Holidays are coming, and you want your products to fly off the shelves into customers’ homes.
But first, you have to display these products with effective holiday marketing on social media.
Potential buyers should see how your products will help them achieve happier holidays.
Or find deals they can’t take their eyes off.
So, how can you execute social media holiday marketing to boost sales?
This guide will provide some ideas and how to plan consistent holiday content.
Let’s begin.
Social media holiday marketing ideas
1. Holiday collections
Your holiday collection contains products shoppers need during the holidays.
Also, it increases product awareness and guides buyers to buy the right products.
To create a holiday collection, consider products your customers need for the holidays.
You can even create separate collections for holidays like Christmas, Thanksgiving, New Year, and Black Friday.
This way, customers will find products to buy for personal use or for loved ones.
Here’s a jewelry collection by James Avery:
This new jewelry collection contains jewelry made for the holidays.
So, a holiday collection does the heavy lifting for shoppers thinking of how to spoil themselves or put smiles on loved ones’ faces.
2. Discounts
Since people find the best holiday product deals, discounts are always music to their ears.
After all, it means they can buy more products with their shopping budget.
The case for discount offers during the holidays is simple.
It encourages holiday shoppers to buy your products.
You can offer discounts across all products or specific ones.
If you’re doing it for specific ones, offer discounts for popular products. These are products that will attract even more sales.
Another option is using discounts to move new products.
If you run an ecommerce site, you can look at common products in abandoned carts. Then, offer a discount for these products.
Another discount method is free shipping for purchases during the holidays.
Here’s Jet2 offering $60 off for flights to specific locations during the holidays:
One clear thing is that the locations are popular holiday destinations.
Many people shop during the holidays to find the best prices possible. Offering discounts (or free shipping) helps you reach these people.
3. Giveaways and contests
Everybody wants to win a product they like. And they’re ready to compete with other people for the chance.
This is where giveaways and contests come in.
You can run social media giveaways to increase engagement, increase social followers, generate leads, and boost sales.
To run an effective giveaway, you have to set a goal. Then, pick a prize that will attract participants and help achieve your goal.
After this, set up entry requirements that align with your goals.
For example, ask participants to follow your social media accounts to increase followers. Meanwhile, ask participants to enter their details on a giveaway page if you want to generate leads.
After your giveaway, pick and announce the winner(s).
If you want a helping hand to manage the whole process, use a social media giveaway tool.
The tool will help host your giveaway page, manage entries, pick winners, and collect leads.
See this giveaway from ghd:
The entry requirements show that this giveaway will help ghd increase TikTok followers and engagement.
Running a giveaway or contest can excite your audience and achieve marketing goals.
4. Encourage user-generated content
What better way to promote your products during holidays than to let customers do it for you?
User-generated content (UGC) is an easy way to display social proof to prospects.
If customers show all the benefits they get from your products, prospects are more likely to believe them and buy the products.
UGC is also a great way to reach more people than your brand account can.
To encourage UGC, specify a holiday hashtag for your customers (in a post or your bio). After some time, clicking this hashtag will lead you to the UGC created.
Then, feature some customers’ posts on your account.
Specifying a hashtag lets you collect UGC for holiday marketing on social media and other marketing campaigns.
Peligoni, a luxury beach club, features people who visit the beach for their holidays:
The post also encourages other visitors to tag the club in their Instagram posts.
Encourage UGC to attract even more buyers.
5. Social media ads
Social media ads are a great way to reach more people.
But even more, you’ll reach your ideal profile.
Social media ads let you target people similar to your ideal buyer.
In the ad section, set your goal and the details of your target audience. For instance, you can target people who have visited your website.
Then, upload your ad creative and copy.
With social media ads, you pay to reach more people with your holiday offers.
6. Influencer collaborations
Influencers have built audiences that trust them and their recommendations over the years.
When collaborating with influencers, you leverage their popularity to reach your ideal audience.
But first, you have to find the right influencers.
The best influencers are those who create engaging content in your industry. They’re influencers with audiences similar to your ideal audience.
Influencer marketing tools also help in uncovering these influencers.
Once you find them, create a shortlist of those you want to collaborate with.
Then, reach out to discuss your campaign and payment options. Payments can be in form of money or free products.
From here, launch your influencer campaign to reach a bigger audience.
In this Instagram post, Te’a Cooper promotes FashionNova’s holiday discount offer:
With over 60K likes, it’s clear FashionNova got more awareness for its offer.
Influencers can be the best source of readymade audiences. Through them, you can attract people who likely want your products.
7. Product tutorials
A lot of activities go on during holidays. And if your product can be used during the holidays, show customers how to use it.
With tutorials, you can show product use cases to customers to help them get great value.
But even more, showing use cases through tutorials can attract potential buyers who want these benefits.
So, create tutorials that help buyers have better holidays with your products.
For example, Expat in Croatia provides information about the Croatian national holidays:
This post delivers holiday information that its customers will find useful
8. Behind the scenes
If people like your products, they’re probably curious about what goes on behind the scenes.
Who are your employees? What are your processes?
Feed their curiosity with some behind-the-scenes posts on social media.
These posts will show how your business and employees are preparing for the holidays.
But beyond that, you’ll engage your social media audience.
To do this, show the ways you’re preparing for the holidays. This can be as simple as decorating your office space.
Here’s Panos Panay sharing behind the scene images for a holiday video shoot:
This is an easy way to build stronger connections with your audience.
9. Flash sales
Flash sales provide significant discounts on some of your products for a short time.
The main difference between flash sales and discounts is that flash sales offer bigger discounts and run for shorter times.
Usually, flash sales offer discounts of at least 20% and can last for a few hours to a few days.
Because of this, flash sales trigger the fear of missing out (FOMO) in your audience. Buy in a few hours or pay more for it.
Then, it improves sales, clears out old inventory, or creates awareness for new products.
Before your holiday flash sales, publish about it on your social media channels to create awareness.
Also, offer discounts on products related to the holidays to make the sales relevant.
In terms of timing, ensure your flash sales are as close to the holidays as possible.
See a flash sale by Birddog Lighting:
This flash sale offers 20% off some products for 2 days.
10. Unboxing
During holidays, people give and receive gifts.
And even if you’ve bought a product to spoil yourself, you have to unbox it.
So, unboxing is a common experience for most people.
Sharing unboxing videos on social media can recreate the good feelings of laying hands on a product for the first time.
To create an unboxing video, ensure it mirrors your customer’s experience as much as possible.
For example, your unboxing video can include a delivery person delivering the product to the buyer before the unboxing.
Hello Kitty shares an unboxing video of its holiday collection:
This video created awareness about the brand’s holiday collection.
Create a holiday marketing calendar
To execute social media holiday marketing, you need a holiday marketing calendar.
In this calendar, you can plan various ideas for dates before and during the holidays.
This lets you stay consistent and reach as many shoppers as possible.
Check out content calendar for Instagram, X (Twitter), and LinkedIn to see how to create content calendars for these platforms.
Or use social media management tools.
These tools help plan all your content for the holiday season.
But even more, they let you schedule posts to go live on multiple social media platforms.
Then, you can perform other social tasks with these tools.
Once you decide on the ideas to execute for the holidays, create a holiday marketing calendar to plan content for specific dates.
Conclusion
Ready to launch your social media holiday marketing?
Use these ideas to plan social content weeks before the holidays.
Then get on your customer’s minds before they start their holiday shopping.
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.