It may seem too early to start thinking about social media marketing campaigns for the holiday season but it’s not! Any successful campaign takes a lot of planning, which helps to create an outline for the future. Starting to plan out campaigns months in advance allows you to have a clear idea of what content to put out to your audience and how to execute it well. 

Essential Elements of Holiday Campaigns

#1 Campaign Objectives 

For every campaign you need to clarify your campaign’s objectives. Most holiday campaigns’ goals would be to drive sales/conversions. Before you are able to reach that ultimate goal you may need to focus on bringing awareness to your product/generate leads. You will need to set clear goals for each of your objectives and how you want to track the success of them. 

#2 Platforms

Once you have clearly defined your campaign objectives you will need to decide what social media platforms you want to feature your campaign on. It would make sense to utilize all social media platforms that your brand is present on or to focus your efforts on your most popular social media platform. This decision can be made by looking at what has been successful during past campaigns by platform.

You would also want to look at the benefits and capabilities of each platform. For example if you need a landing page attached, Instagram would not be the best option. If you want to be able to use an in-app shopping tool, Instagram would be a great option for your holiday campaign. 

#3 Strategy

You will now need to think about how these social media platforms can help you reach your goals for this campaign. You can do this by creating an offer for your target audience. Here are a few examples of what kind of offers you can provide:

• Create a tripwire ( conversion-acceleration hack that convinces target consumers to buy something small from you) to create interest and gain new customers
• Offer something for free with purchase as an incentive for more purchases 
• Offer a lead magnet (free item or service that is given away for the purpose of gathering contact details) to help your company generate leads
• Create a promo code or seasonal discount to increase sales

Once you choose your offer you must decide how you want to promote it on social media. Here are some examples of successful holiday marketing strategies:

• Run social media paid ads to increase reach and revenue unavailable through organic interactions
• Share followers content to connect with your actual customers
• Partner with different influencers to reach a new audience
• Run a giveaway to promote and create interest in your brand

#4 Assets 

Once you have your strategy figured out you will need to decide what type of creative assets you need for your campaign. The amount of assets that you will need to plan out will depend on the amount of social media posts that you have planned. A good rule of thumb is to post a holiday campaign image at least once a week for the duration of the campaign, but sometimes more, if applicable. This will allow you to promote the campaign while continuing to market your other resources. 

You will also need to begin to draft the actual content that will show up during your campaign and plan out the posting schedule. You may want to give a sneak peak of what is to come to create excitement.

#5 Trackable URLs

Trackable URLs are crucial to a successful campaign. You are able to use Google Analytics Campaign URL builder to create parameters for content that drives your website traffic. Once the campaign URLs are created you can add them to any upcoming social media post to be used by your customers.

#6 Paid Content 

Once you have everything else squared away you will need to create and execute paid social media content. This can be done through paid social ads, influencers, ect. This allows your audience to turn into customers. You will also need to choose what kind of ad will best suit your needs. 

Campaign Planning Timelines

One crucial aspect of social media holiday campaigns is when to begin the planning process and when to launch the actual campaign. A good rule is to begin the planning process for any holiday campaign at least six months before the actual holiday. This allows you to launch during the shopping season for this holiday and maximize your profits. It is suggested to finalize all assets and begin to schedule them out a month before your launch date. You will then want to reassess your content calendar and adjust accordingly about two weeks before. During this time any other tasks or timing of posts can be assigned. 

Below we have created a chart for the timelines of any 2022 holiday campaigns that your company may want to create. This can help you with the planning and timing for your content. 

By following the steps given above as well as the timelines below your holiday social media campaigns are bound to be successful!

Holiday	Begin Brainstorming	Finalize Plan/Content	Launch Date	Wrap Date
Halloween	Early May	September 1	Between mid-September and October 1	October 31 (Halloween)
Thanksgiving	Early June	mid-September	mid-October	November 24 (Thanksgiving)
Black Friday/ Cyber Monday	Early June	Between mid-September and mid-October	Tease in early November Full launch one week before	November 29(Day after Cyber Monday)
Hanukkah	mid-June	Early October	Early November	December 27(Day after Hanukkah holiday season)
Christmas (applicable for: Boxing Day and Kwanzaa)	Late June	Early October	Early November	Wrap after applicable holiday
New Years	Late June	mid-November	mid-December	mid-January