Social Media Tips for Mother’s Day

The biggest celebration of moms is right around the corner, and consumers are planning to spend major dollars in their honor. In fact, the National Retail Federation (NRF) estimates that U.S. consumers will spend a record-high $23.6 billion for the holiday this year. How can brands best reach these potential customers? Social media platforms offer some of the greatest areas of opportunity for marketers because audiences can be reached at virtually any time and any place. Seventy-six percent of Americans use Facebook daily, 51 percent use Instagram daily, 42 percent use Twitter each day, and 25 percent use Pinterest daily, according to Pew Research. Additionally, on average, people who are 25 and older visit Snapchat about 12 times per day and spend 20 minutes using it every day.

It’s clear consumers are spending much of their time online on social media, and there are several ways brands can capitalize on these channels to connect with their audiences. With this quick guide, you can use social media platforms to get the most of out your online campaigns for Mother’s Day and other major holidays.

Facebook and Instagram
Facebook and Instagram, combined, are great platforms to drive awareness, consideration, and conversions for your campaigns using some of the most robust targeting capabilities social has to offer. On Facebook, you can target categories of moms such as “big city moms”, “fit moms”, and “stay at home moms.” Utilize Facebook and Instagram targeting to deliver the right message to the right person. You can give children great gift ideas and remind moms to treat themselves!

Help move consumers through their buying journey in the following ways:

• Awareness: Before an event, product launch, or major holiday-related sale, you can use Facebook ads and Instagram Stories to build awareness and generate excitement among your target audience. Awareness campaigns can also help increase your page likes, building a larger following for your brand.
• Consideration: You can use Facebook or Instagram ads to drive direct calls to action, such as clicking on website content, installing an app, viewing a video, or responding to an event.
• Conversions: Facebook and Instagram offer several different campaign types to help you drive conversions:
   

  Lead Generation Cards on Facebook can help brands collect information from prospective customers right within the platform. Use these to build email lists for a newsletter subscription or create segmented lists of customers interested in updates around certain subjects such as Mother’s Day coupons or industry news.
  
  Conversion Campaigns drive sign-ups for appointment slots. You can use these for Mother’s Day brunch reservations or other events that require customers to reserve a time. These can also be used to drive sales for specific products.
  
  Dynamic Product Ads allow brands to highlight certain products. If you have specific holiday product specials, dynamic product ads are a great way to let customers know. They’re also great for remarketing relevant products to potential customers who have shown an interest.

Twitter
Twitter is distinctive from other platforms because it allows brands to reach customers in a real-time stream. It offers a variety of app cards and website cards, as well as options to promote single tweets or tweet campaigns. After selecting the ad type that’s best for you brand, choose from the following objectives to make sure your tweets most effectively reach your target customers:

• Increase website traffic. Selecting this objective will enable you to drive more visitors to your website.
• Grow your audience. Increase your following by driving organic page likes through a follower campaign.
• Drive brand awareness. If the goal is to make sure your target consumers are aware of your brand, set your objective to awareness..
• Increase tweet engagement. Promote a single tweet or a series of tweets to start conversations and drive engagement around the content you are promoting.

Pinterest
Whether it is planning their children's next birthday party or dreaming about the next family vacation, moms love Pinterest. The platform has a much longer purchase cycle than some of the other platforms. Users are typically creating boards for month(s) beforehand to pick out the perfect gift. Start promotion early with this platform and choose between a number of unique pin types to reach customers. Here are a couple we recommend using for your holiday campaign:

• Rich Pins: These dynamically pull in product information such as price and description and drive users to a certain website to take action.
• Promoted Pins: Pinterest pins enable you to extend the reach of your organic pins. For example, if your Mother’s Day brunch pin is performing especially well, add a boost to push it even further to your target audience.

Additionally, Pinterest provides cinematic video pins and a number of other promotion options. Find out more about additional ad types here.


Snapchat
In the midst of the typically busy spring, it’s easy for Mother’s Day to sneak up on you! Reach millennials on Snapchat and give them the much needed reminder to do something special for their moms this year. If 18-34 year olds are within your target audience, you want to invest in Snapchat. In fact, most of the platform’s users fall within that range and 158 million people use it every day, according to Search Engine Journal. There are many opportunities to create an experience around holidays through the app. Here are a few:

• Snap Ads: With a simple swipe up, you can use Snap Ads to get users to view, listen, engage, click to your website, and download your app. These ads can be combined with articles, app installs, long-form video, and web view.
• Sponsored Geofilters: Choosing a specific geographic location, you can help users truly become part of your brand experience with a custom filter.
• Sponsored Lenses: Allow your audience to have fun with your brand by creating an interactive holiday lense.

Each of Snapchat’s ad options also provide brands with analytics on usage and impressions.


Before launching any social campaign, evaluate your options to determine which platforms will allow you to best reach your audience and achieve your brand’s desired goals. If you want to learn more about social media best practices, don’t hesitate to reach out to the social team at Rise.