You’re already well into planning your client’s holiday marketing campaign strategy, if not already executing it, right? It may be scorching outside, but a certain singer is already telling people all she 'wants for Christmas' in many stores. Want to make your client’s 2023 holiday campaign as effective as possible? There are two trends you need to incorporate into your strategy: social media interaction and AI. 

Social Media Interaction and AI Predicted to Drive 2023 Holiday Sales

Social Media

Social’s Growing Influence

According to a report by Salesforce, social media ads are expected to deliver the best ROI this holiday season. In just the first quarter of this year:

• “Traffic referrals from social media platforms grew 27% year over year – even as the shopping journey became more complex and fragmented across an average of nine channels.”
• Social media’s influence reaches beyond the digital landscape. “In the past three months, more than half of consumers said they went to a physical store to see or buy products they discovered on their social feeds.”

Creating the best social media interaction with your client’s consumers is the key to driving record-​breaking sales this season.

How to Engage with Holiday Shoppers Using Social

Is your client decreasing their use of influencers to focus on social media interaction on their own channels? They’re doing the right thing! Salesforce says that shoppers are roughly twice as likely to buy a product advertised on a brand’s social feed than those influencers are promoting. Here are some tips and tricks to know when you should start pulling away from influencer marketing, according to a SalesFuel blog based on research from AdAge.

You also need to be sure your client is targeting their target audiences on the social channels they’re active on. You can look up that information on AudienceSCAN on AdMall by SalesFuel. There, you can see which social media channels that audience is the most active on.

Your client should be using social media interaction to promote their buy-​online-​pickup-​in-​store options, says AdAge. This trend that blew up in 2020 is still essential to today’s shoppers, with 39% seeking out retailers who offer the service. Last year, one out of every five online orders were fulfilled using buy-​online-​pickup-​in-​store services. And that number surged to one in three once the holiday shipping cutoff dates occurred.

Social and AI

The holiday season often leaves both agencies and brands stretched thin in the marketing department. Drafting content for social media interaction can be difficult with a million other things on your mind, especially if you want to make it sound original. How many possible ways can there be to tie your client’s products/​services into a holiday message? AI knows, and it can help.

Take advantage of AI this holiday season to take the burden of drafting content off you and your client’s shoulders. Even if you don’t always get a perfect social post straight from AI, it will at least provide you with a draft to work off of, saving you some effort in crafting a post from scratch.

AI

Personalized shopping experiences are now expected from consumers, they’re not just some delightful random occurrence. If a retailer’s website doesn’t offer a personalized shopping experience, many consumers will look for one who can. Boosting customer loyalty with personalized experiences can be done using AI.

AI-​generated product recommendations offer consumers “suggestions on the product detail page, in the shopping cart, and beyond,” says Salesforce. And generative AI takes personalization a step further. It uses “human prompts, algorithms, and data to create new and original content like text, images, and music.” Talk about personalization!

Overall, AI is expected to benefit the shopping experiences provided by your client to make site searches more human and natural. Plus, if your client incorporates AI into their chatbot, those responses will also be more human, offering better understanding, anticipation, and responses to consumers’ questions. Incorporating that into your client’s social media interaction via messenger can also be of great help to consumers.

Photo by bruce mars