While some of our clients tend to ramp their marketing down during the holidays, such is not the case in the world of retail. This season is the busiest time for the retail industry, which has its advantages and disadvantages when it comes to running social media ads during the holidays.

These tips take both the pluses and minuses into account!

Tips for running social media ads during the holidays

Get your specials out there.

One advantage of running social media ads during the holidays—everyone is already shopping! It’s the best time to use your digital ads to promote your holiday specials and end-of-year deals.

Give people plenty of time to take advantage of what you’re offering.

Since the holiday season does exist within a limited time frame, we suggest starting your promotions early—to give people plenty of time to make their purchases. Even if your brand is not in the market of Christmas gifts, the world in general is busier around the holidays—so your clients or customers will appreciate any extra time to take your offers into consideration.

That being said, we suggest starting to run holiday ads around the beginning of November.

Don’t stop at Christmas.

While starting your holiday ads early is great, so is letting them run longer. Why? Because post-Christmas, people are returning items, looking for deals and spending their gift cards. Consider having some ads run beyond the holiday rush to appeal to consumers that fit into these categories.

Keep in mind: you’ll have competition.

Competition in the social media ad space exists year-round. But it’s especially heightened during the holidays. What does that mean for you when it comes to running social media ads?

For one, you should avoid competing with yourself. Facebook and Instagram ads, for instance, work on a bid system, so if you have multiple ads running on the same ad account simultaneously, they are essentially competing against one another.

For two, we’ll move on to our next point.

You may want to up your budget.

With rampant competition, a higher budget for running social media ads during the holidays can help give you a leg up. Think about allocating some extra dollars to your holiday digital ads to make the most of the hard work you put into them.

Be festive.

Our last piece of advice? Have fun with it! Santa, sleighs, snow—there are so many possibilities when it comes to incorporating holiday festiveness into your seasonal social media ad content. Don’t miss this opportunity to get in the spirit!

Summary

Should you run social media ads during the holidays? If it makes sense for your brand and industry, we say absolutely! Keep these suggestions in mind to get more traction.

McNutt & Partners is a full-service advertising and digital marketing agency. Contact us today for your marketing needs! Call 334-521-1010, or visit our contact page.