Holidays bring happiness.
And part of the joy of holidays is spoiling yourself and giving to others.
Now, how does this benefit your business?
It’s an opportunity to sell more products.
Since many of your ideal audience already scroll Instagram every day, you can deliver your holiday offers to them right there.
And in this guide, I’ll share more than 13 Instagram holiday marketing ideas to use during the holidays.
Instagram holiday marketing ideas
1. Instagram giveaway
Everyone likes a gift, especially if it’s a product they cherish. This is even sweeter if they’ve competed for and won the gift.
Giveaways kick your audience to action to perform tasks for a chance to win the prize.
With Instagram giveaways, you can achieve goals like product awareness, brand awareness, lead generation, and an increase in sales.
To run a giveaway, set your goal.
Then, decide the entry requirements that will help you achieve this goal. For example, ask for emails if you want to generate leads.
Once you do this, use the right Instagram giveaway tool, to manage your giveaways. Then, announce your winner at the end of the giveaway.
Kospet, a smartwatch brand, organizes a Thanksgiving giveaway to give out 3 smartwatches during the celebrations.
To learn more, check out my guide on running an Instagram giveaway.
2. Influencer collaboration
Influencers have large audiences that trust them.
By collaborating with influencers, you’ll take advantage of this trust to promote products, build brand awareness, and achieve other goals.
This also means you can reach bigger audiences with your holiday offers.
For effective influencer collaboration, find influencers in your industry. For example, if you sell fashion products, find fashion influencers on Instagram.
Once you create a shortlist of influencers, reach out to them about your campaign. Then, launch the campaign and analyze the results at the end.
For example, Megan Fairley collaborated with Alyshia Jones, a model, to promote a giveaway. The brand will gain many followers as participants have to follow its account.
So, collaborate with influencers to reach your ideal audience during the holidays.
3. Instagram UGC
Who is your audience more likely to trust? You or your customers?
Since customers usually have nothing to gain from promoting your products, people tend to trust what they say.
And this social proof is why Instagram user-generated content (UGC) is vital for your holiday marketing.
You collect content from customers and share it to convince prospects.
To collect UGC to share on your Instagram account, encourage your customers to create it.
One way to achieve this is to provide a branded holiday hashtag customers can use for a chance to feature on your page.
With the hashtag, it’s easy to find the posts. Then, share the best ones.
4. Gift Guides
Many people wonder what to buy for a friend, how to make their wife happy, or the best addition to their homes.
Educate these people, and you have a good chance of selling to them.
Gift guides provide information about the types of gifts suitable for various people and occasions, including:
- Gifts for men
- Gifts for women
- Gifts for Children
- Gifts for parents
- Gifts for Christmas
- Gifts for Thanksgiving
Apart from educating your audience, gift guides increase product awareness.
One way to create effective gift guides is by exploring gift categories your products fit into. For example, if you sell makeup products, you can create gift guides for wives, mothers, and girlfriends.
In these gift guides, mention relevant products for each buyer category.
For example, Sundays Health and Wellness Club created a gift guide for different types of ladies.
The guide features the gifts you can buy for each type of lady. But in each guide, the brand adds its daily wellness journal to the list.
This is a great way to promote your product as a gift item.
5. Discounts
Some people really want to buy your products. But they can’t squeeze enough money out to purchase it.
Giving them holiday discounts encourages them to pull the trigger on the purchase.
Discounts encourage people to buy more. Or helps you clear inventory to stock new products.
Businesses run discounts for various types of products.
- Holiday products
- Popular products
- Slow-selling products
So, running discounts is a popular and effective way of selling more products during the holidays.
For Thanksgiving, Braids Experts by Mimi offered discounts on Boho and Knotless braids.
And in the comments, someone promised to bring their granddaughter, while others made inquiries about the braids.
6. Flash sales
While flash sales are a form of discount, they offer big discounts for a short period.
Think of 1 or 2 days.
Flash sales drive the fear of missing out (FOMO) in shoppers. And since you’re offering a steep discount, buying the product becomes a no-brainer.
To do flash sales, launch them close to a particular holiday. For example, Thanksgiving day or 2 days before Christmas will attract many people doing last-minute shopping.
Glory Haus did 12 days of Christmas Flash Sales.
For each day, the brand posted a product and its discounted price for the next 24 hours.
7. Instagram takeover
An Instagram takeover involves someone taking over your Instagram account to publish content for a period.
Using this idea can increase engagement, build brand awareness, help you reach a new audience, and generate leads.
To do an Instagram takeover, you need to find the right takeover host to achieve your goal. This can be an influencer, a customer, or an employee.
Then, discuss the direction of the content with your proposed host. This can be them sharing their holiday plans or how they’re using your products for more memorable holidays.
For more information, check out my post on Instagram takeover examples and tips.
8. Feature employees
Employees work hard behind the scenes to deliver valuable products to customers.
Bring the employees to your Instagram account to share their work processes and culture. It can even be to share how they’re preparing to satisfy customers during the holidays.
Seeing the people behind your products helps you build a stronger connection with your audience. And this can ultimately lead to more sales.
So, feature employees from specific departments and let them explain how they’re preparing for the holiday.
Optimum Skills featured employees reading what other employees are grateful for over the year.
This can boost employee engagement and build trust with your audience.
9. Promote holiday products
If you sell Christmas trees, you want to get them in front of shoppers weeks before Christmas.
And this applies to other holiday products.
Promoting those products helps you create awareness and sell more.
To achieve this, display holiday products’ use cases and explain the benefits to buyers.
In preparation for Christmas, The Cake Wizard promotes its Christmas cakes and lists the prices.
This creates awareness for families that want to celebrate Christmas with a cake.
10. Run Instagram ads
If you want to reach a bigger audience and fast, you have to pay for it.
Instagram ads are a great option to promote holiday offers to your ideal audience.
So, if you want your holiday product discount offer to reach a targeted audience, try Instagram ads.
To run an Instagram ad, visit the Meta Ads Manager.
Here, you can choose an objective, upload ad creative, specify audience, and select placement.
Once you’re done with the setup, launch your ad. Also, track your results and adjust your ad strategy accordingly.
While running Instagram ads may be expensive, it’s a fast way to reach your ideal audience.
11. Collaborate with a complementary brand
If you sell bread and another brand sells jam, there’s your opportunity to collaborate.
Whatever product you sell, you’ll find brands that sell complementary products.
When you collaborate with these brands, you’ll reach a bigger audience. Then both brands can sell more as shoppers who need one of the products may need the other.
So, reach out to complementary brands about an Instagram marketing campaign for the holidays. This can be in the form of a discount or giveaway.
Then, launch the campaign with an Instagram collaborative post.
Two clothing brands, Sunkissed coconut and KMM Clothing, collaborated for a giveaway.
The winners won a gift card to shop on both brands’ websites.
12. Create tutorials
Whether it’s assembling a chair or setting up a Christmas tree, buyers sometimes need help to get the best results from your products.
Without this help, you can have many dissatisfied customers dropping 1-star reviews.
This is where creating tutorials comes in.
With tutorials, you can show buyers how to explore your product’s use cases. In this case, explore relevant use cases for holidays.
Tutorials improve customer satisfaction and encourage prospects to buy.
To create tutorials, think of your product’s use cases for the holidays. Then, create content to help customers explore the use cases.
13. Holiday behind-the-scenes
How is your business preparing for the holidays?
This Instagram holiday marketing idea involves taking your audience behind the scenes to show:
- How employees are preparing for the holidays
- How you’re stocking for the holidays
- Holiday-themed decorations around the office
Behind-the-scenes content shows your brand’s human side and helps you connect with followers.
To create this content, think of behind-the-scenes events that will interest your audience most. Then, create this content to fit the holidays.
Webb Landscape shared a behind-the-scenes video of employees unloading trucks of Christmas trees.
This is a way to create awareness for the holiday product.
14. Publish an Instagram poll
People have strong opinions about many things, whether it’s the US presidency or pizza toppings.
And an Instagram poll is an opportunity for them to pick a side.
An Instagram poll lets you engage your audience and collect product feedback.
Some common Instagram poll ideas include:
- Picking one of product variations
- Picking a favorite holiday product
- Picking a prize for your next giveaway
Use these ideas to create a poll on your Instagram feed posts and Stories.
Instagram polls help to engage and build an emotional connection with your audience.
Conclusion
The holidays bring happiness. And with happiness, many willing spenders who want to celebrate.
Exploit these Instagram holiday marketing ideas to get your share of consumer spending during the holidays.
Disclosure: When you buy something through one of the links on our site, we may earn an affiliate commission. We only recommend products we use and/or believe will deliver value to you.
Samuel writes long-form guides to help businesses and entrepreneurs achieve better results from their marketing activities. He also writes for marketing and SaaS companies that want more leads and customers. Get in touch with him to discuss your content needs.