With Easter fast approaching, Rebecca Wikman considers how marketers can strategically leverage social media to maximise seasonal spending.

This Easter is set to be special, especially for those that are lucky enough to reunite with families for the first time in months or even a year.

Last year, the annual sales boost that many businesses have come to expect delivered lacklustre results due to the outbreak of the global pandemic in the month preceding. However, as restrictions and pandemic-anxiety ease for people around the country, this Easter will also mark what will, hopefully, be a spike in income through consumer spending for businesses across a range of sectors.

Predictably, a large part of these sales are expected to take place online. Online sales have surged since the outbreak of COVID-19, with figures showing Australians have spent a total of $27.9 billion online in the period between September 2019 to August 2020. This rapid demand in ecommerce requires businesses to pivot to a digital-first marketing strategy to ensure that it aligns and adapts to behavioural changes in consumer spending. Key to a successful digital first marketing strategy is a concrete focus on social media.

To get set for the upcoming consumer spending boost, marketers should be honing in on and perfecting their social media approach in order to maximise their share of the market.

Follow an omnichannel approach to socials

The omnichannel trend is fast spreading and is a much-hyped buzzword for professionals in CX and customer service, but one that deserves its reputation. From a social media perspective, it encourages marketers to create a brand presence, build a following and manage communities across multiple platforms.

While some argue that it’s important to craft a targeted approach, which establishes and promotes your brand presence on just one or two social platforms, it’s also important to start thinking about broadening your reach by considering an omnichannel approach.

This broad strategy may be criticised as lacking refinement or definition, but omnichannel does not mean unrefined or ill-considered. A successful omnichannel social media approach, will ensure that each social media channel you choose to play in, will ultimately be well integrated into your holistic brand marketing strategy – leveraging themes to tie each social media presence together or utilising technology to integrate socials and simplify the management process.

Leverage data to inform social strategy

To get the most out of your omnichannel social media strategy, it’s critical that you take advantage of social media, sales and consumer data to create social media marketing campaigns that are highly-targeted and effective.

Social data will allow you to target specific audiences based on interests and behavioural trends, ensuring that your social media campaigns and content are as personalised and relevant as possible. Once you’ve collected any available social data you might have access to, look at figures around engagement on different platforms, individual post performance and the time of day engagement is most likely to occur. From here, you can then use this data to inform your social strategy, thereby optimising social spend, brand tone and timing.

Get onboard video content

2020 was the year of the video. Not only did video platforms enable us to remain connected with one another during widespread lockdowns, but video content also saw an exponential growth during this time. At Clipchamp, we reported a 200 percent year-on-year uplift in monthly new users and a 280 percent uplift in monthly video exports – a testament to the consistent and rapid growth of video. Additionally, according to social media platform, Pinterest, users report a higher likelihood of purchasing a product if they’ve seen branded video content compared to those brands who don’t. With a monthly active user base of over 459 million who clock in nearly 1 billion video views per day, it’s clear the value of video in brand marketing is unsurpassed.

With this in mind, as a savvy social media marketer, your content pipeline should include imagery, copy and video assets. There are a range of solutions that can help even the most inexperienced video producers create professional, engaging content in the blink of an eye.

Strengthened strategy 

Once you’ve perfected your social media strategy, there’s no doubt that you’ll reap the benefits through an increase in sales, brand awareness and loyalty. Remember, Rome wasn’t built in a day and neither are strong social media communities. The key is persistence, consistency and engagement. If you can start building on these in time for Easter, the payback will be all the greater as we move forward through the year.

Rebecca Wikman is the head of growth at Clipchamp.