Instagram Holiday Marketing in 2022: Best Practices

The holidays are approaching – fast, a season that tends to be overwhelming for many businesses. The right holiday marketing approach planned months in advance can help your business generate significant sales.

Holiday marketing is around the corner, so what do you need to do to ensure you are on top of your game in the modern social media-driven world?

Having detailed plan months in advance eases the process since you'll have:

Clear holiday marketing campaigns goals, informing your budget, content, and strategy to employ
A practical list of social media assets, including realistic creation, editing, and posting schedules
Effective calendar facilitating an ongoing initiative that does not bombard your followers

Many moving parts characterize holiday social marketing campaigns. As such, a strategic plan crafted in advance makes it easier, especially for small and medium enterprises, to keep up and squeeze the most out of the festivities. Let's dive in further, mainly looking at Instagram, one of the most effective holiday social media marketing platforms.

What is Instagram Holiday Marketing?

Instagram holiday marketing entails intensified campaigns to capture the users' attention, provide holiday-spirited offers, and win more sales.

If done right, the holiday campaigns offer more than immediate sales. Your brand gains more eyeballs, extending its reach. Brand awareness is always a huge win since it gives you an edge in the competitive market.

Those valuable holiday offers can generate voluminous sales, attract new followers, and help your brand gain more followers who can be repeat buyers beyond the holiday season.

Why Should Businesses Run Instagram Holiday Marketing Campaigns?

Although a big number of businesses have an Instagram presence, just a few companies bother about running holiday marketing campaigns as it seems to be a waste of time and budget. However, here are three solid reasons for businesses to run Instagram holiday marketing campaigns for maximum impact:

Holiday shopping is a ritual: Holidays bring people closer. Family and friends gather and enjoy the festivities, and along with this comes the shopping spree. Gifts are at the heart of any holiday, which makes shopping a ritual. As a business, helping consumers find the right gifts, buy at competitive offers, and give their loved ones a huge smile gives you an edge.
People spend more during the holiday season: Consumers are in a festive mood, which makes it easier for them to spend more. Moreover, they've saved for the holidays and are eager to spend. Without holiday campaigns, your business will lose a chance to take advantage of the ready intent to spend.

Establish an emotional connection with followers: Holiday campaigns are not all about more sales. You use the opportunity to wish the followers well and happy festivities. You also help them by providing valuable shopping tips to spice up the holidays. This makes your brand a go-to for information, not just goods. The emotional connection delivers beyond the holidays, emphasizing the need to run holiday campaigns.

Now that you have enough reasons to run holiday Instagram campaigns, how can you supercharge your efforts and realize better results? Here are some tips to include in your strategy for better progress.

1. Decorate Your Profile for Holidays

Decorations make the holiday seasons feel special.

This is the power you leverage as you strive to attract more users to your business. When you decorate the profile for a holiday, you prompt the users to start thinking about shopping for the season.

They'll begin to contemplate the gift they need to buy, meaning they'll check out the prices, available offers, and elements such as customer service and return policies. Once the conversation starts, you are a step closer to winning them over.

Decorating your profile for the holidays is exciting but can also be overwhelming. You don't want to under/overdo it, yet you want to ensure the Instagram profile stands out from the competition.

The online world is loaded with resourceful guides if you are struggling or unsure. Look for practical social media post ideas to help you strike a balance that goes beyond the color themes to include aspects like incorporating user-generated content. Or draw inspiration from Starbucks and mix professional photos with fan-made content.

2. Offer a Holiday Discount

Holiday shopping and discounts go hand in hand.

It is the festive season, and people are in a giving mood, and so should your business. Besides giving back, discounts encourage customers to shop sooner rather than later.

If the discounts offer value and leverage urgency, such as through the power of FOMO (fear of missing out). Discounts during the holidays are everywhere. You need to do it and offer better than your competitors while at it.

When it comes to a holiday discount, the most important thing is to make it time-limited and therefore encourage impulse buying. What is more, it's a good idea to create a unique code that you can share on your profile, just like in the example below:

3. Create a Gift Idea Guide

The number of companies that use Instagram for small business is growing constantly. Instagram boasts over 2 billion users, and tapping into this pool can help your small business win more customers.

So, how do you turn the traffic into buyers? The simplest answer is to grow a loyal following. When you offer value, you can increase brand trust and…purchase intent!

During the holiday season, it's a good idea to create a gift idea guide. Not only can it educate your followers on what gifts to buy, but it can also promote your seasonal products without being too salesy. Plus, it makes your followers' life easier as they navigate the holiday seasons. Especially if you make the most out of Instagram guides, like GAP did:

After scrolling your gift guide, your followers are more likely to establish the best gift for their kids, spouses, and parents, among others.

The guide can also point them towards your offerings matching such intent. Your main objective is offering usable content, not marketing, which the users appreciate and turn to your brand when they need such assistance. This makes it easier to win more followers, and as you grow the user base, improve credibility and brand awareness. The impacts last beyond the holiday seasons, supercharging your quests to grow the small business and scale it to the next level.

4. Make Up a Relevant Influencer Marketing Campaign

Practically every business owner knows about the efficiency of referral marketing when loyal customers spread the word about your company among their friends and family. To speed up the process, you can invite influencers to become a part of your referral marketing campaign.

Did you know that over 80% of social media users trust influencers as much as their friends? Partnering with influencers can significantly boost your Instagram holiday campaigns. Reaching their extensive followers is easier, and since the users trust what they recommend, your holiday offers will win more users.

Let's take a look at the collaboration between Emma Willis and Next. In honor of NExt's winter collection, the company invited the influencer to work together on cool clothes design. Emma was happy to promote her work among her following:

Influencers provide an opportunity to cut through the noise and reach more users. This is more so if you partner with niche influencers in line with your business.

5. Appeal to Holiday Emotions

Forget advertising; the best holiday campaigns leverage emotions to engage and form lasting connections with the audience.

You've brought out the holiday spirit with the decorated Instagram profile; follow it up with emotional campaigns, such as thanking them for their support and offering amazing discounts and rewards, showing how you are also spreading the holiday cheer.

Keep the holiday campaigns social, including responding to the comments, sharing user-generated content, and reacting with holiday-inspired aspects. Ensure your posts elicit excitement building to the holidays.

The happier the customers get, the easier it is to tip them to buy. Besides taking advantage of the swelling sentiment to generate more sales, appealing to the holiday emotions facilitates deeper and more meaningful connections that last past the festivities.

Any examples needed? Check out how one company boosted festive spirit when creating a special video about typical holiday childhood memories:

6. Organize a Festive Giveaway

The holiday season is all about giving. So, isn't it the right time to give away prizes?

A festive giveaway campaign benefits your brand in many ways, among the top including:

Improved user engagement: Having a huge following on Instagram is one thing, and engagement is a different story. Followers are amazing, but monetizing them requires engagement. This is among the top reasons to run a festive giveaway campaign. People enjoy freebies, and a well-thought contest makes it more enticing. The bottom line is to ensure that the giveaways are valuable and won't end up in the garbage bag.
User-generated content: User-generated content brings authenticity to your brand. You'll gain more credibility as users unbox the giveaways and share the experience. While users may not light the area and provide incredible shots, the content is more useful than professionally directed ads since the audience does not take it as a salesy post.

Festive giveaways can help you go viral, supercharge your brand awareness campaign, gain more followers, and win more sales. You are giving the gifts, but the strategy is a gift to your business that will keep giving back. A good example of this strategy comes from the Original Green Pan:

7. Run a Dedicated Instagram Ad Campaign

Competing with other brands during the busy holidays can be hectic unless you invest in paid ads.

When you run a dedicated Instagram ad campaign, it helps to improve your brand visibility in such a highly-concentrated environment that doesn't have to be daunting to the point of contemplating giving up.

To draw inspiration for your next holiday campaign, take a look at a private supermarket chain in San Antonio, H-E-B. The company aimed at attracting holiday shoppers, so it ran an ad campaign with augmented reality filters to bring holiday joy and boost brand awareness.

Take a look at the results:

6x lift in ad recall
9.6x lift in ad recall among people aged 45-54
3.1x higher purchase intent from AR filter campaign, compared to a simultaneous non-AR holiday campaign
60% decrease in cost per incremental ad recall, compared to holiday 2019 campaign

Running Instagram ad campaigns can help you reach more potential buyers and fast. The ads let you leverage Instagram's effective targeting features, placing your brand in front of the right audience. Ensure you spice up the ad campaigns with clickable links and product tags.

Conclusion

Consumers are excited, ready to spend, and have more fun during the holidays.

As a business, establishing where the customers are and strategically positioning your brand in a holiday-inspired way gives you an edge. In the modern setting, social media is the gateway that lets you reach more users. This is more so as online shopping trends continue to skyrocket and social media is proving to be a valuable source of information.

Decorating the profile with a holiday theme, actively engaging the users, offering valuable giveaways, running well-crafted ads, and leveraging the power of consumers through user-generated content are among the strategies that can supercharge your quests, as highlighted above.