Nixgrafix

Holiday season is soon upon us and there’s no better time to motivate your loyal customers and acquire new ones through fun, seasonal promotions. Based on numerous research reports, it seems that Facebook fans get especially excited about fun, holiday-themed promotions so if you haven’t done so already, it’s time to start planning your holiday promotions for October, November and December.

November in particular is a big month for holiday themed promotions in the United States. While the most widely known holiday for Americans is Thanksgiving, November is also a popular shopping month, with Black Friday and Cyber Monday prompting users to get excited about huge discounts and great deals.

Here are some creative ideas for promotions to run for Thanksgiving, Black Friday, and Cyber Monday.

IDEA #1: Encourage word of mouth and social spread by giving away the “Ultimate Thanksgiving Dinner”

Run a sweepstakes to give away the ultimate ‘Thanksgiving Dinner’ – enormous frozen turkey, pumpkin pie, the works! But to make it more ’social’ and to encourage word-of-mouth spread, why not offer up two Thanksgiving feasts – one for the winner and one for the friend that referred the winner to the sweepstakes. Track these referrals by including a text field in the entry form asking the participant, “Were you referred by a friend? If so, what is your friend’s full name? You could both win the grand prize!”.

IDEA #2: Drive engagement and sharing among friends with a Recipe Contest

Doesn’t everyone think that their family’s Thanksgiving meal is the best? Why not encourage this friendly rivalry by running a Thanksgiving Recipe Contest! Allow users to upload both photos and text as their submissions but set the photo upload minimum to zero when setting up your Wildfire photo contest — that way those who don’t have a photo of their recipe easily available can still enter (i.e. you’ll get more submissions by keeping the effort required to enter lower).

IDEA #3: Combine Thanksgiving-Themed Virtual Gifts with Charitable Giving

Create a virtual gift campaign to enable friends to send each other free Thanksgiving themed virtual gifts like funny images of Turkeys, or a family around a dinner table, or the iconic cornucopia. Combine this with an opportunity to ‘give back’ by offering to donate $1 to a hunger-relief charity of your choice for every gift sent.

IDEA #4: Drive Sales with a Black Friday Coupon or a Group Deal!

Black Friday is the biggest shopping day of the year! Many people have grown accustomed to enormous sales and huge discounts as merchants try to drive customers into a buying frenzy in preparation for Christmas. Take advantage of this expectation by creating a specially themed Black Friday coupon of your own, granting your fans a high value discount on one of your products! Or even better, offer up a group deal — i.e. provide your product or service at a big discount but only if a certain number of people commit to buy the deal before it expires.

IDEA #5: Create excitement for Cyber Monday by giving away ‘Mystery’ Coupons

Cyber Monday developed as online merchants responded to brick and mortar stores and their steep Black Friday discounts, which drove users into stores and away from computers, by offering their own steep discounts on internet orders the following Monday. Get creative with your own online coupon codes— by using Wildfire’s unique codes functionality, you can create a set of “mystery” coupons, where each coupon’s value is unknown until the user claims it on your fan page! For example, some coupons may give you free shipping, others 10% off and a limited number might be lucky enough to get a 70% off coupon. We’ve found this kind of ‘mystery’ coupon format creates lots of excitement, strong ROI for our clients and great word of mouth spread because consumers are so excited to share this campaign with their friends.

This Epicure promotion is a great example of a timely, holiday themed promotion— a photo contest of family Thanksgiving feasts!