For marketers, the end of the year holiday sale season is a great time to launch marketing campaigns because gift shopping is at an all-time high. But this year things look different. With COVID-19 still surging, there is a high level of uncertainty about a second lockdown and people are increasingly adapting to a socially distanced lifestyle. 

The digital revolution and the explosion of social media have profoundly changed what influences consumers as they undertake their purchasing decision journey. Here’s how you can pivot and adapt your marketing strategy to address consumer concerns and win this holiday season.

1. Customers are looking to you for inspiration ‍

In a recent study by Pinterest, they uncovered that 50% of their global users are looking to brands to inspire them and help them make this festive season feel extra special. 

Consumers also look to social media in general to get inspiration for gift ideas. 

• Nearly 48% of US consumers rely on social media to decide what to purchase. 
• 60% use social media to read product reviews.
• 53% use social media to browse listings.
• 52% use social media to find promotions. 

If you’re considering social media, consider using influencer marketing to enhance the reach of your brand. Influencers can be great allies to brands when it comes to convincing consumers of purchasing items. Just look at how many consumers make impulse or unplanned purchases after looking at influencer content across many soical media platform.

With this knowledge, think of ways your brand can lend a hand to customers, either by inspiring them using influencer marketing or providing online shopping, contactless delivery, discount or bundle package offers, and more.

In need of some inspiration? See the magical content that influencers created to help Heinekken celebrate the festive season and earn $195k inROI. 

‍

2. Give customers incentives that can reduce financial stress caused by COVID‍

Historically, the most powerful motivators for people to shop during holidays are discounts and promotions. This is far more likely this year as the financial impact of COVID is likely to make consumers spend less on holiday shopping this year.

Not surprisingly, 81% of consumers expect to be swayed by holiday promotions. Specifically:

• 74% prefer price discounts
• 72% prefer free shipping
• 39% prefer a BOGO offer

If you’re thinking of utilizing offers and promotions, check out this tool that can help you to distribute mobile offers directly to consumers and attribute how much revenue it is driving.

‍

3. Retarget customers to build familiarity and loyalty‍

Retargeting your ideal customers with social ads is one of the most effective strategies you can adapt for your holiday social media campaign. Retargeting is effective because it is a way to remind customers that they showed an interest in you earlier.

Yet in our experience, retargeting alone is not enough. To truly engage customers for whom “push” advertising is increasingly irrelevant, companies must do more outside the confines of the traditional marketing organization. At the end of the day, customers no longer separate marketing from the product—it is the product. They don’t separate marketing from their in-store or online experience—it is the experience. In the era of engagement, marketing is the company.

What better way to make your marketing feel like an authentic engaging experience than use influencer marketing? Influencer content, such as holiday gift guides or product review and tutorials can be used to retarget customers by creating whitelisted ads. 

Whitelisted ads are powerful because the influencer’s authentic voice and visually aesthetic content is amplified to engaged and lookalike audiences who have a high likelihood of converting.  

Check out how Swarovski used our in-house paid media technology to amplify highly engaging and aesthetic organic content. Amplifying helped them retarget quality leads via influencers and ultimately increase their ROI by $225k, followers by 11%, and site visits by 2000.  

4. Don’t forget the supply chain‍

With COVID-19 still at large, you need to consider the impact that the coronavirus has on shipment delays. 

The holiday shopping season is longer and earlier this year, thanks to Amazon pushing it’s Prime Day to October 13th this year. 

With the massive influx of digital orders, restricted warehouse access and reduced delivery personnel, Salesforce predicts that shipping providers worldwide will exceed capacity by 5%, leading to 700 million gifts not arriving on time!

With early bird shoppers spending almost $400 more on gifts in general, it becomes a no brainer to start your social media marketing campaign ASAP to ensure you get in more bucks and keep a customer happy with on-time delivery.

‍

Considering launching your holiday social media marketing campaign? We can launch a campaign on short notice and have influencers’ content out in 15-30 days of the campaign launch. Get in touch now and we’ll help you curate a customised strategy for you just in time to launch this November-December.