7 Ways To Make Your Influencer Marketing Pop This Holiday Season
It’s officially time to map out your influencer marketing for the holiday season and begin booking influencers. With talks of inflation, which is expected to top 6% by Christmas according to the Pew Research Center, consumers are expected to spend less this year and be more mindful of purchases in general, which means your marketing campaigns must be expertly crafted and launched with plenty of time in advance to catch the attention of holiday shoppers.
There’s never been a better moment to lean heavily on influencer marketing, partnering with personality-driven creators who can demonstrate your brand’s key products and benefits through engaging and relatable content.
Strengthen your holiday campaigns by:
Planning ahead and launching early.
Holiday shopping starts earlier each year, with 31% of consumers in 2021 starting their holiday shopping before Halloween and 55% before Thanksgiving, according to a survey done by Jungle Scout. Expect that number to rise this year as consumers seek to avoid supply chain delays and seek out the best deals. With this in mind, you should plan to begin promoting holiday offerings in early October and ramp up in November to capture holiday consumers before they’ve checked off their shopping lists for the year. Even date-specific sales like Black Friday and Cyber Monday should launch earlier than their traditional start so that you can advertise deals early.
Getting a head start on your holiday campaigns also means securing influencers before they become booked and locking them in before they charge a premium for last-minute holiday campaigns as well.
Partnering with strategically selected creators.
The creators you select for holiday influencer campaigns will be integral to the success of your marketing efforts, especially if you are seeking sales conversions. Creators who excel in short-form video content, have highly engaged audiences, and have a proven track record with sales conversions will be your key partners. Our extended network includes thousands of creators that we can match with your brand to ensure your goals are met.
Crafting creative that emphasizes value.
Consumers are inundated with a surplus of options these days, which is why emphasizing your brand’s benefits over the competition should be a focus of your campaign messaging. Provide influencer partners with unique discount codes to increase the campaign’s success and use influencer marketing to bring awareness to limited-time offers throughout the holiday season.
With consideration to the current economic landscape, consumers may be shopping for practical gifts, especially in the home and travel categories, while younger shoppers will likely still have trendy items on their wish lists. Take your brand’s target audiences into consideration when deciding what products to highlight for the holiday season and how influencers speak to your brand.
We can work with you to craft effective messaging that drives these points home and provide you with the right influencer partners to bring these messages to life through their content.
Activating Story content for limited-time offers and last-minute promotions.
Think of influencers as your valuable partners in informing consumers about important sales, back-in-stock items, and other informational content during the holiday season. Stories are a great way to highlight limited-time offers and time-sensitive information, like letting audiences know that a best-selling item is finally back in stock. This is why building up strong influencer relationships will give you a leg up during this busy season, as pre-existing business relationships will make it easier for you to add on last-minute campaign additions if needed.
Bringing company values to the forefront.
When faced with an overwhelming amount of choices on where to shop, consumers are mindful of supporting brands that have similar values. Showcase your charity partners and craft a campaign that features a charity component to bring your brand’s values to the forefront, using influencers with like-minded values to amplify your message.
Optimizing content.
Ad amplification is a necessary component of holiday marketing, but it is important to know that the digital ad space will become crowded as we near peak holiday shopping. Plan out your ad strategy in advance and monitor performance continually so you can make the best use of top-performing content and maximize your return on investment. Lytehouse’s team knows how to monitor and optimize ads across platforms, and can run your amplification program on your behalf.
Using the holiday season to jumpstart your 2023 ambassadorships.
Holiday is an important time for marketers, but don’t forget about a new year of marketing just beyond that! It is never too early to start thinking about your 2023 plans, and your holiday campaigns can be a great opportunity to test out influencer partners and assess potential 2023 ambassadors based on top-performing talent. With our team of influencer experts who can analyze campaign performance and provide key learnings for a new year of marketing, we can help you kick off your 2023 efforts on the best foot forward.