Have you finalized your holiday marketing strategy yet?
The season is now well upon us, and with Thanksgiving about to hit, you’re now reaching your final opportunity to map out a strategy to boost your sales this season.
And if X is where your audience is engaging, this will help. The platform has shared a range of holiday marketing tips in its updated Holiday Marketing Hub mini-site, which includes various resources to help guide your X campaign planning.
First off, X has shared some new usage and engagement stats to highlight its relevance for the season.
Interestingly, X’s claimed 548 million active users is less than what Elon Musk claimed in May last year, when he said that X has 600 million MAU. Though X is always pretty inconsistent in its reporting on this front, but presumably, X has somewhere between 500 million and 600 million active users, which is a huge group of potential customers either way.
X has also shared some data on user shopping habits to underline its potential in this respect.
And if that’s enticing for you, then X has also shared a range of creative tips for your ads, which could help you get more out of your X promotions this year.
X’s first key tip is that shorter ads work best.
As per X:
“The best performing ads are only 50-100 characters. Make sure your ad is simple, gets straight to the point, and focuses on one clear message.”
This has always been a key tip for social media marketing, because shorter copy helps to grab attention, while longer messages can be hidden behind a “see more” prompt, lessening their impact.
Short, to-the-point copy is the best way to maximize engagement, so long as you can get it right.
Along a similar line, X says that brands should look to create urgency with their ads.
Highlighting offers can be a good way to prompt action, and grab attention in the feed (though I'm not entirely sure how "family biz" and "local owned" fit in this context).
X also says that brands should maintain authenticity in their messaging, in alignment with their target audience.
And in line with its updated Ad Quality guidelines, X says that advertisers should minimize distractions within their promotions, in order to maintain focus on the main objective.
As you can see in this slide, X recommends that brand avoid including additional @ mentions in their copy, while hashtags and multiple emojis are banned from X ads for this reason.
X wants to ensure that its ads are aesthetically pleasing, and as such, it’s implemented these new guidelines to limit distractions, and make ads better looking, as X sees it.
Finally, X says that ads should include a clear call to action to drive response.
In terms of ad formats, it will come as no surprise to hear that X recommends video ads above all others, and suggests that brands include at least one video in all of their campaigns.
These tips will help you optimize your video approach for the platform, and with video views rising on the app, that could be another key consideration for your outreach.
X also advises that advertisers should optimize for mobile (80% of X usage happens on mobile devices).
Some key tips, which could help you formulate a more effective approach to X ads this holiday season.
You can get more X ad tips at its Holiday Marketing hub, where X has also included a range of on-demand webinars with internal ad experts.
