The excitement of holiday shopping transcends just busy retail centers. It’s unfolding in the digital space, with social media serving as the hub.
Insights from a Q4 2024 Sprout Social Pulse Survey reveal that an impressive 89% of shoppers believe that social media content from brands plays a crucial role in their holiday buying choices. Notably, this year, 42% of surveyed consumers intend to rely more on social media than the previous year for gift finding, underscoring the importance of holiday marketing in your sales strategy.
This clearly indicates that your holiday social media marketing can significantly influence your seasonal sales. To create a noteworthy impact this holiday season, a strategic and timely marketing plan is essential for differentiation.
This article will investigate ways for your brand to embrace holiday marketing and maximize the extended festive season—from the onset of Black Friday to the arrival of the new year.
8 Holiday Marketing Tactics for 2024
From the warmth of autumn to the charm of a snowy landscape, seasonal marketing efforts tap into the strong emotional ties associated with end-of-year traditions.
Feeling nostalgic about the joyful celebrations of years gone by, people began to embrace the holiday spirit early in 2023—a trend that is expected to continue. Traditionally, consumers indulge in gift-giving for family and friends (and themselves) during this special time. However, buyers are now more selective about their spending.
Approximately 40% of consumers expect to spend less this year, while another 47% plan to maintain their expenditure from 2023, creating limited opportunities for sales growth in 2024. With only a projected 2% increase in year-over-year sales, marketers must think creatively and be adaptable in their holiday content and proactive marketing initiatives.
Brands that succeed this holiday season will leverage robust social strategies and personalized AI-driven customer service experiences to stand out.
To maximize their holiday marketing, brands should pay attention to essential consumer trends.
Start Planning Your Holiday Marketing Early
When should you kick off your holiday marketing planning if you haven’t yet? Right after you finish this guide.
Your holiday marketing strategy should embrace an omnichannel approach, considering all customer interaction points. Whether it’s on social media, a digital platform, or traditional advertising, all content should relate back to a cohesive holiday theme.
Take IKEA as an example; the brand effectively launched early holiday marketing with print and social ads that humorously showcased their early sales alongside images of holiday trees that weren’t quite ready for ornaments.
Begin your planning by assessing your 2023 campaigns, identifying what strategies worked and what fell short. Learn from those insights and then consult expert resources on 2024 holiday trends (just like this one!) while also analyzing the competitive environment.
As you craft your 2024 campaign, be sure to schedule content strategically and outline key dates (such as holidays and Black Friday). Having posts prepared and pre-scheduled will ensure smooth operations during peak shopping times.
Develop Holiday-Themed Visuals and Content
The reason holiday decorations surface earlier every year is that people enjoy getting into the festive spirit. From tacky Christmas sweaters to themed cuisine, many adjust aspects of their lives to align with the “seasonal vibe.” The same goes for your brand’s social media content.
Create static posts and videos exhibiting holiday themes, color schemes, and motifs. It’s wise to ensure that each piece aligns with your overall holiday aesthetic, allowing your audience to enjoy a consistent experience with your content. Ensure these posts adhere to your brand guidelines while also standing out from your regular content this year.
For instance, Target utilizes its dog mascot, Bullseye, in lively, holiday-themed video posts.
Tailor Your Messaging
Custom messaging serves as the gold standard in marketing, especially during a season filled with nostalgia, connections, and aspirations for the New Year. Every time you directly engage with a customer, you have the opportunity to personalize that experience.
Segment your audience into specific groups and develop tailored messaging strategies for each. This encompasses email campaigns and communication through apps like Facebook Messenger.
A study from Facebook indicates that 63% of individuals prefer messaging over phone calls or emails when engaging with businesses regardless of age group. Your customers wish to connect with you directly and quickly, in a personalized manner. With tight budgets anticipated this season, a tailored messaging approach can differentiate your brand from the competition.
Leverage User-Generated Content
One of the most effective methods to present your brand’s holiday offerings is through genuine user-generated content. Whether it’s a video captured at your physical location or a clip showcasing your products during family celebrations, this content often exudes warmth and authenticity that advertisements cannot replicate.
Motivate your audience to share their experiences by asking questions related to their holiday planning and celebrations, and how your products fit into those moments. For instance, if you offer pasta sauce, you might ask your audience if they plan to incorporate your sauce into their holiday meals and encourage them to tag you in relevant photos or videos.
You can also discover user-generated content via social listening and ask for permission to share positive mentions about your brand.
Partner with Influencers
The holiday season represents an ideal occasion to kick off new campaigns with familiar influencers or collaborate with new ones. According to the 2024 Sprout Influencer Marketing Report, nearly half of consumers make monthly purchases due to posts from influencers—a trend that will likely persist during the holidays.
Many influencers create holiday gift recommendations in which your products could be included. Additionally, you can design campaigns that revolve specifically around your brand, presenting several of your goods through influencer content. For example, Danny Freeman of Danny Loves Pasta joined forces with Rao’s to create delightful ravioli themed after Rao’s pasta sauce for a festive meal.
There are numerous angles to explore for holiday influencer campaigns. Instead of solely focusing on classic “top holiday gifts” ideas, consider creating themes around holiday travel, meals, parties, or self-care during the season’s hustle and bustle.
Organize Festive Contests and Giveaways
With tight budgets influencing holiday shopping this year, offering something free might be just what your brand requires to enhance awareness of your seasonal offerings. Think about hosting a festive contest or giveaway across your social channels, showcasing the products or services you are prioritizing in your holiday advertising. You can invite audience participation through comments, shares, etc.—remember, reducing entry barriers will boost participation.
Contests can also serve as an excellent avenue for collecting user-generated content. You might require participants to share a photograph (or tag your brand in a prior post) featuring one of your products to enter, and subsequently share the winner’s content on your feed.
Share Behind-the-Scenes Content
As your team launches holiday marketing initiatives, remember that your internal festivities interest your audience too. Authenticity is vital to consumers, and one way to demonstrate this is by allowing them to get acquainted with the individuals behind the products.
Share images of your company’s holiday gatherings, office decorations, gift exchanges, or potlucks to infuse a more human element into your marketing. In a recent Instagram video, Gwyneth Paltrow, founder of Goop, showcases how the company’s holiday photo shoot came together.
Prepare for High Demand in Customer Service
Consumers take their holiday shopping seriously, often investing considerable effort to find the perfect gift for their loved ones. This means that holiday time can be the busiest for customer service teams, which come under high expectations.
According to our 2023 Sprout Social Index, 63% of consumers state that the quality of customer service they receive via social media significantly influences their brand loyalty, and 70% anticipate personalized responses to their inquiries. Ensure your marketing strategy reflects this understanding and incorporates a thoughtful approach to customer care.
AI customer service tools or chatbots can be incredibly beneficial. A Q2 2024 Sprout Pulse Survey of 2,000 consumers revealed that approximately 74% of respondents were comfortable with brands employing AI for faster customer service on social media.
Additionally, 33% of those who interacted with a chatbot reported high satisfaction levels, while 51% expressed moderate satisfaction. Consumers recognize chatbot marketing as a growing trend and are receptive to it, especially when it results in quicker, tailored interactions.
Utilizing platforms like Social Customer Care by Sprout Social or an integration like Sprout + Salesforce Service Cloud can ease the demands on your team. Our platform automatically gathers insights to elucidate the impact of customer care on revenue, providing real-time alerts to avoid crises—especially vital during holiday periods.
Sprout’s Social Customer Care also harnesses AI capabilities to better allocate new cases through the case auto-assignment feature. This enables your teams to prioritize personalized care based on sentiment analysis and establish appropriate actions according to case statuses.
Platform-Specific Holiday Marketing Strategies
When selecting social media platforms for your holiday marketing, focus on where your audience is most active. Posting on platforms they frequent ensures higher visibility for your holiday promotions.
According to our 2024 Social Media Content Strategy Report, top platforms for holiday marketing include Instagram, Pinterest, Facebook, and TikTok. Let’s explore the advantages of each and how to customize your content for optimal performance across these platforms.
Prioritize Instagram for Your Holiday Marketing
According to the 2024 Social Media Content Strategy Report, 84% of consumers actively use Instagram. While it ranks lower for Gen X and Baby Boomers compared to Millennials and Gen Z, it remains a top three choice across all demographics. Therefore, Instagram is a leading platform for reaching your audience during holiday marketing initiatives.
Instagram also stands out for holiday influencer marketing, which can significantly benefit your brand. Trust in influencers remains stable, if not growing: half of consumers trust influencers as they did six months prior, with another 30% expressing increased trust. Instagram’s visual-first nature contributes to its ongoing popularity for influencer collaborations.
To harness Instagram like an influencer, share static images and Reels featuring your products to promote holiday deals. Highlight your best offers, promotions, and events in your bio links and shoppable posts. Create holiday gift guides to inspire your followers. Enhance engagement by reposting user-generated content (UGC) and influencer posts featuring your products. You can also search for relatable holiday-focused UGC to engage your community.
Don’t forget to highlight nonprofit partnerships your brand is involved with this season. Share videos and images of your team volunteering, and provide infographics showcasing the organization’s impact.
Utilize Facebook as Your Customer Care Hub
Facebook follows closely behind Instagram with 83% consumer activity. Importantly, 66% of users cite it as their primary channel for customer care on social media. Thus, there’s a strong likelihood that consumers will reach out for holiday customer service on Facebook.
Integrate AI solutions within your technological framework to boost workflow efficiency and streamline customer care on Facebook. This provides a better customer experience while facilitating internal collaboration.
While consumers turn to Facebook primarily for support, they are also drawn to captivating content (think fresh holiday products, deals, and promotions). Initiate holiday shopping discussions on Messenger with clickable ads. Amplify the performance of your organic and paid posts by testing videos and ephemeral content, using analytics to pinpoint top-performing content early in the season, so you can replicate this success into the new year.
Capitalize on Holiday Trends with TikTok
Gen Z views TikTok as their preferred search engine, and nearly 68% of all consumers use TikTok based on our findings. To connect with them, consider how your holiday marketing can align with their search needs. Inform them about how your products resolve specific issues (e.g., expert tips on decorating for Hanukkah). It’s an ideal opportunity to collaborate with TikTok creators already generating this type of content.
Even if your target audience doesn’t consist of Gen Z, TikTok remains a valuable platform for your holiday marketing. Widen your reach by utilizing trending sounds and fully embracing festive aesthetics (you can also re-share this material as Reels on Instagram).
To maximize your TikTok profitability, integrate products from your website into your TikTok Shop. Establishing a TikTok Shop allows you to showcase products through engaging in-feed videos and live streams.
Influence Holiday Purchases via YouTube
YouTube is a versatile platform for reaching audiences of all age groups with holiday campaigns, particularly appealing to Baby Boomers and Gen X, who rank it among their top three platforms, based on our findings. Numerous tactics can be employed on YouTube, ranging from full-length videos on your brand’s channel to ads positioned on popular content.
YouTube gets added value when incorporated into your influencer strategy. The platform allows for more extensive content than others, and the right influencers can create high-quality videos that effectively feature your product, whether through reviews, recipes, or travel experiences.
Holiday Marketing Techniques for Pinterest
Pinterest serves as a treasure trove of ideas throughout the holiday season, providing users with highly scrollable content for personalized boards.
Around the holidays, Pinners will actively seek trendy recipes, outfit inspiration, decor ideas, and beyond. Use your brand’s products to craft visually appealing photos and brief videos that cater to these topics. Include guidelines for recreating the items or wearing them at home (with links to your website). Position your posts as gift ideas to your audience (like suggestions for what to buy your best friend for Christmas).
Enhance your approach with shoppable Product Pins, simplifying the process from finding inspiration to making purchases—all within the platform.
Engage B2B Shoppers on LinkedIn
Though LinkedIn might not be the first platform that springs to mind for holiday sales, it offers substantial opportunities. Many companies send gifts to clients and partners during the holidays, often selecting unique or gourmet items. If your brand sells food products with attractive packaging, LinkedIn is an excellent place to reach corporate buyers.
Gift cards also serve as great presents for various individuals, including colleagues, supervisors, and business associates. Promote your brand’s gift card offerings to assist those uncertain about what to buy for work connections.
Moreover, if your brand provides a B2B service subject to holiday influences, the months leading up to the holidays are prime time for your marketing to shine. Fetch, a service that aids property managers in handling package deliveries, commenced their 2024 holiday marketing campaign by discussing how holiday challenges have evolved for property managers in light of e-commerce trends.
Four Examples to Inspire Your Holiday Marketing
Maximize holiday marketing on social media with content that resonates with your audience while capturing your brand’s essence.
Here are a few holiday marketing campaigns for inspiration.
Evoke Nostalgia and Festive Cheer
Coca-Cola’s 2023 holiday campaign introduced the tagline “The world needs more Santas.” The brand released a short film of the same name on YouTube, showcasing a bustling city filled with hundreds of Santas assisting one another and completing holiday chores. Ultimately, it is revealed that these “Santas” are simply everyday individuals channeling their inner “Santa” to spread joy.
Your brand can draw inspiration from Coca-Cola’s campaign by exploring ways to invoke nostalgia and promote community. Coca-Cola’s iconic image of a classic Santa enjoying a Coke is reinforced through last year’s campaign. Reflect on what nostalgic holiday images resonate with your audience and weave the ideas of community and family into your marketing efforts.
Enhance Your Customer Care
Cutswater took customer service to another level in 2023 with their “Cutwater Holiday Concierge” hotline that customers could reach via phone or Instagram. The hotline provided tips for creating perfect holiday drinks and accompanied a $10,000 home bar sweepstakes.
Consider how you can enhance customer service for your holiday campaigns while thinking creatively. Cutwater’s hotline offered customers fresh ideas for utilizing their products while assuring them, “we’re here for you.”
Explore Trendy Ideas Playfully
Walmart garnered attention last year with their holiday advertisement featuring stars from the beloved film “Mean Girls,” yet their Instagram content throughout the season was equally impressive. In one instance, the brand highlighted the popular ASMR trend with a Hanukkah table setup featuring Walmart products.
This holiday season, brainstorm ways your campaigns can creatively incorporate both new and traditional trends playfully. Walmart’s ASMR video remains true to their brand while showcasing budget-friendly products.
Highlight User-Generated Content
User-generated content doesn’t have to be recent to be relevant for your holiday marketing initiatives. Ensure you have permission from users to share, and find imaginative ways to intertwine user content from earlier in the year into your holiday posts. For example, resharing content from X (previously known as Twitter) or Threads in a “meme” style is popular on various channels and can effectively promote user-generated content related to your brand.
Wishing You a Joyous, Bright and Successful Holiday Marketing Season
More consumers are turning towards e-commerce and social shopping, and the holiday season keeps expanding longer each year. This increases pressure on social teams to produce engaging campaigns and manage a surge of customer care inquiries.
As you prepare for the upcoming season, enhance your holiday marketing strategy by aligning your content to match audience preferences across various social networks. Download our 2024 Social Media Content Strategy Report to inform your platform strategies this holiday season.
The post 8 winning holiday marketing strategies for 2024 appeared first on Sprout Social.
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