What’s the best way to drive your holiday sales? Influencer marketing campaigns! The thing is that it’s easy to find Instagram and Facebook promoting any business these days. Whether you run an e-commerce shop with the latest toys or online websites with cool games like Mucha Mayana, social media is full of influencers to partner up with. They can help your products and services reach new audiences and make your brand visible to holiday shoppers. So to ensure a good ROI for this year’s marketing budget, check out our six steps to create the ultimate Christmas influencer campaign.
1. Find Your Goals and Set a Budget
For most companies, the main goal of a holiday marketing campaign is to make their products and services visible for thousands of customers. Almost everybody will be looking for toys, food, decorations, and gifts in the upcoming months. And businesses can use this opportunity to drive their sales. Plus, we all know that the coronavirus pandemic is far from being over. This makes people keener than ever to shop online and find the best deals and bargains from the Internet.
And when creating a budget for your influencer marketing campaign, make sure to include these three expenses:
- The cost of giving away your merch to promote, test, etc.
- Video production costs.
- Payments for the influencers.
2. Spread Your Marketing Campaign Over a Longer Period
Many people like to spread their holiday spendings over a longer period to avoid buying all the expensive goods at once. This means that they will start purchasing the gifts and decorations well before the holidays. So when you’re setting up a posting schedule for your influencers, make sure to include plenty of dates before Christmas. This also builds brand awareness and makes people more eager to buy from you.
3. Identify Your Offering
After setting the goals and budget for your holiday marketing strategy, it’s time to get clear on how you would like your products to be delivered. And which products to focus on. A successful holiday marketing usually revolves around offering different products in one gift set or highlighting only one product.
A tried and tested strategy for the holiday season is picking your best products and making them available for only a limited time in December and January. This creates a sense of scarcity that urges people to buy.
Another important part of your offering is the packaging. Spice up the packages a bit. Look for a business that can create custom packages that reflect the nature of your brand. An immersive brand experience is important for both your customers and the influencers who are going to promote your products.
And if your product is web-based, look for ways to brand it with cool interactive elements. For example, if you run an online casino, you can offer a surprise gift of a 300% bonus during the holiday season. Or, if you’re selling scheduling software, you can produce a webinar on how to survive the busy holiday season and offer it as a free bonus to new clients. These kinds of extra touches create positive emotions for your influencers and their audience.
4. How to Find the Best Influencers
The quickest way to find the most suitable influencers to promote your products is to look for people who are already creating content around similar products. Find their campaigns from last year’s holiday season and take a look at how the posts performed. Also, keep an eye on people posting popular lists of their favorite holiday products. Getting featured in one of those highly-shareable posts can bring plenty of exposure to your items.
5. Working With Gaming Influencers
There are many ways gaming influencers connect with their audience and make money. They can live-stream their gaming via Twitch or YouTube, test and review the games, and collaborate with brands. So if you develop games or sell gaming-related accessories, pick an influencer whose usual activities enable them to test your specific product. The popularity of games is always growing, which means that gaming influencers are gaining new followers every day.
6. Schedule Your Content
Once the content for your campaign is produced, it’s time to schedule the release dates. The important thing is to leave enough time between each post to be able to engage with your community. If your influencer can generate a ton of interest in your products, you should answer all the incoming queries and requests before posting another video.
Conclusion
So amp up your marketing campaign this holiday season and use the leverage of influencers to reach new audiences. It’s one of the most powerful ways to generate sales and get products to consumers’ gift bags. Every company can find the right influencers for their specific products and use the steps outlined in this article to build an effective social media marketing campaign. It’s your business. And this holiday season is the time to make it shine.
Are you planning to use influencers in your marketing campaign this Christmas? Let us know in the comments. We’d love to hear from you.
Guest Article by Thomas Glare
Thomas Glare started into the world of online marketing when he was hired as a copywriter for a small agency in Leeds. He rapidly wanted to learn more about marketing strategies, so he started to experiment on his blog until he figured out he has a natural knack for this. Since then, he collaborates with various publications, sharing tips on how to improve digital marketing strategies.