It’s not too early for brands to start thinking about the holiday period, and how they can drive sales at this time. With purchase intent already on your side, we at The Practice hope our tips will help generate that extra push.

Now is the time to pay particular attention to your demographic, separating repeat customers from potential new purchasers. Brand advocates tend to be particularly vocal about products around the holiday season, and will typically share content by word of mouth and via social media. Latest figures show that 70% of consumers expect personalized content, which you can create based on the actions and preferences of past purchasers. Revisit these using audience targeting on Facebook and Twitter posts, first determining the different audiences you wish to target, and then deciding on budget and schedule. Or, you can do the reverse, and let your audience come to you first. This is what Barnes and Noble did last year in a well-executed holiday campaign on Twitter. The retailer noticed a trend in the amount of followers asking for suggestions for holiday gifts, and so established a campaign to offer personalized recommendations. In this, Barnes and Noble asked followers to accompany all such tweets with the hash tag, #BNGiftTip to help discovery, and then replied to each one.

Social media marketing will be key for this period- but don’t just focus on Facebook and Twitter. Visual merchandising will be helped hugely by a strong and active Pinterest account, so now is the time to start creating new campaign boards. One of the most lucrative Pinterest marketing tactics is the use of rich pins- those which display prices and product information. These will help your product inventory mirror that of your main site, driving on-page engagement, and encouraging click-throughs. Target exemplified this in their Pinterest Thanksgiving campaign last year, helping them to achieve a 70% increase in visits to their home site. The company produced a board entitled, “Best.Party.Ever” featuring the secrets to creating the perfect holiday party. This include exclusive recipes and decorating ideas, intertwined with rich pins from Target’s site, helping followers to imagine products in context.

And when it comes to visual engagement, Instagram is certainly just as powerful. One of the best campaigns last year was created by Asos, who launched their take on an “Advent calendar” countdown. The retail brand opened a designated Instagram account entitled asos_advent, posting images of prizes up for grabs each day in the run up to Christmas. Followers who uploaded or tagged their own holiday snaps accompanied by the competition hash tag, #instaadvent, were then eligible to win the items displayed. This generated an increase in product awareness as well as user engagement, likely reinforcing Asos as the online destination for Christmas gifts. As this example illustrates, brands should focus on story-telling, using each image as part of a wider campaign, and employ as much creative variety as possible, not just with photos, but with video too.

Are you a business owner intent on driving further sales for your brand this holiday season? Which social media best practices have you found most profitable in the past? We’d love to hear your thoughts, so please tweet to us @PracticeDigital and share your comments on our Facebook page.