Ten Ways To Create Brand Buzz This Holiday Season

A large part of sales during holiday season, originate from Social Media referrals. In a study shared by a leading retail research firm, as high as 70 percent of online sales during Cyber Monday 2014, were social media referrals.

Getting your social media campaign and buzz right for holiday marketing is a critical part of your campaign planning process. Here are Ten Ways brands can create buzz with Holiday Marketing Campaign.

Showcase Technology enabled experience

If you have a new product that is created for moments where technology enabled experiences make the holidays more memorable, create a video or Facebook post encouraging audiences to share their moments with the new technology. You can take this further with a contest that will reward customers with a gift card or provides an interactive experience in an app. Dubsmash, one of the more popular app from last year lets consumers choose a song and record the same in their voice and share it on Social Networks.

Focus on Content Share-ability

Content that audiences find shareable is most likely to get the right brand buzz. To design the right content use images and visuals that your core target audience finds most engaging. Create a dedicated site for your themed offers that allows users ti get more information and updates.

Create Newer Experiences

In case you have a high engagement rate with your fans, you may need to create newer experiences to get the brand buzz. Delivering more of what you have shared through the year may not get the engagement that you require during the peak shopping season.

Some of the ways to achieve this is with New Ad Formats, New Personalized Care and Gift Packs and redesign of your existing packs, or co-promoting with a popular app.

Some of the popular examples for co-promoting with an App are Starbucks and Match. Budweiser has earlier launched a native ad campaign on Tinder.

Snickers has partnered with iHeartRadio to promote a contest that sponsors a Road Trip.

Introduce New Shopping Options

Try new ways audiences can reach your business, either by introducing a “Holiday Wishlist” for existing users that lets them receive special offers and discounts for different holidays or a referral program that rewards audiences with higher rewards earlier in the season. Remember that you can always change the Call-To-Action on most social network posts.

You can also introduce a time bound rewards update in an app allowing audiences to earn rewards at an improved rate.

Behind the Scenes

In case you are hosting a one of a kind event, a behind the scenes look and special features about the venue can create engagement prior to the event. You can look at inviting a few of your loyal fans and audiences to an event. A popular engagement

Personalize Your Marketing

In addition to Geo-targeting and offering location-based offers, you can also use Music for personalizing campaigns with downloadable playlists. Offer a choice to customers to create a special bond with the brand.

Gift Guides and Snippets

Create a series of gift guides that are unveiled or released in a sequential manner targeting different segments. You can go a step further by offering discounts and special promotions that are available on pre-booking or an early purchase confirmation. Promote the gift guides with Dynamic Product Ads on Facebook.

Countdown With Social Media Celebrity

Engage a Social Media Celebrity that will create a countdown for the key sales event with a feature every week that walks the audience through DIY content or product features. You can include a Free Giveaway at the end of each session.

Use A Series of Posts to Engage Audiences

Taco Bell created a contest that had series of posts that unravelled clues for a new mission every week, for the new biscuit Taco launch. The launch was coupled with a video ad set in a dystopian era that urged people to defect to a new kind of breakfast. The campaign with its sequential approach brought customers back to the social media site every week, while generating buzz for the campaign and the brand.

The contest design was unique as it required customers to interact and share with a chance to win unique merchandise.

Update Your Social Media Pages

For sustained interest in your promotions feature the rules and the contest in a prominent manner on your Social Media profile pages. You can use a Facebook Tab, pinned Tweet and updated profiles in addition to the about section. Walmart has recently added Basket Challenge Casting that lets the users sign up on Facebook to be featured in Walmart Commercial.