Facebook & Paid Social 2019 Holiday Guide
The holiday season is one of the most important times of the year for businesses to capitalize on increased shopper activity.
With gifting top of mind for consumers, you have a timely opportunity to drive your brand discovery, customer acquisition, and loyalty across social media campaigns.
Here’s a look at some of the holiday insights and tactics Tinuiti’s Paid Social strategists have put together in the 2019 Facebook & Paid Social Holiday Guide.
“The year’s biggest shopping days—from Cyber Week to Christmas— are just around the corner. Now is your time to test, gather audience data, and build out creative to prepare for the increased volume and competition of the holiday season.”
-Sarah Sanchez, Senior Manager of Social Strategy, Tinuiti
1. Understand Key Trends That Will Impact Your Holiday Campaigns
Before all else, you need to have an understanding of what you’re up against this holiday season.
What are shoppers doing differently? What’s driving costs and competition across social ad platforms? And how can you plan accordingly?
Here are a few considerations that social media marketers will need to plan for:
- Increased engagement leading up to and during holiday shopping periods
- Shoppers starting earlier and spending more this year
- Taking advantage of lower CPCs and CPMs during specific time windows
- Instagram’s new ad tools and cost-effective impression growth
- Video and mobile-centric content is essential during the holidays
- Most shoppers will end their journey on Amazon, it needs to be part of your social strategy
All of these considerations call for tactical adjustments to your holiday social campaigns, so don’t treat this year the same as last year.
2. Building the Perfect Q4 Marketing Mix
When it comes to investing in a holiday social strategy, you’ll want to consider leveraging campaigns across each platform that reach your target audience.
Although Facebook is still king, it’s important to diversify your media mix across multiple channels and pivot to areas where there is potential to find new customers looking to gift for themselves and others.
For a holistic holiday strategy, you have the opportunity to reach audiences (sometimes at lower costs) on Pinterest, Snapchat, and even Twitter.
“Prior to the holiday season, start strategizing a full-funnel approach that invests in branding tactics to tell your company story and business values. Driving prospecting traffic to your site will help fuel retargeting pools and in turn, improve conversion rates when you’re ready to push Black Friday and Cyber Monday sales.”
-Mary Hubley, Specialist, Paid Social, Tinuiti
In the full guide, we explain which platforms, campaigns, ad types, and audience targeting works throughout the Q4 period and into 2020.
3. Holiday Creative & Messaging
During the holidays, it’s essential to make your ads stand out with beautiful creative, promos, and text overlays — and tailoring all of it to your targeting based on where your audience is in their holiday journey.
“When planning holiday creative, it’s more important than ever to tailor your creative to your audience. When prospecting new customers, leverage video ads that both introduce the brand and showcase the promotion. When retargeting loyal customers, go straight to featuring the sale within text overlays and copy to maximize website traffic and conversions.”
-Kelsey Miller, Strategist, Paid Social, Tinuiti
Here are some of the creative strategies we discuss in the full guide:
- Use imagery that’s relevant to the season; it should be able to evoke the feeling of being that perfect gift—even without text
- Tell a cohesive story with your media-rich Carousel ads, Instant Experiences, or DPAs—so it’s thematic and engaging
- Include holiday imagery for product-focused ads Shoppable, product-focused ads (DPA across placements, collections)
- Show product & price assortment to appeal to gifting through Promoted Pins, Carousels, Collections, and broad DPA.
- Make your stories interactive, store-focused, and feature local creative
Want to learn more strategies to power your holiday social campaigns?
Download the full Facebook & Paid Social 2019 Holiday Guide today for more in-depth coverage of trends, how to build out your media mix, and holiday creative.
The full guide also includes expert advice on:
- Targeting
- Promotions
- Messaging
- Holiday Testing
- Holiday Paid Social Best Practices
- …and much more!
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