And just like that, it’s that time of the year again. Now that you have had time to wrap up your Black Friday and Cyber Monday campaigns, it’s time to think about how to drive sales during the holiday season. In this article, you will find helpful tips on how to use Instagram to generate and convert leads.
It’s time to change your mood board and switch from fall colors to winter ones. Mark the beginning of the holiday season with a nice transition to holiday-themed posts. If you don’t have an in-house design team to create posters and add a bit of Christmas magic to each of your posts, you can always use Canva or another editing/graphic design platforms.
Another approach is to opt for user-generated content (UGC). If you feel like you can’t post any more holiday-themed photos featuring your product/service and the templates are getting boring, it’s time to consider UGC. Ask your follower to send their favorite holiday-themed photos and post them on your IG page. It would be ideal if these posts featured your product/service. Starbucks, for instance, launched a campaign called “Project Give Good” back in 2017 and asked its customers to give good and share it on Instagram with #givegood. Many of these posts featured the iconic Starbucks holiday cups.
Make sure to stay consistent with your visuals and keep the holiday spirit in your feed until the season is over․
The main sales strategy during the holiday season is to convince your audience that your product/service makes a perfect gift. So, you can develop a gift guide that features your products/services. Depending on the essence of your business, you can create a gift guide either based on gender or age.
To seal the deal, you need to minimize the number of steps between the customer seeing the post and being able to make the purchase. We recommend using Instagram shoppable posts that allow users to tap on the product tags and see details about them.
If you have over 10,000 followers, you can use swipe ups on Instagram Stories. In case none of these options works for you, simply let your followers know how they can purchase the products in your guide (e.g. contacting you via Facebook, sending a DM, etc.).
Scarcity marketing is not a novel tactic. In short, scarcity marketing is the use of the fear of shortage to sell more. It employs the fear of missing out and the sense of exclusivity to generate sales. Given that people want to give great gifts to their loved ones, they are likely to take up your limited and one-time offers. The key here is that scarcity marketing won’t work for your regular products, you need to modify them, upgrade them or offer a bundle deal. The bottom line is, it has to be something unique and different from your general collection. The best example for this is again Starbucks with its limited holiday-themed drinks.
Put some thought into developing your limited edition products/services, read up more on scarcity marketing tactics and share about it on Instagram.
I bet you won’t find a single article about Instagram marketing that doesn’t mention influencer marketing at least once. Simply think how many times you’ve asked friends and family for gift recommendations. Influencers are essentially the virtual variation of friends and family, so you can work with them to promote your business. Keep in mind that most of the time, micro-influencers drive better results than the ones with big following.
Do your research and create a list of micro-influencers, who are in your niche and reach out to them with a proposal.
At the end of the day, the primary ingredient of success is visibility and Instagram ads can help you with that. Time is limited during the holiday season, so you need to act fast to reach potential customers and offer them your products/services. Familiarize yourself with Instagram’s targeting features, set up the ads and connect with prospective customers for your business. Carousel and Stories ads are a great place to start. If for some reason, you need to choose between these two options, we recommend Stories ads. Users are most likely to watch the stories of the accounts they follow and be presented with your ad than scroll their feeds.
Sometimes you need to serve with an example, plus it’s the time of giving, so organize a holiday giveaway to engage with your audience. The prize can either be some of your products/services, a gift card or cash. Whichever option you end up choosing, be sure that it’s exciting enough to catch the attention of your followers and motivate them to participate in the giveaway.
If you want to take it a step further, you can organize a series of small giveaways instead of one big contest.
Giveaways are an excellent way to give back to your community and also, increase your followers and engagement, which will serve you well during the holiday season.
To participate in the giveaway, you can ask your followers to like, share or comment on your photo like this brand did. You can also ask your followers to post their own versions of a photo or a video that you had posted. So, the giveaway becomes a means to use the giveaway to collect user-generated content to post later.
From decorating your office Christmas tree to Secret Santa adventures, giveaway deals and gift guides, there are so many things you can share in the Stories section of Instagram. Do use it to interact with your audience and remind them about you. Just think that someone might come across your story when thinking what to get as a gift for their friend and there you are with your awesome gift idea!
Kinopoisk.ru a Russian website about cinematography offers to select a film, through stories, to watch during the Christmas holidays.
Because of risks associated with COVID-19, a lot of people will turn to online browsing and shopping during the holiday season. So it’s about the time you step up your Instagram game and use it to drive sales during this holiday season.
