by Looking for ways to market your products on Instagram during the holidays? Want to generate more seasonal sales?
In this article, you'll find six tips for holiday marketing on Instagram.
#1: Drive Sales and Generate Leads With Shoppable Instagram Posts and Holiday Gift Guides
Finding the right gifts for friends and family can be a daunting task so many holiday shoppers delay those purchases. In fact, more than 50% of U.S. consumers are last-minute shoppers. To cater to them, consider publishing a gift guide with gift ideas to ease their holiday stress.
Use Instagram carousel posts to share mini-gift guides with your audience and feature relevant offerings from your product catalog. Offer ideas tailored for different audiences or budgets to help consumers find the right gift for the person they're shopping for.
To make it easy for your audience to buy the products you feature, use Instagram shoppable posts. Consumers can then tap on the product tags for items they're interested in and see details about them in-app. Read this article to learn how to get approved for Instagram Shopping so you can enable product tagging.
Video can also play a role in sharing gift ideas with your audience on Instagram. According to a Wyzol survey, 72% of customers prefer to watch a video to learn about a product or service.
In addition to guiding shoppers to a purchase, a downloadable gift guide can help you generate leads from Instagram. Include a link to your gift guide in your Instagram bio and ask your audience to sign up for it. When people find your content valuable, they're more likely to share their contact information with you.
#2: Leverage Scarcity and Fear of Missing Out to Drive Sales
The holiday season is perfect for limited-time offers to appeal to shoppers looking for unique and interesting gifts for their friends and family. Product offerings that are only available for a short period of time and in limited supply create a sense of urgency that motivates Instagram shoppers to make a purchase.
Many shoppers eagerly anticipate the launch of special seasonal products. Let's take Starbucks' Pumpkin Spice Latte as an example. It's one of the most popular seasonal products every year and generates tremendous buzz on social media.
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GET THE DETAILSBusinesses of any size can design seasonal offerings that will appeal to their unique customer base. If you run a local brewery, for instance, you might have a special blend that you offer only at this time of year. Or if you're an eCommerce store, you could design a specially curated holiday gift set that's available in limited quantities.
Build anticipation by announcing your holiday products in advance. Use your Instagram bio, stories, feed posts, and reels to promote your offerings and emphasize the limited timeframe. To ensure you publish your time-sensitive content to best effect, schedule your posts through Creator Studio or use a social media scheduling tool.
#3: Partner With Micro-Influencers Your Customers Trust for Recommendations
In recent years, Instagram has emerged as the most popular influencer marketing channel where opinion leaders can get in touch with their followers and share their views. Instagram users routinely follow influencers on the platform and a Sideqik study found that 70% of people trust influencers' recommendations as much as their real-world friends.
For businesses, working with niche influencers presents an opportunity to cut through the noise and reach their potential audience with ease.
If you partner with niche influencers to spread the word about your seasonal offerings on Instagram, ask them to share these recommendations via Instagram stories as well. The content's short 24-hour lifespan helps create a sense of urgency. What's more, many influencers have access to valuable Stories features like clickable links that help improve the customer's shopping experience.
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Goodnight Macaroon Boutique teamed up with fashion influencer Nicole Neissany to promote their store and share a unique discount code with her followers. The content linked back to the boutique's website so interested viewers could see and purchase featured products.
#4: Ensure Product and Brand Visibility With Instagram Ad Campaigns
As you compete with other brands for visibility this holiday season, Instagram ads are one of the best ways to reach potential customers fast. Instagram's robust targeting features let you zero in on the right audience for your business.
To make the most of your Instagram ad campaigns and turn interested consumers into customers, take advantage of product tags and clickable links in your ads.
#5: Let Your Community Help Build a Seasonal Feed of Social Proof for You
With 25 million businesses on Instagram, it's challenging to stand out from the crowd. But having a beautiful Instagram feed with a unique brand style can be an effective way to grab the attention of consumers and promote your products. After all, Instagram is a visual platform and many people are visual learners.
If you're not one of the world's famous brands with a big in-house design team, though, creating unique holiday-related visuals can be daunting. In that case, why not turn to your community for content?
Featuring seasonal user-generated content (UGC) on your Instagram feed can help you create a festive mood and celebrate your Instagram following at the same time. If users share photos of your product on Instagram, chances are they're satisfied with its quality and that serves as a trust signal to potential customers.
To get more UGC on Instagram, consider working with brand ambassadors. When people are genuinely interested in spreading the word about your brand, they're more likely to share photos or videos on Instagram, which can often inspire others to do the same.
When it comes to the holiday season, people search for information around a specific theme and hashtags help social media users discover relevant content. Creating a branded holiday hashtag for your business is a great way to grab your followers' attention and increase engagement.
Last year, Cluse created the #MerryCLUSEmas hashtag campaign to gather holiday-related posts from their Instagram audience. The hashtag they chose is both brand-specific and holiday-related.
Pro Tip: Another option to fill your Instagram feed with seasonal content is to repurpose stock images or videos. Read this article to discover sites where you can find premium background images and videos for your Instagram posts.
#6: Reward Your Instagram Followers With a Seasonal Contest or Giveaway
The season of giving is an ideal time to show your appreciation to your Instagram followers and reward them for their loyalty and trust. One way to do that is to run an Instagram contest or giveaway that offers participants an opportunity to win valuable prizes from your business. It also has the potential to drive engagement from your audience and get you more visibility on the platform.
With Instagram contests or giveaways, it's up to you to decide what the prize will be and how long it will run. You can give away brand freebies, gift cards, or even cash.
Obviously, the longer the contest or giveaway runs, the more potential participants you can attract. To build hype and give more people an opportunity to win, consider running a series of giveaways. Last year, PassionPlanner organized their giveaways around “12 Days of Giving.”
Pro Tip: To draw attention to your seasonal Instagram contest or giveaway, include basic information in the image itself so your followers can quickly read pertinent details about it while scrolling the feed.
Conclusion
With the outbreak of COVID-19, consumers will be turning to online shopping more than ever before this holiday season. For businesses on Instagram, the ability to sell products in-app with product tags and in-app checkout makes Instagram an important marketplace with great sales potential. Try these six Instagram marketing ideas to reach your target audience and drive holiday sales.
What do you think? Which of these tactics will you try on Instagram this holiday season? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
More articles on Instagram marketing:
- Learn how to use Instagram filters on feed posts, stories, and reels.
- Discover four places to drop your links on Instagram and get tips to optimize your links for clicks.
- Find four ways to reach a wider audience on Instagram.
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