3 Ways to Step Up Your Social Media Marketing Strategy for the Holidays

As we near the holiday season, it’s time to adjust your social media marketing strategy accordingly. The holidays offer eCommerce stores an incredible opportunity to boost their sales and reach new audiences faster than any other time of year.

By using the right strategies, you can use the holiday season to your store’s advantage, resulting in a significant boost to sales for your Shopify store and increased exposure online.

Use Facebook Remarketing Strategies

Exactly how many new customers can your expect during the holiday season? According to RJMetrics, roughly 23 percent of your annual new customer count will come in around the holiday season, and while you attract a larger number of new customers around this time of year, they have a 13 percent lower lifetime value on average than non-holiday shoppers.

If you focus solely on attracting new customers without making an effort to earn their loyalty, you’ll severely limit your potential earnings. Fortunately, Facebook remarketing is a plausible solution to ‘one-and-done’ holiday shoppers.

Facebook remarketing displays targeted ads on the timelines of shoppers who’ve visited your store. These ads will typically address shoppers who have:

• Made a purchase from your store.
• Signed up for your newsletter or email list.
• Visited your store (whether or not they’ve made a purchase).
• Viewed a specific product in your store.

These algorithms allow your ads to target shoppers who have already shown interest in your store. The ads will remind your shopper of your store and your products, giving you another opportunity to earn their business.

Use Pinterest to Promote Your Store and Products

Based on a recent survey of Pinterest users, 93 percent of respondents said they use the popular social media platform to plan their purchases. These numbers indicate huge potential for your social media strategy, particularly if you already have a significant Pinterest presence.

If you don’t have a strong Pinterest presence, you can make it happen with the platform’s Promoted Pins function. Much like other social media advertising opportunities, you’ll need to pay a reasonable fee to have your pins promoted, allowing them to show up on the dashboards of users who may have an interest in your product. You can pay for your pin to show up in certain search results pages, and you can narrow its audience by gender, location, and numerous other filters.

Promoted Pins are an excellent paid advertising choice for businesses on a budget because of its pricing model – you only pay when someone clicks on your pin, you don’t pay for it just to show up.

Before you pay to promote your store on Pinterest, you’ll want to design the perfect pin to maximize its potential:

• Use beautiful, accurate images which will capture your audience’s attention.
• Make the most of your pin’s description – particularly the first few words.
• Your pin should directly relate to the search term its attached to – use your image choice and description accordingly.

For the holiday season, you may want to consider Promoted Pins related to holiday searches. Holiday searches spike drastically this time of year, and including your Promoted Pin in holiday keywords can significantly increase your reach.

Step Up Your Customer Service Game With Twitter

Today’s online shopper wants responsive customer service, and they expect to find it everywhere they look – including social media. Your customers are probably talking about your store and your products on Twitter, and by paying attention to their comments, questions, and concerns, you can earn your company major points for effective customer service.

Some ways to step up your social media customer service on Twitter for the holidays:

• Search for words and phrases which directly relate to your store, brand, or product. Your customers may not mention you directly when they talk about your products, and using the right search terms can help you uncover tweets related to your brand. You can also find requests and respond to them directly – if your store sells dress shoes, you could respond to tweets which say “Where can I find dress shoes for Christmas?”
• Respond to all mentions of your brand name in a helpful, friendly way. You’ll see positive and negative mentions – responding to both can help you establish a strong relationship with your customer base, as well as show new customers how much you care about their satisfaction.

What are your social media marketing tips for the holidays? Let us know in the comments below!