Holiday Social Advertising Planning 2024: What to Consider Before Decking the Halls

Planning for the end-of-year holiday shopping season is a big deal for retailers. Retailers must plan strategically to stand out in the crowded holiday shopping season. While social advertising shines in building brand awareness, it is also a performance channel that drives sales and, thus, a key component to a well-balanced marketing holiday media plan.

Building brand awareness through paid social ads is crucial year-round, but it’s even more vital during the holidays. Consumers are flooded with deals and offers, so standing out means more than just offering great discounts—it means being visible and memorable.

Paid social ensures your brand remains at the top of shoppers’ minds, making it easier for them to remember you when they start their holiday purchases. Awareness leads to consideration, and consideration eventually drives those all-important conversions.

Holiday media plans must be wrapped up soon to allow for revisions, approvals, and enough time for your social teams to prepare everything. Before you finalize your paid social plan, take a moment to check out the key considerations in this blog post. Ensuring you’ve covered all the bases will set you up for a successful holiday season.

Now, let’s dive into the must-have elements for your holiday social advertising strategy.

Adjust your budget for seasonal shoppers

When planning your social advertising budget for the holidays, analyzing which channels and ad formats have delivered the best results in previous seasons and throughout this year is a great place to start. What has worked with shoppers on social? What kind of competitive judo can you employ this holiday season to beat your rivals to the punch?

Allocating your budget across major platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, and Snapchat is essential for effectively reaching your target audience. 

For Facebook, its detailed targeting options and robust ad formats make it a powerhouse for reaching a broad audience and driving conversions. Planning to allocate a significant portion of your budget here is wise during the holiday season, especially if you have strong past performance data. Utilize Facebook’s analytics tools to measure the impact and adjust spending as needed throughout the campaign.

On Instagram, the emphasis on visually driven content is perfect for holiday-themed brand storytelling and product showcases. Engaging with a younger demographic through high-quality visual content and interactive ad formats like Stories and Reels can be particularly effective..

TikTok is ideal for reaching Gen Z and younger Millennials with creative, short-form video content. Planning with a smaller budget to test the waters and scaling up based on performance can be smart. Allocating enough budget for creative production is key to delivering engaging, authentic content that resonates with TikTok’s audience during the holiday rush. Great ads can be done cheaply, but you may need to bump up your creative game for the holidays with higher production costs.

For Snapchat, reaching a younger audience with ephemeral, visually engaging content is effective during the holidays. Allocating budget to Snap Ads and Sponsored Lenses/Filters can capture the attention of this demographic. A strategy for monitoring ad performance and making necessary adjustments will help maximize engagement and conversions.

Having clear objectives for your holiday social advertising campaign s— brand awareness, sales, or cross-channel conversions — helps understand what’s working and allows for timely adjustments. Planning to leverage the tools these platforms offer to measure the impact of your campaigns is crucial for making the most of your holiday budget.

Ad formats matter in the planning stage

Social advertising offers a robust set of creative options for holiday media planning. Each platform provides unique ad formats to engage users at various stages of their journey, from discovery to purchase. But remember, each format has a different cost to produce. While you may want to invest heavily into video ads, feed ads, and other more simplistic formats might need to be part of the mix to keep costs down.

Here’s how to consider these formats for your holiday media plan.

Early in the customer journey

When planning your holiday media strategy, capturing attention early is crucial. Allocate budget, time, and creative resources to Facebook and Instagram’s image and video ads, including Stories ads, to highlight holiday themes and products. Invest in TikTok’s short videos and Branded Hashtag Challenges to attract new audiences. Plan to use Snap Ads and Sponsored Lenses on Snapchat to create memorable, interactive experiences that build initial interest.

Middle of the customer journey

Focus on nurturing interest in the middle stages of the customer journey. When allocating your budget and resources, consider utilizing Facebook and Instagram’s Carousel and Collection ads. These formats allow users to explore multiple products within a single ad, enhancing their consideration phase. Include TikTok’s Video Shopping Ads in your plan, as they provide a seamless path to a landing page with more product details. Plan to use Snapchat’s Collection Ads to facilitate easy exploration of your holiday products.

End of the customer journey

Think ahead to build a strong holiday plan that drives conversions at the journey’s end with shoppable and retargeting ads. Use Facebook and Instagram’s Dynamic Ads to retarget holiday shoppers with personalized product recommendations. Include TikTok’s shoppable video ads in your strategy, directly linking to purchases and capitalizing on user interest. On Snapchat, ensure you use Dynamic Ads to retarget users with products they’ve already viewed, encouraging them to complete their purchase.

A detailed holiday social advertising plan is crucial for guiding customers from discovery to purchase. By strategically selecting the right ad formats and allocating your budget, time, and resources accordingly, you can create a seamless and engaging holiday campaign that maximizes your impact.

Keep your audience in mind

When putting the final touches on your social advertising holiday plan, starting with your audience is crucial. The essential step is identifying where your audience spends their time online. Your plan should identify which platforms and formats will best reach and engage your target customers during the festive season.

Understanding the audience on each platform is a critical part of your planning. Snapchat and TikTok are excellent for targeting younger generations, such as Gen Z and Millennials, who often look for the latest trends and engaging content. Facebook remains popular with Boomers and Gen X, making it ideal for reaching an older, more established audience. Instagram attracts a diverse group but is particularly strong among younger users who value visual content and influencer recommendations. Knowing where your target audience spends their time can help you tailor your campaigns more effectively as you finalize your holiday plan.

Social platforms offer advanced targeting tools that allow you to tailor your messaging to specific interests and demographics. Unlike paid search and retail media, where you often wait for shoppers to search for your keywords, social advertising allows you to proactively push ads to niche groups without any specific trigger.

For example, if you’re promoting light-up lawn elves for the holiday season, you can directly target holiday decor enthusiasts with highly specific content. This ensures that your ads reach the right audience, helping them find exactly what they want with your brand. As you finalize your holiday plan, leverage these tools to segment your audience and deliver personalized messages that resonate, maximizing the impact of your campaign.

Make paid social part of your omnichannel strategy

Integrating social advertising with your retail media and search strategies is crucial for a cohesive holiday plan. This holistic approach provides a clearer picture of how audiences interact with your brand across different channels and helps you understand each channel’s role in the purchase path. By aligning your social advertising efforts with paid search and retail media, you can create a cohesive and powerful marketing plan.

Reach out and collaborate with your paid search and retail media teams to align strategies for greater campaign effectiveness. Understanding their strategies and coordinating efforts can enhance the overall effectiveness of your campaigns.

For instance, if your paid search team is focusing on specific keywords or your retail media team is promoting particular products, your social ads can complement these efforts by targeting the same audiences with consistent messaging. Collaboration ensures all channels work towards the same goals, maximizing your holiday campaign’s impact.

Utilize tools that give a comprehensive view of your marketing performance, aiding in informed budget allocation and campaign tweaks. These tools enable you to see the big picture and make informed decisions about budget allocation and campaign adjustments.

By integrating paid social into your omnichannel strategy, you can optimize your holiday plan, ensuring a seamless and engaging experience for your customers. This approach will help make 2024 your best holiday season yet, providing valuable insights for 2025 and beyond.

How Skai can help

The holiday season is upon us, and Skai is here to make sure your paid social campaigns not only stand out but truly shine. Our suite of capabilities is designed to help you easily navigate the chaos of the shopping season, optimizing every aspect of your strategy to drive significant results.

Dynamic Commerce Ads. Skai’s exclusive DCAs update product metadata in real time, allowing consumers to choose where they want to shop. This ensures that your ads are always relevant and impactful.

Creative AI insights. Harness the power of AI to automatically classify creative elements and pinpoint which are driving the best performance, helping you focus on what really works during the holidays.

Smart Tags for Optimization. Smart tags automate the identification of ad fatigue and popular products, ensuring your campaigns stay fresh and effective throughout the season.

Segment Asset Customization. SAC serves custom creatives to each target audience member based on location without creating individual ad sets for each segment — perfect for maximizing engagement during the holidays.

AI-powered pacing monitor. Keep your campaigns on track with AI-driven pacing that adjusts in real time, ensuring you always make the most of your holiday budget. You can not afford to accidentally run out of budget needlessly during this peak shopping period.

Rules-based automation. Let’s face it: the end of the holiday shopping season is chaotic for marketers. Leverage Skai’s automation for repetitive tasks, freeing you and your team up to focus on strategy and execution while the system optimizes performance.

Third-party audience integration. Leverage third-party audience data to expand your reach and connect with new customers who are ready to engage with your holiday offerings.

Creative Center. Monitor and compare performance insights for creative assets across multiple channels, all in one place, so you can make data-driven decisions quickly. You won’t know exactly how this season will play out unless you have a crystal ball, so build in time to adjust your plan midway through the period. 

AI-enhanced dayparting. Ensure your ads are shown at the most effective times with AI-driven dayparting, maximizing visibility when holiday shoppers are most active.

Omnichannel synergy. Integrate your paid social efforts with other channels like search and retail media to create a seamless customer journey, guiding shoppers from discovery to purchase.

With Skai, you’re not just preparing for the holidays—you’re setting the stage for a successful season that could carry momentum into the new year. Get ready to make this holiday season your most successful yet with Skai’s powerful paid social capabilities

Conclusion: Be ready to adjust on-the-fly

As the holiday season approaches, stay flexible and ready to adapt. The brands that can quickly respond to real-time data and trends will have the edge. Start with a solid plan, but keep a close eye on your campaigns and be prepared to make changes as needed. This proactive approach will help you stay ahead of the competition.

When it comes to social advertising, you’ll never go wrong by prioritizing your creative strategy. The holiday marketplace is crowded, and eye-catching, relevant ads will help you stand out. Test different formats early on and double down on what works. The more you refine your creative assets, the better your chances of converting shoppers.

Lastly, integrate your paid social efforts with your broader marketing strategy. Align your social ads with your search and retail media campaigns to create a consistent customer journey. This cohesive approach will ensure your brand stays top-of-mind, no matter where shoppers encounter it. Stay agile, keep your messaging clear, and make the most of every opportunity this holiday season.

Check out all that Skai has to offer for your holiday social advertising plans

Skai’s Paid Social solution has unique, best-in-class capabilities to automate, optimize, and scale your ads at an enterprise level. In a privacy-first world, Skai offers integrated solutions to reach consumers on all the platforms that matter and drive powerful growth no other independent social platforms can achieve. As part of our omnichannel platform, connect the walled gardens and manage campaigns on all the top publishers across retail media, paid search, and app marketing. 

Client results include:

• 135% increase in Facebook leads for BYJU’s Future School
• 600% increase in Facebook leads for Inova
• 60% decrease in cost per conversion for Mercedes-Benz Vans Turkey

Please schedule a brief demo with our team for more information or to see our innovation firsthand. They’ll be happy to show you everything we offer to elevate your paid social campaigns.