The holiday season is the most important time of year for businesses. It’s a make-or-break season that can keep you afloat for the entire year. But an underperforming holiday season can spell disaster for businesses of all sizes.
That’s why it’s so important to zero in on modern marketing trends, adopting them so that you don’t get left in the dust by your biggest competitors.
One huge trend in the social media marketing world right now is social video. This visual medium has taken the social media world by storm and should prove to be a major marketing element of the holiday season.
But what is social video? Why is it important? And how can you incorporate social video into your holiday marketing?
We’re going to address all of these questions and more throughout this article.
What is Social Video?
Social video is short-form video content shared on social platforms like Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, Snapchat, and YouTube. These videos typically last between 30 seconds and a full minute. While this isn’t nearly enough time to go into great detail, it does provide ample time to deliver a singular message.
These videos should be entertaining in nature, as they’re easy to consume and share. They also have the potential to go viral and bring a ton of new attention to your pages.
Social videos are also typically targeted to a specific audience and optimized with specific keywords and hashtags that will appeal to a chosen population. Of course, gaining viewers organically can be a challenge. That’s why it’s often better to invest some of your marketing budget into boosting these videos. This ensures that your video will be shown to its intended audience, giving you your best chance at market penetration and improved brand awareness.
Why is Social Video Important This Holiday Season?
Social video is important because it’s effective.
How effective is social video?
A massive 93% of brands in 2022 have said they received new business because of their videos on social media platforms. Right there, that should show you how vital it is to get the word out about your product using social video marketing. They use this method to create authentic testimonials and explainer videos, as well as product promotions in a way that's uniquely suited for each platform
During the holiday season specifically, people are looking for promotions, discounts, and ideas for gifts. But businesses are also defining budgets for the coming year, creating an opportunity for B2B organizations to capitalize on the holiday season as well.
If you’re a business that provides virtual receptionist services like HelloRache, you might find the holiday season a perfect time to promote your business. This is the time when people are more receptive to receiving and learning about new products. During the holidays, HelloRache typically creates videos to post on social networks with a theme based on the people it targets.
Let’s say you’re a courier service company looking to create social videos for the holiday season. You can use these short videos to show your potential customers how many deliveries typically pop up during this busy time. Your potential clients likely have many gifts that need to be delivered to customers and clients, and a social video can be the perfect platform to show them how you can help.
Demonstrate how your business can collaborate with them by delivering these gifts, perhaps dressed up as Santa Claus or an elf to help spread the holiday spirit.
More than 50% of marketers have stated that video marketing provides them with the best ROI, even over other tried and true marketing platforms like Google Ads. That means you can stand to increase your return on investment and make a strong showing this holiday season by investing in social ads and rolling out a strong campaign.
But what do you need to do to implement such a campaign? That’s what we’ll be covering in the next section.
How Can You Incorporate Social Video This Holiday Season?
Target Your Content
You need to design content for both the audience you have and the audience you want to attract. This means taking their specific likes and dislikes into account when designing social videos for the holiday season.
You can leverage different types of videos for your social media to keep your audience engaged. This includes ads, Reels, and slideshows. However, you need to make sure all the visuals grab the viewers’ attention from the start. With the help of a professional video and photo editor, you can create the most festive and striking videos specifically designed for your audience.
Take their wants, needs, pain points, and sensibilities into account when creating this content. Then, target your video posts specifically to these people. Use popular hashtags that resonate with your audience and boost your posts so that you can enter demographic targeting data.
Through social platforms like Facebook, you can target viewers based on criteria like:
- Age
- Location
- Occupation
- Interests
- Income
- Gender
- Marital status
- And more!
Include Slogans and Marketing Messages
A great way to ensure that your business message sticks in the minds of your viewers is to include very specific branding in the form of slogans and marketing messages specific to your company and the holiday campaign.
Try including holiday-themed slogans and CTAs in your videos along with your landing pages, social media posts and emails. This can be a subtle way to add personality to your holiday campaign. Try to be original and come up with something both fresh and engaging. These ideas should align with your brand voice, but that could be easier said than done. If you need some extra help, you can always turn to online tools like a paraphrase generator to test different slogans and caption generators to get past your creative block.
Create a YouTube Channel
YouTube is one of the most popular social channels on the planet, and you can post your social videos there for maximum exposure. YouTube Shorts are a new Reel-type video that allows you to capitalize on the benefits and popularity of these short-form social videos.
YouTube boasts an extensive user base of over 2.5 billion individuals worldwide as of April 2023. 91% of respondents want to encounter more online videos created by brands in 2023.
That’s why creating a YouTube channel for your brand or business is essential. Imagine you have a company that specializes in real estate web design. Creating a YouTube channel that features high-quality short videos explaining everything related to these topics would be a great strategy to attract thousands of real estate agents interested in growing their businesses.
By including subtitles, calls to action, popular music, special holiday content, and interesting captions to make your videos more interesting, you can grab the attention of your chosen audience and attract thousands of viewers and potential customers.
Share these videos on other social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, and TikTok for maximum exposure.
Hype Specific Products
Because social videos are often so short, you’re going to have to really focus on specific products in each video this holiday season.
While a video hyping your entire product line might be too much for this format, consider dedicating videos to single products, going in-depth on their uses and benefits.
By adding popular key products through social videos, you’ll be able to generate customer attention for your biggest sellers. Take the gaming industry, for instance. It can be targeted across multiple generations. Superheroes, in particular, have a ton of popularity and goodwill with audiences thanks to huge blockbuster movies.
In the gaming industry, people like to play as their favorite heroes. That means gaming companies with superhero IP content should create videos specifically focusing on those heroes and their accessories.
Create a video hyping a Catwoman pickaxe skin or an alternate costume for Spider-Man to draw major attention for the holiday season.
By understanding what products need the biggest push and focusing your short social videos around them, you’ll be able to generate a ton of interest. This leads to likes, comments, shares, and, ultimately, conversions.
Use the Right Tools
When creating a holiday video promo for your products, it’s all about the visual elements. You must present a polished product that is appealing and eye-catching. If you want your social videos to be helpful in drawing your audience's attention, they need to be of a certain quality.
Thankfully, creating stunning imagery without breaking the bank has never been easier. Make sure you’re using quality video and photo editing software, backing your videos with exciting and appropriate music, and filming in high definition.
You can access Adobe’s creative suite for a small monthly fee or use smartphone apps or online tools like PowerDirector and BIGVU to edit videos.
Summary
Social video will be a huge difference-maker this holiday season. You can use it to draw attention to your products and create a viral splash in the market to ensure that you have a profitable end to the year.
To review, make sure that you’re:
- Targeting your content to your audience
- Including slogans and holiday-themed marketing messages in your videos
- Running a YouTube channel and posting YouTube Shorts
- Hyping specific products in these short videos
- Using the right tools to help you create high-quality videos for social media
By following the advice laid out in this guide, you’ll be able to push your products and keep up with your competitors through what’s sure to be a busy holiday season.
Author Bio
Shane Barker is a digital marketing consultant who specializes in influencer marketing, content marketing, and SEO. He is also the co-founder and CEO of Content Solutions, a digital marketing agency. He has consulted with Fortune 500 companies, influencers with digital products, and a number of A-List celebrities.
