It’s that time of the year again! 

The time when businesses get set to wind up their financial books and gear up to make as much revenue in the year as possible. 

Juggling between taking time off for the year-end celebration with family and wrapping up the business, they often fail to pay heed to the changing trends, newer social media touchpoints and customer expectations. Resultingly, they aren’t able to execute successful holiday marketing campaigns to achieve the desired outcomes.

Therefore, like Yoda, the great Jedi master from Star Wars, says- ”You will find only what you bring in!” 

Source: Giphy

This is the time to rocket launch your seasonal holiday social media campaigns, keeping in mind the novel market transformations. Owing to the chaotic situation nearing the holiday season, businesses often miss out on paying due diligence to promotional strategies and make mistakes. Hence the failure to reach the right audiences at the right time!

Let’s dive in to make you aware of the mistakes that you need to avoid while running the holiday social media campaigns!

10 mistakes to avoid while executing the holiday social media campaigns

Missing out on the smaller adjacent events

We all know the major events such as Christmas, Hanukkah, Black Friday, and Halloween. There are other events like Cyber Monday, Free Shipping Day, Small Business Saturday, etc. Promoting your business through these holiday social media posts gives you an edge over the competition and attracts the audience because the buyers are already on the lookout for heavy offers and discounts during the holiday season.

Source: Agorapulse

Late beginning of the holiday campaign shooting

Keeping in mind the current year and the key happenings, especially the pandemic, a great shift in buyer behaviour and expectations has been noticed. To catch hold of the customer's attention and the tectonic trend change, it is suggested to start early to devise the holiday marketing strategies and implement the marketing campaigns. 

No point waiting till November to push your campaigns, October end should see your marketing efforts already in action. The underlying idea is to be visible to the potential customers at the right time for their needs, and that would happen if you end up being amongst the first few businesses that they notice. 

Ignoring sending out appreciation notes to the current customers

Heartfelt personalized gestures, like sending out “Thank You” messages to your existing customers is an act that is not easily forgotten. It helps build that ever-valuable relationship when you say “Thank You for your Business”, and means a lot to them.

Source: Pinterest

Social media blasts do not mean going all crazy over promotional message send-outs

While it is important to make use of social media promotional messages, don’t go all feeding frenzy on your audience’s inbox. Avoid sending more than 5 promotional messages a week.

The best practice for successful holiday marketing campaigns is to use a good combination of social media messages, emails, SMS, and calls in a balanced manner. You can start with a social media inbox message, shoot an email, send out a reminder SMS a few days later, and then maybe call them a week later.

Source: Socionator

Barely giving sufficient attention to competition research

An otherwise carefully done activity, competition research can easily slide off the minds of businesses during the holiday season. However, competition research is crucial during this season as the consumers are actually researching online for heavy deals and offers, along with bundled offerings, that brands tend to offer during these times.

You would not want to miss out on keeping an eye on what your competition is up to!

Source: Agorapulse

Discounts’ overload

Who does not love discounts? They are awesome, right? 

Nevertheless, excessive discounting on your products/services backfires, as people tend to think of your brand to be dirt cheap, and that is not good news. Instead, put on your creative hat and create attractive bundled offers to captivate the customers.

Think of adding a gift card to your campaign, as a part of your holiday marketing strategies. Voila!

Ignoring ad retargeting

Pushing targeted campaigns to the warm prospects lead to a higher rate of conversion, vis a vis, pushing them to the cold prospects.

During the holiday season specifically, ignoring retargeting and focusing on new traffic is a big mistake that many businesses tend to commit. The prospects already in your league should be shown retargeted ads for your business offers.

Keeping traffic as the focus area, not sales

It is naturally delightful watching your traffic grow during the holiday season but be mindful of the fact that the ultimate goal is to make sales.

Ensure placing your season offer pop-up right in the front of the website because its a matter of 6 seconds to gain or lose a potential customer’s attention.

Letting the engagement monitoring activity slide off

As much as we talk about the holiday season being downright messy and chaotic, the engagement of the audience on your social media campaigns and activities is something that is of utmost importance.

You had your social media messaging right, you had your offers well-placed, and you didn’t let your promotional efforts see the downside. Still, if you aren’t available when a prospect leaves a message or a query for an offer or sale, or related to orders and returns, then it might mean that you lose out a large chunk of business during the season.

This is because a huge number of customers are ready to buy during the season, and paying due heed to the engagement on your online messaging is crucial. This is key to successful holiday marketing campaigns. 

Source: Amybucherphd

Disregarding the buyer persona

You must be having a crystal clear holiday social media campaign strategy in mind, for the Christmas festival. You know what works best and what doesn’t, during this time of the year.

But hey, you missed out on understanding whether your target audience celebrates Christmas or not! If they do, then your targeted messaging is relevant, but if they don’t, then your campaign efforts went for a toss, which ultimately resulted in a big loss to your business.   

Thus, understanding the buyer persona is a quintessential phase in strategising your holiday social media marketing campaign.

Source: Amywright

The holiday season witnesses a lot of traction in terms of the buyers out there. This is the time when a business can maximise its revenue if it focuses on the right holiday marketing strategies for the target audience to reach out to. This ensures that even after the season is over, those customers, satisfied,  continue to buy from your business.

Conclusion

So, make sure you follow the above pointers to understand how to avoid the possible pitfalls and mistakes while running holiday social media campaigns. 

And as Yoda says- “May the force be with you.”, during the upcoming holiday season!