Life for most people tends to slow down around the festive season. It’s usually a time to spend more time with family and friends. To relax and catch up on the things that matter to you outside of work. You do less, but it counts for a whole lot more. Things like long relaxed meals, savouring conversations, walks in the park and exploring what nature has to offer usually take precedence over the holidays.
It’s during this time that B2B companies usually stop posting and running ads on social media. But, believe it or not, the weeks leading up to Christmas and New Year tend to deliver some of the best social ad results according to LinkedIn!
Sadly, many B2B businesses miss out on this because they rightly assume that people engage less with social media content as they set aside time for other things during this time. But wrongly assume that they won’t engage with social media at all. Nothing could be further from the truth…
In fact, social media audiences tend to engage more deeply with B2B content during this time, despite consuming less overall. This gives B2B social media campaigns a rare chance to increase reach and influence audiences at much lower costs.
B2B social media engagement rates during the festive season
B2B engagement rates on social media dip from mid-December onwards as people begin spending less time on their laptops and phones and more time putting up Christmas trees, decorations and wrapping gifts. But that’s not to say that engagement disappears altogether.
The little bit of engagement that does take place has greater value. This is because, as previously mentioned, audiences engage more deeply with the content they consume. They also tend to take more action. This, combined with less available content, adds up to more powerful opportunities to build brand awareness and influence audiences’ choices.
Reach and influence audiences at a lower cost
There is real value and engagement to be found over the Christmas and New Year periods, not to mention, a lot less competition! This is because, as mentioned, most B2B businesses assume that their social media campaigns shouldn’t continue throughout the year. As a result, stop posting by the time the festive season rolls around.
This results in fewer people bidding for impressions and clicks. Which ends up significantly bringing down the cost of social media ad campaigns. This provides valuable opportunities to drive B2B engagement and build brand awareness for less.
The fact is that always-on campaigns protect B2B businesses’ share of voice. Put simply, when B2B brands stop posting, they create “white-space”, which usually gets filled by their competitors.
The biggest “white-space” opportunity usually occurs around the festive season, when most B2B brands slow down or stop posting on social media altogether. Those who take a break while their competitors continue to post and run social media ad campaigns will find it more difficult, and in most cases, more expensive to claw back market share in the new year.
Oppositely, B2B brands who continue to publish over the holidays when competitors stop will own a significantly larger share of the “pie”. Making it harder for other B2B brands to compete in the same space.
Conclusion
Always on campaigns add more value for B2B brands and allow for more opportunities. Campaigns that get switched off over Christmas and New Year miss out because they get cut off at the knees. Making it harder by leaving B2B brands to guess when their audiences will engage and when they won’t.
If you’re a B2B business, leaving your social campaigns to run all year round is recommended. Doing this allows them to “build up” reach and frequency over a long period. The result? You end up bidding less for impressions and clicks, making your annual social media budget go further!
