Holiday IG Marketing Guide: Tips for Planning Your Content and Selling to Millennials
Too soon to think of holidays? –not really.
There has been a lot of speculations around the best time for holiday marketing. While the end of Halloween seems to be the unofficial start date to most marketers, studies have shown that 40 percent of consumers begin their holiday shopping actually before Halloween.
This means businesses should already be planning and scheduling their holiday content — if you haven’t yet, start now.
Unlike last minute shoppers, you definitely don’t want to be that last minute brand with poor quality marketing content.
The aforementioned data concludes that brands should be thinking about holiday related marketing during the summer, and should probably have some content and campaigns ready to distribute during the early fall season. Though it’s not really about the exact timing, it’s about quality. Planning now just means nothing is rushed and your brand visuals stay consistent with complete high quality content. Also preparing in advance will condition your followers to stay tuned in on your campaigns and events.
First of all, your brand must have a business account on Instagram. Due to the significant photos and videos produced by friends and influencers, users are 10 times more likely to engage with brands on IG rather than on other platforms like FB or Twitter.
The outline for an effective Instagram holiday marketing plan consists of 10 tips.
1. Profile Page Optimization
Creating and optimizing your Instagram profile is essential for driving followers and potential customers. Your brand should first establish a business account which will include an analytics solution. Then focus on the looks and feel of your IG page. Is it clean and consistent? Does it strike curiosity? Make it unique, and make it “you“. You want your page to scream out your brand statement. In addition to your usual everyday content, sneak in some holiday theme posts by creating appealing visuals such as multi-grid images, gallery posts, and color grids. Also start hinting early about the upcoming events, #holiday2018 collection, and post an announcement call for brand ambassador and influencers to help support your campaigns.
2. Single Virtual Catalog
Design and create a virtual catalog of your products — in other words, make an easy viewing collage to present your holiday offers on IG. With the holiday spirit being about gifts giving and celebrations, optimize your page connecting to the theme of gift guides, seasonal additions, or 2018/2019 collection — the possibilities are endless! Then number the items so you could place the links to each product. If all of the products are on your website you can list the products to your caption and add the link to your bio. Also you can feature complementary items, top sellers, influencers‘ pick, etc. You don’t need to be a rockstar graphic designer. There are many great tools you can use to create these collages like Canva, Illustrator, Photoshop, and more.
Important notes: Make sure your product photos are in high resolution, use title and tags with relevant keywords, and create your collage sharable on ALL social media outlets especially to your blog site.
3. Add Links and Proper Hashtags
It is no doubt that using relevant hashtags make your posts easier to find and engage with. Posts that use links and hashtags get higher engagement rating and is a great way to grow your audience.
Instagram posts that use at least one hashtag get 12.6 more engagement.
(source: simplymeasured)
Unfortunately Instagram does not make links (URLs) in captions and comments actionable, but you can add the link to your bio and have it mentioned in your post. Also if you want to direct your followers to a specific product or page, we recommend to create your own optimized landing page for SEO benefits. However, you can also use custom branded micro landing page builders with URL shorteners to track your visitors.
(Some reviews on landing page builders https://zapier.com/blog/best-landing-page-builders/)
4. Creativity is Key
Look for interesting perspectives in your content. Remember, not all of your posts have to be related to sales. Try to avoid hard selling so that you could blend into Instagram’s social culture. There are many ways you can approach this, such as curating content from your influencers or repost photos and videos, then make a kick-ass composition that would interest your followers. Have some fun and throw in various forms of media too. Emojis are remarkable (and relatable to Millennials)!
Overall communicate through your brand’s personality and that will bring your content alive. By producing these posts, you give your brand originality and you transform your page into more of a community of loyal followers. What helps with producing creative content is to plan and schedule the posts ahead of time using an Instagram scheduling platform. Nowadays there are quite a lot of providers out there offering free or paid versions.
5. Offer Deals and Discounts
Promotional offerings are necessary as shoppers like to take advantage of the holidays.
Needless to say, discount pricing strategies are complementary to any marketing initiative especially to holiday marketing. And now with Instagram being the most powerful and influential channel around, brands can offer bonuses, promotions, and communicate exclusive announcements directly to their followers‘ feed.
Remember to post the link in bio section so that followers will know where to go. When creating these photos, apply text overlay with the message and caption the details of the announcement, special offers or promo code, etc.
Lastly, don’t forget to add it to your Holiday highlights.
41% of Instagrammers state that they follow, or would follow, a brand to take advantage of perks and giveaways, give followers that incentive.
(source: https://blog.iconosquare.com/instagram-2015-study-unleash-power-instagram/)
6. Promote Content on IG Stories & IGTV
What’s IGTV?
IGTV, also a standalone app, is a new feature on Instagram for vertical videos. It is also longer than the usual IG stories. This feature allows users to upload and watch videos that are 15 seconds to 1 hour long.
With this new section, brands can create mini ads, commercials, and stories more efficiently. It’s perfect timing that Instagram had launched it earlier this year. Now you can be among the first users on IG to be uploading your holiday series straight to your IGTV channel!
Though there are some requirements of how your videos should be before you’re able to publish it. Below the picture caption is a link to a guide that helps you convert your videos accordingly to IGTV’s standard.
7. Partner with an Influencer or Multiple Microinfluencers
On our previous blog post, we discuss the importance of influencer marketing and the powerful impact it has on your customers. It means brand should be going all in with the program especially during these holidays, a time where people are looking for gift ideas and inspirations.
(Read more about how to launch the program here: http://bit.ly/influencercreation)
8. Run Instagram Carousel Ads
What’s an IG Carousel Ad? Basically a carousel post, or gallery post of a set of photos. The concept can be applied for an ad, but it can also be use for organic posts too(for both business or personal IG accounts).
To create carousel ads, your IG business account must be connected to your FB business page. From there, you can start creating your ad or through Facebook’s Power Editor.
Carousel ads are marvelous and quite effective as they tend to tell the complete interrelated story with multiple photos as opposed to a single image. It adds more depth and definitely more appealing to the viewers. This is the most brilliant way to be promoting your holiday content.
9. Keep Followers Up to Date with Insider Announcements
This one is pretty straightforward — You have followers, now it’s time to interact. It is challenging as it requires intensive level of dedication into building connections, but also rewarding as it is more likely you are to get new customers.
How to stay in touch?
Do something that will allow your followers to feel included in the mix. Offer insiders deals, contests, and giveaways (take advantage of events like Black Friday or Cyber Monday); Or use a call to action with some of your posts to get your followers engage.
Be clever, but most important, have fun!
10. Engage. Engage. Engage.
The social media culture in general has become more evolve over the last few years. The simple likes and short comments just doesn’t cut it anymore. Particularly with Instagram, when it comes to establishing solid engagement, showing real sentimental value is the only way to make a good positive impression.
When you show some love to a community (either online or offline), you’ll start to notice the staggering growth and outcome from that love in return. It works the same way with the Instagram community— perhaps a little less complex with all the neat IG management tools you could use. For example, use the bookmark feature to save your top followers’ profile and posts, check your insights analytics feature to see where most of your followers are, and make the most of your DM channel by sending your followers personal direct messages.
Also, another way to acquire and engage with more users and followers is to save relevant hashtags to your page, then check out some of the top posts and spend a little more time and thought into writing genuine comments. Repeat this process 2–3 times a day, or dedicate someone to commit to it full time.
Social Media marketing requires you to BE SOCIAL.
Check out @influencercreation for more tips!
