The festive season is just around the corner and special Christmas products and promotions have already begun to penetrate the market. The big question is, how do you break through all of the noise over this busy time. Influencer marketing could be your secret weapon. We’re going to look at some of the ways your brand can use influencer marketing to get ahead as well as provide some inspiration for your next campaign.
Plan your Christmas strategy
Be prepared this holiday season with a strong strategy for your marketing activity. This is the journey that The Social Club recommends taking your customer on over the coming months.
Awareness (early): The months in the lead up to Summer and Christmas are the perfect time for influencers to start spreading awareness of your product or service.
Engagement (pre-holiday): Once people are familiar with your product or service, you want to start the conversation and get them researching more. Some great ways to do this are through competitions and giveaways to drive engagement and consideration.
Conversion (holiday): Now it’s all about sealing the deal! This is the time for your influencers to drive in-store and e-commerce traffic. One of the best ways to do this is to offer personalised discount codes that the influencer can offer to their followers.
On-going customer (post-holiday): With the holidays over, this the perfect opportunity to have influencers show off how the products or services fit into their lifestyle. In the early weeks of January people are spending a lot of time on Instagram while on holiday, the younger audience groups will be deciding what to spend the cash they got from their relatives on. Many brands each year have cottoned on to this trend and are running campaigns, to place their brands front of mind when consumers are making purchasing decisions!
Get a competitive edge
As consumers, savvy social media audiences have their list of most trusted influencers, that they naturally gravitate to for the latest info and product/brand advice, we make it easy to connect your brand with these niche audiences. When it comes to recommendations, 92% of people trust their friends (micro-influencers) and those they admire and follow (influencers) more than they trust brand advertisements or regular celebrity endorsements. Get ahead by engaging in influencer marketing and sending a stronger more authentic message than your competitors.
Find your niche
It is important to remember the size of an influencer’s following does not necessarily determine the quality of their content or their effectiveness. Instead, you should focus on selecting people who are genuine ambassadors for your brand and reflect the spirit of your campaign. A key benefit of using smaller influencers is being able to target a niche audience. This means you know you’re not wasting any money on advertising to the wrong people.
Collaboration is key
Amidst the saturation of touching stories and interactive adverts, brand struggle to come up with memorable content over the holidays. However, when an influencer is given creative control by brands on a campaign, the right influencers can organically combine the brand’s messaging into their own recognised, audience-approved narrative.
Stay one tap away
Online shopping makes christmas shopping more convenient than ever for customers. Now shoppers can purchase from their offices, homes, and mobile devices at any time. There’s no more waiting in traffic and no more waiting in lines and with shoppable posts on Instagram they can discover and purchase products in just a few taps.
Every month, 130 million taps are made on Instagram shopping posts and influencers are the ideal channel to get customers to your shoppable instagram posts as they don’t even need to leave the platform.
Examples
Adairs is Australia’s leading retailer of bed linen, quilts, towels, cushions and homewares. With 160 stores across Australia and six stores now open across New Zealand, Adairs is fast becoming a local favourite in the interior design market.
The #AdairsChristmas18 influencer campaign has helped build brand awareness and reach in the New Zealand marketplace.
As a part of the Adairs Christmas campaign, influencers created interactive Instagram Story content which highlighted their time spent in their local Adairs store, capturing how they selected their items while showcasing the summer Christmas collections.
Westgold wanted to promote their butter and show people how they could use it in their holiday recipes. The Social Club worked with them on a campaign that saw creative food influencers from around New Zealand create content showcasing the product being used in their own authentic holiday recipes. The posts received over five and a half thousand likes and comments from baking enthusiasts. The influencers posted the recipes they made using Westgold butter and those posts collectively had 3,475 views. This campaign is a great example of how a great Christmas campaign can work and also it shows us how these campaigns don’t always have to be around buying gifts for someone else. People will need to buy a lot of FMCG products over the holiday season to prepare for visitors and events over the entire period so don’t forget about marketing your products to them too!
Brittish supermarket chain Waitrose worked with influencers for their humorous Christmas campaign #toogoodtowait. Their ads showed moments where people had to rush away from important things because they couldn’t wait to eat a delicious Christmas meal. They got influencers involved to share some of the delicious thing they had made from the supermarket using the hashtag.
This is a great example of how influencers can be used to support an existing christmas campaign. Influencers can take your campaign to the next level and help to reach the right people.
There isn’t much time so get started on your Influencer marketing christmas campaign today. We are here if you want to share any ideas or have any questions, just send us an email at enquiries@thesocialclub.co and we can help you out.
