We’re in the home stretch now - there’s just 2 weeks left until the big day. If you’re running around worrying about packing material, working around staff vacations, or checking in on inventory, then social media might fall to the bottom of your to-do list. But did you know that consumers complete 53% of their Christmas shopping in the last two weeks before Christmas? That’s a lot of last-minute sales! Social media can prove invaluable in making sure you don’t miss out on these sales.
We’re here with some top tips and ideas to make sure that you can make the most of these last days in the run up to Christmas.
Promote Your Ordering Deadlines
First and foremost, you need to keep your customers in the loop about key dates. These include:
- Last day and time for ordering in time for Christmas
- When they can expect those orders to be delivered
- When orders will ship and arrive after the Christmas deadline
- When will your offices be closed i.e. Customer support
Advertising these now not only lets your customers know what to expect, but it also encourages them to get those orders in early as they can now see there’s a deadline. Promote this on social media a couple times throughout this week, the day before the deadline, and the morning of the deadline.
Top Tip: Set your order-by date to the day before your chosen courier’s deadline. E.g. if it’s the 18th, tell your customers they need to order by the 17th. This not only gives you more time to pick and pack orders, but it also means that you can potentially ship those orders that come in just after the deadline. A customer will never be unhappy that a shipment will arrive earlier than expected, especially around this time of the year!
Offer Last Minute Incentives
Incentives are a great way to grab your customers’ attention. Most people think of incentives as discount codes, but you can also try:
Giveaways
An example of an effective giveaway for this period would be that every order between now and Christmas is entered into a prize draw to win some sort of prize. You can also run a smaller Share-to-Win giveaway on social media to advertise the Order-to-Win giveaway, which will help increase its reach.
Limited Time Offers
Running a flash sale on your most popular items and advertising this on social media will grab the attention of those customers who were perhaps on the fence about placing an order. It could be for one day only or less, and combining this with a small amount of advertising spend on Facebook and Instagram will make sure it reaches those customers most interested in making a purchase.
Free or Reduced Shipping
Shipping costs play a huge role in a customer’s purchasing decision - 57% of US consumers say that they’ll outright cancel an order if the shipping cost is too high. During these last two weeks, consider offering free or reduced shipping - it may seem like a large cost to absorb, but discounted shipping does increase the likelihood that a customer will make a purchase. And once they’ve made that purchase, they’re more likely to become a repeat customer if the service is good.
Keep on Top of Social Customer Care
Social Customer Care is the new Customer Service — more and more people want to use and are using social media to contact brands and companies with their issues and concerns. Need some stats? 67% of consumers have used social media to contact a brand for customer service needs, and 34.5% prefer using social media over traditional methods like email and phone. And it isn’t just about providing that care over social media, but the care does need to be on point — 42% of consumers expect a response in less than 60 minutes when they contact a brand on social media.
So what can you do?
-
Make sure someone on your team is assigned to checking in on social media customer enquiries as much as possible.
-
Use an auto-response to tell your customers who contact you when your service hours are.
- Prepare an FAQ for your team members to use as a guide for responding to customer enquiries.
We also get asked about how to deal with negative comments that customers make on a public post. In this situation, you want to respond as quickly as possible:
- Maintain a polite, friendly tone
- Open with something cordial - e.g. “Hi [name], Thank you for reaching out, we hope we can help get this sorted right away!”
- Show that you understand the customer’s frustration - e.g. “We understand that at this of the year, getting an answer right away about shipping is so important”
- Offer an explanation for the situation - e.g. “We’ve been dealing with a high number of enquiries via email recently, and we of course apologize for the inconvenience.”
- Tell them how this will be resolved - e.g. “Please DM us your order number, and we’ll make sure someone looks into the situation ASAP”
This approach ensures that not only is the individual situation being dealt with, but that your other followers can see you are dealing with the situation in a polite and effective way. The key is not to hide from negative feedback but to face it head on and resolve it quickly in a way that shows off how great your customer care really is.
Plan Content for Over Christmas and New Year
It’s Christmas Day, you’ve been chilling out with your family all morning, you’re sitting in your pajamas…OH NO. You’ve forgotten to do anything with social media! No message to wish followers a Merry Christmas, no thank you to customers who placed an order…and there’s nothing in the calendar for the days after Christmas when you’ve got your end of year sale planned.
The way to avoid that nightmare situation is to go ahead and schedule your content now. Plan for at least a week after Christmas to give yourself time to enjoy the holiday, then deal with orders from over Christmas, and get back into gear for the New Year. This will save you time and stress knowing that your followers are still getting their regular content so you can focus on other matters.
Create Gift Guides
Everyone has different reasons for waiting till the last minute to order gifts, but a very common reason is just not knowing what to buy. We all have that uncle or cousin who we need to buy something for…but just don’t know what to get. Or your dad really likes golf, but you don’t know anything about it.
We mentioned in our last blog that gift guides are a really fantastic way to showcase your products. Gift guides are your opportunity to not just advertise your products, but give your customers ideas especially now in the last two weeks before Christmas. They have a problem, and you’re here with the solution. It might be more general like “Gifts for Dad”, or really specific like “Essential Gifts for the Amateur Photographer”.
You can also combine these gift guides with a giveaway or other incentive to really increase their potential reach.