How to advertise your January sale on social media
So, you’re planning a January sale. Maybe you want to get rid of old stock? Or you might simply want a revenue boost at a time of year when cash flow is usually quite stagnant. Whatever the reason, you need to make sure your offers stand out, and social media advertising is one of the best ways to do that.
Once the excitement of Christmas is over, there’s little else to do but finish up the remainder of the Christmas chocolate in your pyjamas. Whilst doing this, many people will take to their screens to check their social media apps. This makes the final period of December the prime time to start garnering interest in your upcoming January discounts.
So, how do you go about it? Simply put, if you’re using social media to alert people to your sale, you need to lead with value. Here’s what you need to consider to ensure you capture people’s attention.
Identify your goals
This is the first and arguably the most important step in growing the visibility of your sale event. Sure, you’re looking to boost revenue. But how? Do you want more foot traffic through your store, more users visiting your site, or more email subscribers so that you can send them a discount via email? Decide this before you begin creating your content, as it’s likely to inform your post copy and text overlay on your images.
Next up, content plan. This should cover everything from the creative assets and copy you’ll have in each post, to the days of the week and times that you’re going to post them. You should start advertising your sale at least a couple of weeks prior to it starting, so that you can drum up a decent amount of interest.
Tips for designing your images/creative
Make sure your creative content for the sale follows a common theme so that your brand is easily recognisable.
Ensure any images are formatted correctly for the platform you’re posting on—you can use SproutSocial’s always up-to-date guide for social media image sizes to double check these. If you use Canva, there are template options available for each social platform.
If there’s text on your images, make sure it’s easy to read, and the most important information is the most obvious, e.g. up to 70% off (you can use the post copy to relay any fine print).
When it comes to figuring out what times you’re going to post, you first need to decide whether you’ll be using organic or paid content.
Organic content: Organic social media refers to the free content (posts, photos, videos, memes, Stories, etc.) that all users, including businesses and brands, share with each other on their feeds. (Hootsuite)
Paid content: Paid social media is another word for advertising. It’s when brands pay money to Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, YouTube, etc., in order to have their content shared with specific new targeted audiences who are likely to be interested, either through “boosting” their organic content, or designing unique advertisements. (Hootsuite)
Are you using organic content?
If you’re looking to promote your sale on a budget, then organic content is probably for you. You can create the images yourself using a tool like Canva, Adobe Photoshop or Figma and reduce costs by sharing the content with just your followers.
But, it can be hard to figure out the best times to post your content to maximise reach and engagement. Again, SproutSocial has put together a guide on the best times to post for each social media platform.
The thing to bear in mind with organic content is that only your followers will see your content (unless users share it to their own timelines), and even then, it’s likely to be a fraction of your followers rather than the entire list.
Are you using paid content?
If you want to make sure your content reaches the largest possible audience of engaged shoppers and people likely interested in your products, paid content is your best bet. For this type of content you’ll need to put aside some money to boost the delivery of your content to a wider audience.
You can still create your images and videos using tools like Canva, Figma and Adobe, but the actual posting of your content will be done through an ad platform like Facebook Ads Manager, where you can target people with specific interests and from certain demographics. For example, if you’re a homeware brand, you might want to target women aged 25 - 60 with an interest in interior design/home decor, and if your sale is in-store only, you’ll want to make sure you target people who live an appropriate distance from your store and would be willing to travel.
Paid content checklist
Decide your budget
This will differ from business to business, so it’s difficult to give an indication of what the ideal budget would be. However, most ads manager platforms will give you an indication of the daily reach and results based on the budget you input, so you can use trial and error until you land on the estimated results you want.
Chose the duration and dates of your ad
The length of your ad campaign will also affect your budget, as you want to ensure it stretches for the full duration. Normally, we suggest a minimum run-time for an ad campaign of 7 days, and a maximum of 14 depending on the size of your target audience.
Choose your ad objective(s)
Most ad platforms have a number of objectives you can choose from when you start creating your ad. The most popular objectives are probably traffic (directing people towards your website via your ad to increase users) and conversion (increasing sales). Ad platforms will optimise the delivery of your ad to the people most likely to take the action you’ve specified.
Lead generation
Another popular ad objective is lead generation. This is particularly useful for businesses getting ready to have a seasonal sale. You can gather a large number of leads in advance of your sale going live by promising a further 10% discount to email subscribers.
This is great for increasing site traffic during your sale period but also for promoting increased revenue in the long term. For example, you could use an email marketing software like Klaviyo or Mailchimp to set up automated email flows to remind people of their abandoned baskets on your site, mid-season sales or new product launches.
Social media advertising can be done on a shoestring or with a more generous budget—but both methods go a long way to improving the visibility of your brand and your products. Leads can be generated through paid or organic social media content, and building your database in this way will help not only with your upcoming sale, but your customer retention and loyalty in the long-term.
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