New Year Campaigns – 15 Ideas For Killing It On Social Media
Ready to welcome another new year? It’s that time of the year when businesses get to celebrate another new beginning with their customers. The time when businesses get to look back on the journey that led them to where they are. And it marks the time when businesses plan big surprises in the form of product launches and pamper their customers with discounts. After all, shopping does not end with Christmas. So, shall we talk about New Year campaigns today?
We’ll talk particularly about campaigns on social media. Because connecting with customers at a personal level while also maintaining the brand image is one area that many businesses struggle with.
- New Year campaigns on social media – an overview
- New Year campaigns – post ideas + design tips for brands
- 1. Looking back
- 2. Special times call for special discounts
- 3. New Year new products
- 4. New features count too
- 5. Talk about your in-store promotions
- 6. Show your product in a new light
- 7. You can’t go wrong with informative posts
- 8. Use visuals to capture the festivity
- 9. Try inspirational content
- 10. Stick with your niche
- 11. Share user stories
- 12. Conduct a poll
- 13. Host a social media challenge
- 14. Giveaways for brand growth
- 15. Partner with other brands
- Get your New Year campaigns ready with KIMP
New Year campaigns on social media – an overview
Brand pages and personal pages look almost similar. But connecting with customers on a brand page can be so much different from connecting with people through a personal page. Unlike a personal page where most connections are your acquaintances, on a brand page, you are dealing with diverse demographics.
You are connecting with strangers and talking on behalf of your brand. And sometimes it is the business owner maintaining the social media page single-handedly and sometimes the marketing team does it.
And from a customer’s perspective, connecting with a brand page is not exactly easy. People might hit that follow button or even like a post you share. But for customers to leave a comment, share the post or even tag your business page, you should appear approachable. Make things easier for your customers because trusting a name without a face is difficult.
One of the strategies that help customers and brands break free of these inhibitions and meet at a common point is seasonal marketing. With your New Year campaigns, you are targeting people who already have the intent to buy. You are communicating with people who are in a happy mood about an imminent celebration. Hence, without a doubt, well-planned New Year campaigns have the potential to boost your sales, build trust with new leads, and win the loyalty of existing customers too.
New Year campaigns – post ideas + design tips for brands
Deciding what to post is the biggest first step to take. Once you have your ideas in place, you can always tweak them to suit your brand’s communication tone. So, here are some ideas and inspirations from big brands.
You are celebrating with them. So everything you post matters. Affects reputation
1. Looking back
One of the most straightforward things to do will be to look back at the year that went by. You can talk about how the year treated your brand or how your customers made it a wonderful year for your brand.
Spotify Wrapped is one of the exemplary campaigns that show the power of retrospecting. It also displays the strength of personalization. While emails to customers contain more customized information about their listening history, the social media posts from the brand focus mostly on common favorites.
It's safe to say that "10,000 Hours" has now been streamed for far more than 10,000 hours 💽 Congratulations @DanAndShay and @justinbieber. #BillionsClub https://t.co/avNpctIBgJ pic.twitter.com/OvztpdfVhQ
— Spotify (@Spotify) December 14, 2023
The above post puts the song in the spotlight. By talking about the song or artist that most people were listening to, you are evoking the curiosity of more people. FOMO makes them want to listen to that track or artist everyone’s raving about. That’s brilliant marketing!
Here is a similar post by Meta.
Here Meta leverages statistics to build credibility and show the strength of its brand. This works in reinforcing your brand image.
KIMP Tip: When you have to talk statistics, infographics like the one used by Meta keep the design interactive. Illustrations and images make the infographic easier to understand. Visually appealing infographics are the ones that get the shares.
Want to design ‘grammable infographics for your brand’s New Year campaigns? Get a KIMP Graphics subscription.
2. Special times call for special discounts
What better way to reward your social media followers than to give them access to special discounts?
Hey LA! ICYMI: if you live in LA County, you can get a free Headspace membership through February 2023. 🙌 Our partnership with the Los Angeles County Department of Mental Health @LACDMH is continuing into the new year.
— Headspace (@Headspace) October 19, 2022
Click below to sign up: https://t.co/wWlsOYQim1 pic.twitter.com/HvcS7lWJRo
Create personalized discounts that appeal to specific audience segments you wish to target. Relevance and exclusivity make a big impact. The above post from HeadSpace does that by appealing to users in LA County.
3. New Year new products
New Year gives you a wonderful chance to introduce new products. And what better place to talk about them than social media? It doesn’t even have to be a product launched exactly on New Year’s eve. It can be something launched recently or something that’s coming early in January. But talking about this new product as a part of your New Year campaigns will be a good way to build anticipation.
As the new year begins, many people are busy making resolutions. And many are willing to try new things. That’s why introducing a new product during this time might be a good idea.
In the above example, Oreo shared its announcement a little ahead of New Year’s Day. And this is crucial in building anticipation for a new product. So, if you are planning to launch a new product to welcome the new year, remember this trick to get people talking about your product before its launch.
4. New features count too
If you are in the digital products business, then you do not even have to launch a whole new product to make a difference. Even introducing new features or some freebies to enhance the experience of your digital products will do the trick.
Social media platforms like Instagram and X usher in the new year with new stickers, filters, and other digital products.
Even for physical products with OTA firmware release models, this idea works. Here’s how BMW tapped into this concept. With the Festive App promotion, users saw a festive banner displayed on the Control Display of their cars.
KIMP Tip: When you have new features or freebies for customers to find within an existing software or app, use UI animations or simple screen recordings to show customers what it looks like. But be careful not to give away too much. Tease the features to convince them to try out what’s new.
UI animations or simple animated videos to convey the message – a KIMP Video subscription covers them all.
5. Talk about your in-store promotions
Your social media page does not have to be a space to talk about digital campaigns alone. You can also use it to help your in-store promotions gain more traction. Social media also comes in handy for targeting local audiences. If you have New Year campaigns planned for your stores, talk about them on social media. This will bring in more foot traffic on D-day.
The above talks about extended store opening hours and bridges the digital vs offline gap by extending the offer for online orders too. Instead of using a regular design, the billboard mockup here instantly tells customers that the announcement has something to do with physical stores. And such straightforward visual cues go a long way in grabbing attention.
6. Show your product in a new light
If you do not have any new products or features lined up for the New Year campaign you can always focus on your hero product and highlight its important features. Use social media to tell customers about the creative ways in which they can use that product. Pay attention to the least-talked-about features, for example.
In the below post, Google focuses on a new Google assistant command. New Year is all about fresh perspectives, and so posts that focus on fresh perspectives to your products work well!
7. You can’t go wrong with informative posts
Data shows that about 44% of internet users (especially those in the age group 16-64 years) rely on social media to find more information about a product or brand that interests them. So, informative posts about one of your products, posts that talk about the creative applications of the product, or even show the product in action will garner a good response.
The above post talks about different variations of the product based on skin type. It educates customers about the products in the category and also helps them find the right one for them.
KIMP Tip: The above post focuses on the product and there is no other distracting detail in the image. But the subtle animations of the bubbles make the post catchy. Cinemagraphs, animated loops, and a whole lot of other motion graphics styles can be used to create a distraction-free display of your product.
All of these social media animation styles are part of the KIMP Video subscription.
8. Use visuals to capture the festivity
Talking about New Year celebrations is a good place to start. If you do not have any solid campaigns running for the New Year, use your social media page to engage in a conversation with your customers on the occasion.
Use images and convincing post descriptions to initiate conversations and to make your customers think of your brand or your products on New Year’s Day. The below post from Krispy Kreme shows how it is done. It uses a simple crisp copy that resonates with the social media lingo and incorporates emojis for a more conversational tone.
Starting the new year strong 🍩 + ☕️ pic.twitter.com/9rWF2FApOc
— Krispy Kreme (@krispykreme) January 4, 2023
For brands in the food business pictures that make the audience hungry are the only kind that works. And the above post has exactly that. After all the partying, when you are hungry, you might end up thinking about that image of doughnuts you saw on social media.
9. Try inspirational content
Inspirational content is timeless on social media. Moreover, content that inspires also humanizes your brand. And while preparing for a new year there might be more people looking for motivation in all forms and from all sources. That’s why creating motivational posts that somehow tie back to your products will add good value to your New Year campaigns.
10. Stick with your niche
Whether you want to share a joke to keep things light during the celebration or want to share tips or inspiration, try to stay within your niche. This way you will make the most of seasonal marketing without deviating from your brand too much.
For example, History TV Canada shared an informative post on New Year’s Eve but focused on history so as to keep the content relevant to the brand’s niche.
11. Share user stories
One evergreen idea that works for New Year campaigns is sharing user stories. This could be about the previous year’s New Year sale and what users purchased during it. Or about how your customers celebrate the occasion. If you have user reviews or user-generated content that you think will be relevant to New Year’s Eve you can share that too.
Here is Porsche making the most of user-generated content.
12. Conduct a poll
At the end of the day, one of the critical parameters of conversion to monitor on social media will be the engagement rate. Do relevant customers comment on your post and do they share your post with people in their network and thus bring relevant leads? For all these, conversational posts like polls come in handy. You can use the idea on LinkedIn and Twitter or use Stories on Instagram.
Your poll question does not always have to be something serious. You can always keep it fun, like Subway did. Or if you are looking for ideas on planning your upcoming campaigns, you can use this poll to capture customer opinions too.
13. Host a social media challenge
Social media contests of all kinds work for New Year campaigns. One of them is a social media challenge. Unlike traditional contests, there might be no real prize involved. But customers take part anyway.
Social media users love these challenges because they let them be a part of what’s trending. They give them a chance to share their story with the larger population. And for brands, these challenges are about community-building and accumulating valuable user content to reuse on social media.
14. Giveaways for brand growth
There are many brands that have gained a massive following by conducting giveaways. But you can go beyond social media following. If you are planning a giveaway as a part of your New Year campaign, be clear about the objective. If it is social media engagement that you want, you can set rules that get customers to follow your brand page, share the post or tag their friends.
But if you want to drive traffic to your website through your giveaway, create an exclusive landing page and link it to your post. This can be a lead capture page where you record customer information.
However, for both these ideas to work., your social media post should talk about what customers gain through participating. Will they get access to an exclusive community or get special discounts mailed to them? Or perhaps gain access to an exclusive Facebook Group where they get instant updates about deals or discount codes?
In short, the content of your post and the designs you need for this giveaway depend on the objective you set.
15. Partner with other brands
One approach that can take your New Year campaigns to the next level will be collaboration. This can be with another brand in a shoulder niche or an influencer too. This way you open up your brand to new leads and relevant ones. For this, you should choose brands that are somehow connected with yours but not your competitors.
For example, these could be brands that sell accessories for the appliances your brand caters to. Or brands that provide services that use your products. Or it can simply be a partnership with social media platforms to release new AR features or filters. Here’s one such idea that Honda used in its collaboration with Snapchat.
Get your New Year campaigns ready with KIMP
There are various channels of communication to reach out to your customers. So, whether you want to simply wish them or talk about your New Year sale you have plenty of ways to do it. But social media is one where you get instant responses and can track the engagement in real-time. That’s why even big global brands never fail to talk about their New Year campaigns on social media.
That said, you should also know that to be heard amidst all the noise close to New Year’s Eve, you need a scroll-stopping post. This could be a video, a simple animation, or even a static image. And these need to be backed up by respective landing pages if there is a promotion you want to push forward. So, close to the New Year, your content calendar is likely to be flooded with new design requests for different social media platforms. Doesn’t that sound too much? Leave the design part to the KIMP team while you focus on the ideas and the engagement part.
Not sure if this will work? Give KIMP subscriptions a try by registering now for a free trial. You can confidently then choose your subscription right in time to get ready for your New Year campaigns.