The holidays are here. And for anyone who has been in a big box store in the last two months, the holidays have been here for a while already.
In this edition of Social Media Highlights, you can see how businesses are combining the benefits of social media marketing with the holiday warm-and-fuzzies to boost their brand and sell more stuff.
Here are some examples of creative marketing that any size company can use for inspiration for their own holiday campaigns and social media content.
Tis the Season to Repurpose Old Content
Hershey’s repurposed a TV commercial for Instagram
Exhibit A: Hershey's Kisses
We've all seen this spot. It's the kisses acting as bells, shaped in a tree, rigging We Wish You a Merry Christmas.
This commercial dates back to 1989 and is the brainchild of none other than Ogilvy & Mather — the same advertising agency responsible for Coca Cola’s many memorable campaigns and for making Dove soap a household name.
It's classic. It's simple. It never gets old.
That's why Hershey continues to use it every year. Plus, with the advent (😉) of social media, Hershey’s has repurposed this television commercial into short videos, usable on platforms like Instagram, Twitter and Facebook.
If you have a TV commercial or video ad from a Christmas past, consider revising it for this holiday season. You can do this by:
Editing its time so it fits within Instagram and Twitter’s video length limits (60 seconds for Instagram or 2 minutes and 20 seconds for Twitter).
Adding a call to action at the end of the video to your website or store. You can use a simple video editor to do that, like iMovie or Lightworks.
Promoting it through posts and if you have the budget, using it for targeted social media advertising.
Exhibit B: PA State Lottery
The PA State lottery used the same advertisement year after year after year.
The classic commercial using the 12 Days of Christmas as a backdrop was shot in Pittsburgh and aired during the holiday seasons from 1992 through 2011. In 2012, they reshot the commercial...frame for frame.
You know why?
Because it told a heartwarming story centered on the core product — lottery tickets — and community.
Why change something that works?
If you're considering video for your holiday marketing campaign, consider if your brand could apply the same, simple approach: explain your core product and how it helps the community — by bringing everyone together or as a small gift.
Simple isn't always easy, but if your video gives viewers the warm-and-fuzzies, you're doing it right.
Show How Your Brand Contributes to the Holiday Spirit
When you think about the holiday season, software probably isn’t the first thing to come to mind. Yet Microsoft consistently creates relevant holiday marketing. How do they do it? By spreading harmony. They did it in 2015 with this commercial, where real life Microsoft employees extended a holiday olive branch to Apple employees.
If you want to make a video for your holiday promotions, you can buy music as a backdrop for a video or use free music from resources like:
User-Generated Content UGC
User-generated content (UGC) is a tactic used many a marketing manager. It is content created by users, customers and/or your target audience.
As a business owner or marketing manager, you get two things out of it:
The opportunity to engage your customers and highlight their lives and personalities.
The chance for them to share your curated content — a blog post or a slide show or just a social media post — which can dramatically boost the reach of your post.
As social media platforms change their algorithms to be more user-focused, they're prioritizing content from friends and family members. That means, as a business, getting shares should be a top priority in your social media strategy.
A great, holiday-focused, example is Town and Country Magazine. They let other Instagrammers do all the work and share their sparkly, warm holiday photos:
Example of User Generated Content on Instagram
Effectively distributed UGC could inspire your followers to share what you want, and get your page content in front of more eyeballs.
Use Your Social Media as a Digital Showroom
This sounds much harder than it actually is. It’s a two-step process to get your holiday specials seen by more people:
Take pictures of your products
Create albums or stories to weave them together
A few great examples of this are e-commerce store Wayfair, and of course, Amazon:
One of the many benefits of social media marketing is that it’s highly visual. This gives small mom-and-pop shops a chance to compete with large companies like Wal-Mart, Amazon and Target. If you’re one of the millions of small businesses in the U.S., you don’t need 100 stores to sell a lot.
You do need to show off your product.
Social media allows you to do that by acting as platforms for content distribution. It’s free to post on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter — and it’s your job to make sure it looks good.
Be Generous
There's a lot of noise in holiday marketing.
A lot.
Wal-mart alone spent more than $66 million on holiday advertising in 2016.
So maybe the solution for your social media marketing during the holiday season is to highlight how your company is part of the season of giving. Maybe it's photos/videos of your employees donating their time to a local charity. That’s what Ryder trucking did in this example.
Maybe you could help visually explain how you bridge the gap between donors and the charities, which Blackbaud did.
The holidays are a prime opportunity to show the generosity and holiday spirit of your brand, and you can amplify that message using your social media channels. Get in the spirit and get creative.