How to Get Your Social Media Profiles Ready for Holiday Shopping Season
The holidays are *almost* here, so gather around the fire, grab your hot cocoa, and let me tell you a jolly story about every digital marketer's favorite holiday tradition — shopping season!
You heard that right… SHOPPING! The Super Bowl of e-commerce occurs from November 1st to December 25th, the timeframe that consumers are most eager to buy and competition amongst digital retailers is higher than ever. In fact, this time is so important that most marketers begin preparing for the holiday season in July (or even earlier!)
The biggest play of our holiday shopping offense is Black Friday on November, 25th and Cyber Weekend from November 26th to November 28th. In 2020, the online sales on Cyber Monday reached $10.8 billion, making it the biggest ecommerce selling day of all time!
So, how do you prepare for the big leagues? Well, of course you will need to determine a discounting strategy, develop a timeline for marketing promotion, place paid ads, etc. But, I’m here to talk about the sleep agent of holiday selling, preparing your organic social media profiles.
As more consumers are searching for your products online, they’ll probably land on your social media profile. In an age of scrolling from page to page, you’re battling against ten other open tabs and several social media profiles that your users will switch to in seconds. You only have a few seconds to get your customers hooked! So, here’s my checklist:
Double-check that all information is up to date in the bio or about section of your page. Is your contact information correct if consumers have questions? Is there an easy to spot link to your website so they can make a purchase easily? Maybe you even want to add your current holiday promotion to your instagram bio like “50% Off Holiday Bundles thrus 12/24!”
Make sure your social media profiles are curated with pictures of the products you want to sell, and testimonials from happy shoppers. When 78% of consumers say a company’s social media posts impact their purchase intent, this is not the time to scale back on posting.
Develop your customer support strategy early! As sales volumes increase, so does the number of customer service requests. Be proactive in planning how you will respond to requests via direct message, negative reviews, and more. I like to come up with a list of FAQs for any holiday promotions and pre-write a standard response with the input of the sales team!
Reward your followers with a first-look. So often the holiday shopping season is focused on acquiring new sales, but don’t forget that your loyal customers are shopping too. Try rewarding them by offering a coupon code is early November that is shared only on social media, You may just get yourself a few new followers in the process!
Instagram Stories and Highlights will be your friends. In order to constantly remind customers of sales and promotions, you’ll want to lean heavily on ephemeral short-form content like Instagram Stories. Try creating a handful of branded graphics outlining the promotion that you can rotate through and post daily with links to your website. You can even save these graphics in a new Instagram Highlight called “Holiday Promotions” that lives permanently on your page and consumers will see immediately upon visiting your page.
Use hashtags to gain momentum. This is an easy one to forget, but switch up your hashtags to include holiday keywords. Some of my favorites include #giftideas, #giftguide, #cybermonday, #blackfriday, #holidayshopping #stockingstuffers, and so many more!
What about you? Do you shop online during the holiday season? What type of deals do you want to see for Cyber Monday? I’d love to hear your thoughts, so comment below!