Christmas comes early on Facebook: How will you maximise your #smm?

Christmas comes early on Facebook: How will you maximise social media during this busy period?

The countdown to Christmas is now officially on…only 39 more days. Can you believe it? Each year consumers say the same thing: the build up to Christmas gets earlier and earlier. Audiences are surely switching off from the Christmas messaging….or are they?

During the run-up to Christmas, new research released by Facebook actually shows that consumers are more interested in consumer products and messaging in this busy pre-Christmas period. (Source: Facebook)

As a social media marketer, you may be asking yourself:

• Did our Christmas campaigns hit the mark last year?
• How can I beat my competitors during this Christmas period?
• Is my agency doing the best possible job with my Christmas budget?

So, before we look into how to improve social media marketing in the busy pre-Christmas period, let’s have a look at what Facebook had to say:

1. Christmas conversation begins on Facebook on October 24 (yes, October!).

2. Black Friday, November 25, is the biggest shopping day of the year for women on Facebook.

3. Last year Cyber Monday, November 28, online spend totalled £968m in the UK.

4. The build up to Christmas and last minute shopping takes place within the period from 8-31 December.

5. Boxing Day is topical on Facebook throughout all of December with an amazing 21.6m interactions related to it.

6. The first two weeks in January can offer some of the best value CPMs seen all year on Facebook.

How can we use this information and insight in our social marketing to enhance our Christmas campaigns and capitalise on the increased spend?

agency:2’s Christmas marketing advice:

a) It’s always important to stand out from the crowd as this is a very busy period on social – 32m pieces of content are posted to Facebook every day over Christmas! Your brand will need to be the best e.g. use video to boost audience reach.

b) You can widen your audience by adding grandparents, uncles and aunties, as they are the true Christmas buying audience for anything over £50.

c) Increase reach further through audience insight tools such as the Social Insight Engine. For example, by using our unique ad serving software we can select parents with siblings in a similar age range, and therefore sell more to the same user. Overall, this will improve return on investment.

d) As it’s such a busy period, clever targeting is important to get your message in front of the right people at the right time. Linking targeting to consumer behaviour and interests is a great way of making an emotional connection, which can lead to strengthening purchasing intent.

e) It is also important to connect social media activity with offline behaviours, PR and other marketing activities.

f) Use Facebook’s unique abilities – for example, friends can tag each other in comments e.g. ‘this is the one I wanted you to get for my daughter’. You can’t do this as easily with other marketing channels so make the most of these features.

g) Make sure your posts are mobile friendly as 86% of Christmas posts are shared on mobile and 88% of all videos are shared on mobile.

Here at agency:2 we have already applied these strategies to our social media marketing for some of the world’s leading brands, achieving fantastic ROI for our clients. Find out how you can take your social offering to the next level. Call us on 0203 567 1380.