to people that haven’t yet bought from you to remind them the offer is available and send a reminder to those that have bought that it is coming up soon. This can be done through Social Media channels, emails or direct mail again. It adds another personal touch to the campaign and maintains engagement and communication to make customers feel “involved”.
- MAINTAIN STANDARDS. During the offer/event, make sure you uphold the values of your business to give the right impression. Customer service is now key to gain exceptional reviews, feedback and a return visit. As much as possible try to collect feedback of where customers heard about the offer/event to understand which channels worked the best to get them into your business. Ask people to leave recommendations on Facebook or reviews on Google. You can then collate this information afterwards to evaluate which channels were most successful and plan for your next campaign.
- FOLLOW UP. After the event/offer, send all your customers a thank-you with information about your next event/offer, this can be posted onto Social Media as well as emailed out. Providing customers with a reason to return is just as important as getting them there in the first place, building relationships and trust will lead to future business and long-term loyalty!
Festive campaigns, like any other campaigns, are about consistency. We saw great success through a campaign last year with Christmas Party bookings for one of our clients and are confident these ten steps will help to make the process as smooth as possible!
If you need a little help to get your marketing or social media festive ready then please get in touch with the team, we’d love to help! Contact us here!