Winter is coming.
Although that means something much different for marketers than it does for Jon Snow, one underlying principle remains: Preparation is essential to thriving through it! One way to do this is to strategize holiday advertising ahead of time with the type of people who will add to your brand.
In this article we visit how teaming up with certain personalities during the festive season can catapult your brand’s visibility and credibility to new heights. The popularity of influencer marketing is skyrocketing, so why not join them among the stars?
In this article:
The Influencer: Your Brand’s Holiday Marketing BFF
So, why is influencer marketing a holiday promotion powerhouse? Simple. Many well-known and beloved trend-setters have spent time and precision cultivating unwavering trust with their devoted followers. When they endorse a holiday product or service, their audience takes notice. This unshakeable trust and authenticity wield incredible influence over purchasing decisions made by their fans.
Since influencers specialize in specific niches or industries, each one has curated a devoted following that perfectly aligns with your target market. Joining forces with personalities whose audience matches your ideal customer base can lead to a surge in conversions. This is in part due to the decline of trust in traditional advertising. Today’s consumers crave genuine connections and authentic recommendations. And guess who fulfills this desire? That’s right, influencers! Their relatable content and personalized touch make them far more impactful than traditional ads.
This isn’t just a guess. Influencer marketing delivers tangible benefits during the holidays as Cadbury and others have seen. Research has shown that influencer marketing campaigns generate higher engagement rates compared to other marketing strategies. Influencers’ close bond with their followers leads to increased interactions, comments, and shares. And this heightened engagement translates into a remarkable return on investment (ROI), making influencer marketing an incredibly cost-effective approach for holiday promotions. Nice!
To stay in touch with the customer base, influencer marketing is an absolute must for your holiday promotions. By partnering with them, your brand can tap into their engaged following during the holiday frenzy when everyone’s fighting for consumer attention, ensuring your message doesn’t get lost in the din of all the festivities.
Critical Thinking: What’s Your Brand’s Best Influencer Type?
Knowing what type of VIP would be prudent to pair up with is crucial. Influencer marketing is all about collaborating with the right individuals to promote your brand or products. It’s like having a trusted friend recommend your offerings to their engaged audience, but on a much larger scale.
But knowing HOW big that scale ought to be is instrumental to promotional success, especially during the holiday season when so many are fighting over the dollars customers clutch for the presents they’re seeking. That’s why in the realm of influencer artists, size really does matter. There are four main categories to consider:
Mega-influencers
When it comes to the biggest impact, think famous personalities, industry experts, or social media stars (soccer player Cristiano Ronaldo, journalist & commentator Joe Rogan, yoga instructor Adriene Mishler, etc.) who have over a million to many million followers. Teaming up with mega-influencers like Will Smith can give your brand the most visibility across the globe. It can also cost your right leg and both arms, but if you’re from Bel Aire, no problem!
Macro-influencers
These are the celebrities of the digital world, with massive follower counts ranging from hundreds of thousands to a few million. Unlike most mega-influencers, macro-influencers usually gain fame online through their own efforts, whether that was through vlogging, or by producing funny or inspiring content. These include folks like entertainers like Rhett & Link, video blogging Hank & John Green duo in VlogBrothers, and author Nassim Taleb. Collaborating with macro-influencers can give your brand a significant reach and exposure as R & L did with St. Jude Children’s Hospital during Giving Weekto raise funds and awareness.
Micro-influencers
They may not have millions of followers, but they possess a loyal and highly engaged audience within a specific niche. Micro-influencers typically have follower counts in the tens of thousands, like accessibility activist Catarina Rivera of BlindishLatina, traveler Francesca Newman-Young, geopolitical consultant & author Peter Zeihan etc. Partnering with folks at this level can provide a more targeted approach and authentic connections with your ideal customer base.
Nano-influencers
At the grassroots level, we find the nano-influencers. These individuals have smaller follower counts, often in the thousands, but their impact should not be underestimated. Nano-influencers have a close-knit community that values their opinions and recommendations. Think of your local heroes that maybe your town and surrounding areas laud (Jonathan Haidt [Professor of Ethical Leadership at NYU], Veronica Coit [animal and human rights activist]). Although these types of influencers start with small audiences, they often have a fierce following that plant seeds that grow your company in the long run.
Selection: Choosing the Right Influencers for Holiday Promotions
Now comes the fun part—finding the perfect peeps to collaborate with. When assessing potential influencers, take a closer look at their audience demographics and engagement. Do they align with your target market? Do they reach a niche you’d love to explore? Are their followers actively engaging with their content? It’s all about finding the right fit.
Another important aspect is to ensure the artist aligns with your brand values and message. Take some time to explore their content, their style, and the values they portray. Authenticity is key, so make sure their vibe matches yours.
When you choose the right partner, that influencer can help amplify your brand’s visibility, perceived authenticity and trustworthiness, creative content potential, social credibility, and all to the exact right people you’d otherwise have to spend time accessing.
The perks of teaming up with influencers during the holiday season may cut in a middle man, but it also cuts down on traditional outreach costs and frustrations.
Goals: What Do You Want & How Will You Get It?
When diving into influencer marketing, it’s crucial to establish your campaign objectives. What do you want to achieve? Clearly defining your goals will help steer your strategy in the right direction. If you don’t, you might find your campaign following in the unfortunate footsteps of the Fyer Festival fiasco.
To track your progress, identify key performance indicators (KPIs). These are the measurable metrics that will tell you if your campaign is hitting the mark. It could be things like engagement rates, website traffic, or even direct sales. Train your eyes on the prize and set those KPIs!
Setting Campaign Goals
Keeping the horse before the cart, start by clearly defining what you want to achieve with your campaign. Are you aiming to boost sales, increase brand awareness, generate user-generated content, or something else entirely? Set specific and measurable goals, so you know what you’re working towards.
Budgeting
Everyone’s favorite topic to discuss: money. When allocating a budget specifically for collaborations during the holiday season, consider factors like the number of famous faces you want to work with, how long the campaign will run, and the scale of promotions.
Don’t forget to think about how you want to compensate these folks, too. Will it be financial compensation, free products, or a combination of both? What are they likely to counter with?
Negotiating with Influencers
It’s important to do your homework here. Research and evaluate potential partners based on their content quality, engagement rates, audience demographics, and previous brand collaborations details.
When it comes to partnerships and compensation, negotiation is key. These folks are putting their reputation on the line to work with you as creating promotional content shapes their online presence, so it’s important to not be stingy. Be clear about the campaign details, expectations, compensation, and any unique incentives you can offer to make it an exciting collaboration.
Be open and transparent about what you can offer and discuss mutually beneficial terms. Remember, it’s not just about the money. Think about what value you can bring to the table for them as well. Craft partnership proposals that VIPs can’t resist, like Cococart did with food bloggers from Sydney.
Measuring Campaign Success
Now, let’s talk results. It may go without saying that you’ll want to track how well your campaign is performing, so set up some key performance indicators (KPIs). These could be metrics like engagement rate, conversions, reach, or impressions. You can do this by using tracking links, unique discount codes, or affiliate programs to attribute sales or conversions to specific platforms, especially when working with multiple creators.
Of course you can also leverage analytics tools as they help you measure and compare the performance of your influencer campaigns which can provide helpful insight.
Planning: Crafting an Influencer Marketing Strategy
With your goals in mind and the keenest content creators on your radar, it’s time to craft a killer influencer marketing strategy.
Define your campaign theme and messaging. What do you want your holiday promotions to convey, and how will it be communicated? Think about how the influencer’s content can tie into your brand’s story and create a cohesive message that resonates with both their audience and yours, as Gymshark did to blend seamlessly (which you will read about later on).
Be clear about what you want them to create and how you envision the collaboration. Clarity is key to ensure everyone is on the same page and working towards a common goal.
Cooperate: Collaborating with Influencers
Building relationships with these trend-setters is essential for successful collaborations. While Influencers may be open to start talks off with business, a lot of the time making an effort to establish a personable relationship with folks—yes, even personalities count—can break down barriers and make working together more cooperative. Start by approaching them in a genuine and friendly manner, share your appreciation for their work and express why you think they’d be a great fit for your holiday promotions.
To avoid any misunderstandings, draft clear and comprehensive contracts that both parties can have a copy of. Outline the scope of work, deliverables, timelines, and compensation details. This will protect both parties and ensure a smooth alliance.
Create: Making Engaging Content with Influencers
Now, it’s time for the artistic magic to happen! Although you may have some specific ideas on your ideal campaign, keep an open mind and include the influencer in all stages of content drafting to brainstorm content ideas and formats. They know their audience best, so trust their expertise and let their creativity shine.
One thing that is important at this stage that you shouldn’t compromise on is ensuring that there’s genuine brand integration and authenticity in the content. It should feel like a natural extension of the content creator’s usual style while staying true to your brand’s identity. Finding the right balance will captivate the audience and strengthen your brand presence. Additionally, encourage authentic endorsements by emphasizing the importance of providing honest opinions and experiences with your products or services.
Don’t forget to incorporate holiday themes and promotions into the content. ‘Tis the season to be jolly, after all! Encourage influencers to infuse their content with that festive spirit and create a sense of celebratory excitement among their followers.
Reach: Amplifying Influencer Content
Now that you’ve co-opted some seriously amazing content, it’s time to pull out the megaphone and make some noise. Leverage influencer marketing through specific social media platforms by sharing their content and encouraging your audience to engage with it. As we know, likes, comments, and shares can work wonders for spreading the word.
Encourage the creators themselves to engage with their audience beyond the content. Responding to comments, asking questions, and sparking conversations will foster a deeper connection and make the campaign more interactive. Make even more of a splash to join in on the conversation, showing that there’s more than just your product or services.
Don’t underestimate the power of utilizing hashtags and user-generated content to inspire buzz around your holiday promotions. (Who doesn’t remember Lay’s highly successful #DoUsAFlavor interactive campaign?) Encourage your audience to join in the fun and share their experiences using your brand’s dedicated hashtags. This user-generated content adds authenticity and expands your campaign’s reach, so call-and-response type content by the creator could be a part of rustling up this kind of interaction.
Ethics: Addressing Challenges & Mitigating Risks
Influencer marketing is not without its challenges. Make sure you’re well-versed in what you need to do to be in compliance with advertising guidelines and regulations (such as the Federal Trade Commission [FTC] guidelines) to avoid any legal and ethical hiccups. Familiarize yourself with the rules and regulations of the platforms you’re operating on, as well as those unwritten rules that should be considered, and have a conversation with the influencer so you’re on the same page. Provide them with clear guidelines or a brand playbook that outlines what they should and shouldn’t do when creating sponsored content for your brand.
For example, keep things transparent by having artists include clear and conspicuous disclosures like #ad or #sponsored in their promotional content to indicate a commercial relationship. Ask them to disclose their partnership with your brand right at the beginning of their content, rather than burying it in captions or comments.
Handle potential controversies or misalignments proactively. Stay vigilant and monitor the content being produced to ensure it aligns with your brand’s values and remains consistent with your messaging. Address any issues promptly, transparently, and with kindness to maintain rapport even after disagreements.
Once your content launches, monitor and manage your online reputation. Keep an eye on how your campaign is being received and respond to feedback, both positive and negative. Especially negative. Engage in open dialogue and use any criticism constructively to improve your future influencer marketing efforts, and make sure to present a united front with your partner whenever possible.
Future Vision: Building Long-Term Relationships with Influencers
Although you may start off your partnership for a certain season, influencer marketing is not just for the holidays. Consider nurturing relationships with content creators beyond the festive season if you seem like a good fit together. Offer them exclusive partnerships and benefits that extend beyond the holiday promotions. Building long-term relationships creates continuity and strengthens the bond between your brand, the influencers, and the audience.
When you establish a strong rapport with influencers, you can continuously collaborate on future campaigns and brand initiatives. By involving them in your broader marketing strategy, you can tap into their creativity and expertise consistently. This ongoing collaboration fosters a sense of loyalty and builds a community around your brand. Viewers will notice that the influencer comes back to you time and again, adding credibility.
It Worked for Them, It Can Work for You!
There’s nothing like real-world examples of successful influencer marketing campaigns to be convinced of this strategy’s effectiveness. These success stories give you a glimpse into the power of content and personality collaborations.
Take note of how other brands have effectively leveraged this type of marketing for their holiday promotions as they can provide valuable insights and spark your own creative ideas:
Daniel Wellington + Various Influencers
Daniel Wellington, a watch brand, collaborated with various influencers to promote their minimalist watches. The brand strategically partnered with personalities from different niches, ranging from fashion and travel to lifestyle and fitness. The celebs posted high-quality photos featuring the watches while sharing #DWMoments and a deeply personal moment in the influencers lives, and then provided exclusive discount codes to their followers. The campaign was a massive success, driving brand awareness, increasing sales, and solidifying Daniel Wellington’s position as a trendy and fashionable brand.
Why it worked:
Collaborating with VIPs from diverse pigeonholes can expand your reach and attract a wider audience. Consider partnering with influencers who align with your brand’s aesthetics and values.
Gymshark + Fitness Influencers
Gymshark, a fitness apparel brand, built its entire brand around influencer marketing. They collaborated with fitness influencers who resonated with their target audience of fitness enthusiasts. These fitness names showcased Gymshark’s clothing in their workout routines, shared fitness tips, and encouraged their followers to adopt a healthy lifestyle. The partnership resulted in tremendous brand growth and a loyal community of Gymshark enthusiasts.
Why it worked:
Content creators who have a genuine passion for your brand and can authentically promote your products or services. Look for the public voices who align with your brand’s mission and values.
Coca-Cola + YouTube Creators
Coca-Cola partnered with popular YouTube creators for their “Share a Coke” campaign. They created personalized Coca-Cola bottles featuring people’s names and encouraged users to share their experiences on social media using the hashtag #ShareACoke. The campaign generated massive user-generated content, engagement, and brand visibility. By collaborating with YouTube creators, Coca-Cola tapped into their wide-reaching audience and leveraged their creativity to make the campaign go viral.
Why it worked:
User-generated content leveraged with the creativity of influencers to amplify your brand message is powerful. Encourage followers to actively participate and share their experiences with your brand to drive investment and loyalty.
Airbnb + Travel Influencers
Airbnb, the accommodation booking platform, partnered with travel influencers to showcase unique and inspiring travel experiences. These trend-setters shared their adventures and stays at various Airbnb locations, providing an authentic and relatable travel narrative. The partnership not only showcased Airbnb’s diverse offerings but also generated a sense of trust and credibility among potential travelers.
Why it worked:
When big names share genuine experiences with your brand, it emphasizes its unique features and benefits which is attractive. Consider partnering with strong storytellers and can create a connection with their fans.
The moral of this section: by learning from these examples, marketers can develop effective influencer marketing strategies that drive results and resonate with their target audience. These successful influencer partnerships demonstrate the power of aligning with personalities who have a genuine connection with their audience, a strong brand fit, and the ability to create engaging and authentic content.
It’s Go Time!
There you have it—your guide to game-changing influencer marketing for holiday promotions and beyond. By collaborating with big names whose audience aligns with your target market, you can create successful campaigns that resonate deeply with potential customers and give you the upper hand against other competitors.
In setting goals, finding the right VIPs, crafting engaging content, and building lasting relationships, tapping into influencer marketing delivers tangible benefits. Enjoy a plethora of perks like increased brand credibility, social proof, and a remarkable return on investment together!
So, this holiday season, harness the power of influencer marketing to dominate the market to meet and surpass your goals. Embrace the artist’s ability to captivate audiences, build trust, and drive remarkable results.
Happy holidays and happy influencer marketing!
