• Instagram with its user base of 500 Million users and numerous photos shared per day, may prove to be an ideal network to attract your target audience this holiday season. Advertising on Instagram has given boost to advertisers with increase in Ad recall; and with newly added features to the advertising suite, Instagram is the network of choice for visually-engaging campaigns.

    Landscape photo and video to unlock new creative opportunities and give ads a more cinematic feel
    Video ads of up to 30 seconds in length, so brands can engage in richer storytelling
    Marquee, a new premium product that helps drive mass awareness and expanded reach in a short time-frame—perfect for events like movie premieres and new product launches
    Delivery and optimization tools to manage and drive the best performance of campaigns across Facebook and Instagram
    Engaging your audience with Visual Storytelling can be done with posts on Instagram that engage audiences with Captions and images that resonate

    Here are Ten Ways Brands can promote on Instagram.

    Create Seasonal Posts introducing a new product or promotion highlighting the key product attributes in a visually engaging format.

    Present your Gift Card Customer Value Proposition in a static frame of a video or an image, as an image and caption the post with an emotional connect.

    Engage Social Media Influencers that can get your proposition noticed with visuals that engage your target audience.

    Create a Video Loop that places your brand logo in a seasonal context in a creative manner as can be seen for Pepsi’s post for Art Dome at an event with the help of an artist.

    https://www.instagram.com/p/99GIHQqrKC/?taken-by=pepsi

    Use Instagram posts as a style guide to create a Visual LookBook for the holiday season.

    According to Shareablee, Oreo generated 120 percent more engagement on Instagram in November, with holiday themed campaigns, compared with the same time last year, capturing more than 376,000 total actions (likes and comments).

    Oreo has highlighted the seasonal pack that uses creative layouts depicting interaction, which is the point of engagement with audiences.

    Krispy Kreme introduces Santa Belly doughnuts with a simple question.

    Engage audiences with reposts from your followers with a seasonal theme.

    Share Content that audiences find useful such as DIY and recipe ideas, One of the most engaged posts on Twitter was a dessert recipe shared for Thanksgiving by Jell-O.

    Highlight any special offers that you are introducing during the season, or share a window display that highlights your brand’s identity as seen for Nordstrom’s Holiday post.

    https://www.instagram.com/p/-39GR7MdNa/?taken-by=urbanoutfitters

  • Instagram Video Channel

    Instagram’s  video channel curated from users feed, can be seen with the explore tab for a topic, allowing content marketers to get their stories discovered in an instant. This is an organic content discovery tool that allows for an immersive video viewing experience the same as Facebook’s Instant Ads.

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    Facebook Audience Network

    FacebookAudienceNetworkSpotify Spotify expanded the reach for its campaign by 20 percent with Facebook Audience Network ads by using Display Ads available. According to Facebook for Business, mobile apps on Facebook Audience Network account for 6 percent of all time spent on Mobile Apps. Ads on Facebook Audience Network are served in Native and Display formats. Advertising on Facebook Audience Network is easy by choosing the Mobile Apps as an option in the Placement of Ads. With the wide mobile apps network, Facebook Audience Network gives content marketers and advertisers an option for building outreach on publisher apps where the audiences are most likely to be looking for new stories.

     

    Twitter Promoted Moments

    Other than Promoted Tweets and Promoted Trends, Twitter has introduced Promoted Moments, that will featured curated  brand stories that can be accessed from Moments Feed for 24 hours, with a Promoted badge.

    Twitter has introduced the Moments that covers the best of curated stories with Tweets on the topic to give the highlights in an instant making content discovery on the go easy for mobile audiences. With Promoted Moments Brands can get their content discovered while featuring offers in a visually engaging format.

    MBLN

    Snapchat Discover

    Snapchat Discover is a content discovery tool that allows for videos and stories featured from select publishers that mobile audiences can browse and share on the go.

    Discover

    According to Wired, “Snapchat launched Discover earlier this year as a new way for its millions of predominantly young users to follow daily news and entertainment without ever leaving the hugely popular app. Discover features nine partners each with their own controlled “channel” that stays up for 24-hours, including media companies like Vice, ESPN, and CNN”.

     

     

     

     

     

  • AmazonWith Holiday season, offers and deals, Brands can engage audiences beyond loyal customers. The new customers that engage with your brand for the first time can prove to be a valuable source of leads and revenue. Amazon has introduced Amazon Prime as a Gifting option, where users can exchange the subscription for a gift card and the referrer receives a bonus reward on successful sign-up.

    With Referral Marketing, you can get friends of customers engaged with  your offers with a seasonal theme. The referral marketing programs can be used throughout the customer journey.

    Here are Five Ways to acquire, engage, retarget, activate and retain your customers with a Holiday themed campaign.

    Reward The Friend And The Advocate

    Encourage customers to sign up for a program by rewarding both the friend and the advocate. For audiences looking for Gift purchases and entertaining options for the Holiday season, a referral program built around rewards for the advocates, is likely to resonate better.

    Referrals can also be used to boost engagement with your existing fans and followers. Manchester United’s Contest rewards five winning entries with a free Christmas card signed by the players for the entrant and a friend.

     

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    Elf Tip

    Introduce ” Buy One Get One” Free offers on Social Media to increase sign-ups for your Referral program. Email marketing can help you get to the customers as the open rates for your Holiday email tends to be higher.

     

    Create Holiday Specific Programs

    If there is a cap on maximum number of customers that members can sign-up, holiday season and sales events are the right time for increasing the number of sign-ups as the friends of program members are most likely to be looking for offers and deals.

    Increasescopereferral

    Elf Tip

    Introduce special Holiday experience to make your Referral program more engaging. For brands promoting Gift cards, Referral marketing can bring newer customers with special offers.

    Build Anticipation For Rewards

    Customers look forward to the next reward level that they can reach with referrals and Loyalty programs. Introduce any surprises that you have for your best customers. This could be linked to more rewards or complimentary offers. Promote your referral program with a Sweepstakes campaign.
    GiftsRef4

    Elf Tip

    Referred customers are better customers.
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    Promote your Referral Marketing Program

    Increase the likelihood of your referral program being discovered by audiences during Holiday Season with Keywords articulated for your campaign discovery. Optimize the landing pages and brand sites appropriately. Using User Generated content boosts engagement for your campaigns.

    Promotions referal

    Elf Tip

    Include Keywords and Hashtags that will help your content get discovered, in your social media posts. As seen from Papa John’s post including #Sweepstakes makes the program easier to find.

    Presume Participation

    Customize the landing page experience for the referred audience, and presume participation by including social media links and any offers that you would like to introduce for the newly signed-up members.

     

    Referral2

    Elf Tip

    Encourage customers to participate by showing the way to increase their rewards and earnings from the referral program. Encourage audiences to log in with their social media profiles. Include social media icons and sharing options at all check-out and sign up pages

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    Source: Extole

  • Creating Content for engaging and retargeting The Holiday Shopper, can make all the difference to your campaign performance, from generating awareness to increasing conversions.  As you have a large set of audience that may have visited your brand’s site, you may choose to select a sub-segment for retargeting depending on your campaign objective. To know more about Best Practices For Cross-Device Mobile Retargeting, Click here.

    Here are five ways to create content for retargeting audiences during the Holiday Season.

    Content With Purpose

    Walmart’s content for Holiday Season with ideas that can be navigated to from the main menu focuses on making holiday entertainment moments rewarding for engaged content users with tips and tricks, that mark the holiday season celebrations. One of the Features posted on Walmart’s Celebrations planning section, is tips on setting a Hot Chocolate Bar.

    Walmart1

    Among other recipe ideas Walmart’s site allows for user reviews that users can browse through for inspiration. The ideas for cup-cake recipes  have a featured section with recommended recipes that helps users browse through other recipes of interest.
    Cupcakerecipes

    For customers who are looking at gifts for holidays can pick one of the designed cards for Christmas, that adds to the Party Fun.

    Cardswal

    Walmart’s content  has been designed to give a seamless experience for users who are looking at planning and entertaining. With a clear content strategy Walmart has engaged segments of Gift shoppers as well as those that entertain at home.

    Takeaway: Create content that will answer search queries for all segments of Holiday Shoppers. In the content experience created by Walmart, audiences that are from different segments, right from Gift shoppers to those planning holiday parties are likely to discover content options.

    Advertising:  Google’s  RLSA can help you promote your content for engaging the users that have browsed your retail site, but have not purchased. For Cart abandoners, targeting audiences with content campaigns based on intent or behavioral signals can repurpose content for relevant search queries.

    • intent: user intent as expressed by the search term entered into the Google Search engine
    • behavioral signal: a previous visit to your website is generally a strong signal that the user is more likely to convert on your site than a searcher who has not yet visited your site

    Google’s Text messaging can help you reach audiences that may have looked up your offers and deals for special promotions,targeting them with a text messaging campaign to sign up for content updates can turn them into repeat visitors.

    adwords-text-message-adsContent text

    Content That Generates Interest

    Know how your audiences are discovering content and promote your content with posts featured for those publishers. The Huffington Post, features deals for Star Wars fans with links to the sites where audiences are most likely to find the merchandise, with links to the landing page. In the example of the image below, Sphero – BB 8, customers can find the Star Wars merchandise at Best Buy or Sphero.com. The post features the two options, where users can decide on the

    SpheroPublpost

    Takeaway: Publisher content that your users are most likely to be looking for can feature brand content such as reviews that can help you upsell or convert .

    Advertising:  Facebook’s  Social Media Posts from publishers provide a greater reach and obtain a higher number of viral impressions. Update the product Landing page with user-generated content that audiences are most likely to share.

    Content That Is Suitable

    The Cheesecake Factory posts remind audiences about relevance of  Desserts for the holiday menu.

    The promotion on Gift card, engages audience with rewards that are extended post the holiday season.  For every $25 in gift cards purchased audiences receive a complimentary slice of cheesecake.

    Takeaway : Create content that will answer a specific query within a context. In the content experience created by The Cheesecake Factory, audiences shopping for Dessert options, are,most likely to be looking for Dessert recipe ideas. Promoting recipe ideas sequentially can help engage audiences who have earlier visited your site for Holiday Season offers.

    Advertising:  Facebook’s Promoted Posts and Twitter’s Promoted Tweets as well as Facebook offers can be used to promote the offer during the holiday season. Update the Offer Landing page with content that audiences are most likely to share.

    Content That Is Snackable

    As important as it is to make appealing and engaging content for gaining shares, Content that is snackable is most likely to be acted upon. The Yahoo Food post below gives Cookie Hacks that are presented in a visually engaging format which is more likely to be viewed. With video providing the entire experience in one go, audiences looking for answers or further information will visit the brand site. Engaged audiences that have gained information required are most likely to complete the purchase.

     

    Takeaway : Creating Snackable content not only answers a query within a context, but helps audiences decide with relevant information.

    Advertising : Formats that engage users with an engaging tagline can help you get the winning content piece. Start with how the content helps your audience. Use the advertising format on Social Networks that is appropriate for promoting your post.

    Content That Provides Value

    Macy’s Gift Guide features Today’s Top Gift that lets users choose the option that provides better value for special occasions.

    Gourmetgg

    Takeaway : Creating offers-led content can reengage users who may have looked for gifts earlier. Segmenting your users based on past purchase behavior can help you promote the content at the right time.

    Advertising : Timing Matters. If Your customers convert at a later stage, promote posts and Shopping Campaigns with offers and deals when they are most likely to click-through and convert.

     

     

     

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