Maximize Your Holiday Marketing Over Platforms Like Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram

With the end of the year coming to a close, this is now peak holiday season and true crunch time for any brand marketer that wants to be able to grab the interest of shoppers that are both new and returning. One of the best places to get the instant exposure, brand awareness and possible audience engagement is through social media marketing on platforms like Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram.

While there are countless e-commerce brands that are putting a large portion of their budget with these platforms, the true key to success is knowing how to differentiate the content and the ability to adapt for each platform. It goes without saying that what may work well in one platform is not going to always work with another. Without a one-size-fits-all outlet, performance brands need to be systematic in order to be successful – which means testing out ad placement, formatting, visuals, and messages to get some detailed insight on performance. When you document your findings, you can then use the information to mold your strategies for 2019.

Facebook, Pinterest, and Instagram have a variety of formatting available, so marketers should understand the best ways to work with them as a way to succeed this holiday season. These are some of the best practices to consider:

Stories Are A Hot Format Today

The Stories format is one of the more distinguished features available on Instagram today. Even though it was introduced years ago, today’s marketers are just now finding ways to utilize its power.

The main perk with Stories is that the brand is afforded a unique opportunity for their message to envelop the entire screen. There could even be three Story cards that run consecutively if you go with the carousel format. No matter the option you select, just be sure that you remember the benefits of using Stories may be incremental and should be used as a way for enhancing your message and never being a standalone campaign element.

You can make a Story feel organic when you mimic the content generated by the user. There is no need for producing an ad in the same manner as the ads you see in the Instagram feed. Stories can also be good for marketers to enhance branding for seasonal campaigns – think about showcasing snippets from a holiday shoot or use some testimonials from your real customers. Overall, branding is a nice funnel marketing strategy and the Stories format is excellent for it because it fits in easily with the other content that surrounds it.

Another good thing about Stories is that brands have the ability to make them interactive. An Instagram Story provides the “swipe up” feature for brands to design ads that cue an action and have animations or arrows that will draw the eye. You can easily further assist engagement by using visual elements like text, stickers, overlays, and GIFs so that the content and brand seem more approachable. Stories are now an available feature for placing ads on Facebook, as well. This means that your holiday season marketing can be ramped up so that you can also test the waters on this format. Because the Stories feature on Facebook is so new, it is not as saturated with brand advertising.

Storefront Formats On Facebook

Besides Stories, the Facebook marketing platform also offers advertising that should be a staple for any holiday marketing budget. Facebook Canvas and Collection ads offer a unique opportunity for brands to show off their products while allowing the consumer a way to window shop in a digital sense because the products in the ads are fully browsable.

The Canvas ad acts like a landing page or a mini-website that offers both inspiration while driving sales. This is a full-screen ad that helps to immerse the consumer in the brand. The Collection ad is a bit different because they are set up with a main image or video like an actual store window and you will have four product images underneath that are related. Although Collection ads are less flexible from a creative standpoint, they can be nice for direct-response advertising.

Pinterest Feed Tips

Compared to the other two formats, Pinterest is a bit different because most users look there to find inspiration and new brands. Advertising efforts need to be personalized and relevant for the targeted audience on all formats, but is even more so with Pinterest. The users on Pinterest are people that are planning for major life moments, including boards for weddings, party planning, and more.

Pinterest, unlike Instagram and Facebook, calls for actionable, strong copy because there are no limits on the amount of real estate that your message can conquer. You can put forth a range of fonts and creative messaging and you can be playful by including seasonal puns that match your brand or telling a story in your space. Thinking back to what make print advertising so popular will help you to be successful with your online Pinterest advertising.

For help with these and other formats of interest in relation to your marketing efforts, Top Marketing Agency is here to help. We are the authorities when it comes to social marketing campaigns and branding and we would like to talk to you about your advertising goals. Contact us today for a free marketing consultation by calling (800) 843-9840.