The holiday season is quickly approaching; and with it, Boxing Day. Even with the tens of billions of dollars being spent in the lead up to Christmas Day, there’s an additional $2+ billion being spent on the day after alone. However, businesses know this and everyone splashes out on in-store, online and print advertising to make sure that money is spent with them.
Knowing how and where to compete is hard. You obviously don’t want to detract from your Christmas sales, but you want people to come to you (and not your competitors) on Boxing Day. So, we’re going to make it easy for you with our two phase social media marketing plan. Plus, this strategy can be used in the lead up to any big event throughout the year, so you have plenty of time to plan ahead.
Phase One: Before Boxing Day
Interact More With Your Social Audiences
You most likely already engage with your audience on social media, but if not, you should. Not only does it make your brand look good, the more people who interact with you on the platforms, the more people will see your posts.
Facebook and Instagram may seem complicated, but what you need to remember is that they are businesses. They want people to like their platform so they continue to use them. Focus your social media marketing on providing content your target audience will enjoy, and the rest should take care of itself.
Some easy ways to engage your social audiences:
- Like comments and reply to them.
- Run polls on Facebook or Instagram.
- Add swipe to agree/disagree on your Instagram stories.
- Ask people to check-in to your location (give them an incentive, such as 10% off their next visit).
- Finish every post with an open question to encourage people to comment or share.
- Ask people to use your hashtag, and select some of your favourites to feature on your story or page.
Start Using Instagram and Facebook Live
While Facebook and Instagram tend to deny using stories and live stream have any affect on their algorithm, most social medial specialists will disagree. Regular use of the live feature on either platform has been seen to improve visibility on feeds, result in better prices for paid ads and increase click through rates. Plus, users watch live streams up to 8 times more than normal video—so whether it is part of the algorithm or not, it’s a win-win.
Start using the feature a few weeks before Boxing Day to reap the most benefits.
What type of content can you go live with? Here are a few ideas:
- Product demonstration or advice.
- Q&A time with an expert.
- Behind the scenes.
- Daily specials or new product releases.
- Products recommended by your staff.
Don’t Start Advertising Too Early
Here’s the thing; you don’t want your Boxing Day sales to lower the return on investment for your Christmas promotions. To balance out the two, wait until a day or two before Christmas Day to advertise your Boxing Day promotions. Highlight limited stock, so there is no guarantee people will get what they want on sale. You may even want to avoid announcing how big the savings are until the day of your sale.
Create a Facebook Event
People love exclusivity, so creating a Facebook event for your sale can help add a personalised touch to your promotion. However, you only want to do this if you are going all out for your Boxing Day sales. If you’re offering massive savings or have in-store activities, prizes or other fun, put it in the event description so people get excited for what’s to come.
Having an event will also alert people who have selected attending on the day, reminding them they wanted to shop with you.
Start Running Paid Social Media Ads
Spoiler alert—on Boxing Day, you should run paid Facebook and/or Instagram ads. However, you’ll want to run some paid campaigns before the day to give Facebook time to collect data on your ideal audience, and who engages most with your brand. If you have a limited budget, you can run ads for as little as a five dollars a day. When you’re setting up your ad, you’ll see exactly how many people your investment will help you reach to help you decide how much to invest.
Phase Two: On Boxing Day
Go Live
Now it’s about giving people FOMO (fear of missing out). Record what’s going on in-store, what products are on sale, reveal exclusive offers or video people receiving surprise giveaways. Have someone who is bright and bubbly on or behind the camera and really show people what they are missing out on if they don’t come down to your store NOW!
Run Paid Ads
This is your last ditch effort. If you took our earlier advice about running paid campaigns before the event, Facebook should now have a pretty good idea on who to show your ad to. A Facebook business page lets you boost offers, so create an exclusive code people can use in-store or online to really draw people in. You can learn more about offers and promotional posts in our Facebook best practice guide.
One Last Thing…
With so many people coming through your store, use it as an opportunity to build your database. If you have an online store, have an opt-in button on your checkout for people to sign up to your email or SMS marketing offers. For in-store shoppers, ask if they’d like to join your email list to receive a discount code to their inbox.
So, not only have you got more sales during the holiday season, you have more ways to re-engage those shoppers throughout the year. And to think, you weren’t even going to look at your social media marketing plan for just this one day.