For influencer marketing agencies, summertime is when the holiday season truly begins. The holiday season is a prime opportunity for brands to engage with their existing customer base, generate leads, and boost sales. With consumers turning to social media for education, information, and entertainment, having a holiday influencer marketing strategy is vital to making sure your brand reaches the right customers at this ideal time.
Planning a Holiday Influencer Marketing Campaign
Below, we give 5 helpful tips for planning a successful holiday influencer marketing campaign.
1. Start Planning Your Holiday Influencer Marketing Campaign in the Summer
By the time the holidays roll around, social media ads and influencer marketing will be highly competitive spaces. Get ahead by planning early when competition is low.
Soft launch holiday campaigns by creating long-form seasonal content on blogs and Pinterest
An early start on holiday content allows your brand to establish seasonal SEO. A soft launch won’t push this content in front of consumers right away. But, in late fall, when customers start looking for gift ideas, this long-form, optimized content will show up as the answer to their questions and direct them to your brand site.
Partner with influencers for soft launch long-form content. The Influencer Marketing Wishlist makes the great point that influencers who have a strong connection to their following usually have owned-content platforms (like a website, blog, email list, or podcast) that are largely ignored by brands. These channels are where influencers connect with their most dedicated followers and – thus – have the most sway. Soft launching holiday blog content through influencer partnerships will increase your brand’s visibility and increase your SEO by spreading the content on well-established, highly-engaged websites.
Capitalize on smaller holidays
Even if you aren’t selling a Halloween edition of a product, inserting your brand into the holiday season at large will leave you at the top of consumers’ minds when it comes time to shop in December.
Announce or tease holiday products and services in advance
If you’re planning to transform a customer favorite into a holiday edition, then spread the word early. Create curiosity and hype by dropping hints and build up to a big reveal at peak holiday shopping time.
Book influencers in advance
The holiday season is a highly competitive marketing space. Figure out which influencers you want to work with sooner rather than later so you can book before they become unavailable. Keep in mind how exclusivity terms change during the holidays, as well.
2. Know What You’re Promoting
Before you can develop a successful holiday influencer marketing campaign, you have to have a solid understanding of what you’re marketing.
For example, if your brand plans to promote regular products and services with a holiday twist, then you might be able to repurpose existing content within your holiday marketing campaign. You’ll also play up customer favorites, perhaps at special holiday pricing (whereas if you were promoting holiday versions of products, you could lean into a limited edition or limited availability element in your marketing strategy).
To inform the decision of what to promote, make sure you consider who your target consumers are around the holidays. For example, younger demographics have different priorities around the holidays than older demographics with families. If you’re a makeup brand selling to middle-aged women, you probably aren’t going to promote holiday palettes with flashy greens and glittery reds. You might put together a travel-size gift set of your consumer’s favorite products.
3. How to Create a Holiday Campaign with a Seasonal Advertising Strategy
Establish the goal of your campaign and define KPIs to keep track of success.
Research your audience to understand who they are and what they want during the holiday season. Use that information to decide what products or services to promote in your holiday content.
Generate holiday content ideas to make your marketing campaign relevant to the season.
- Gift guides are a great way to show consumers how to navigate your brand around the holidays.
- Shoppable Instagram posts make it easy for customers to make purchases without having to leave the app. Eliminating that extra step is sometimes the fine line between “I’ll look into it later” and “I want it now”.
- Use a strategic combination of holiday hashtags and niche-specific hashtags. If you can narrow down a few target audiences to sell to, try to find hashtags relevant to that audience with less than a million hits. Hashtags with hundreds of thousands of hits instead of millions have less competition, so you’re more likely to reach your target audience.
- Repurpose content with festive filters, frames, or graphic design elements to make it relevant to the holiday season.
- Consider working with a content developing service, like Sway Group’s Content Studio. We have a team of creatives who will make original holiday content for your brand. The best part is that brand clients maintain ownership of the content, so you can continue to use it and repurpose it without any licensing issues.
Run a holiday influencer marketing campaign.
The best influencers have actively engaged audiences who trust their judgment. A partnership with the right influencer can sway your target audience in favor of your products.
To save time, consider working with Sway Group. We’re a full-service influencer marketing agency with a network of over 30K vetted, authentic influencers. We’ll generate a targeted list of potential partnerships based on your brand, campaign goals, and KPIs and continue to work with you throughout every step of the campaign process.
Continue to optimize and refine holiday content based on data-driven insights.
Throughout your campaign, Sway Group makes sure your brand’s digital advertisements continue to reach the right audience in the right places at the best times.
4. Limitations Are Large: Play into the Holiday Frenzy
The best marketing idea for a Christmas campaign is to play into the temporariness of the holiday season. It’s a cozy time of year when families and friends celebrate each other with love, gifts, and gatherings. Play into the magic with season-specific incentives.
- Limited time offers and holiday deals will create a sense of urgency among consumers
- Holiday editions of products and services only last for the season. The exclusivity will put pressure on consumers to act now
- Instagram and TikTok stories last for 24 hours and are a great way to create a sense of urgency. You could do a 12 days of Christmas promotion with a discount on a new product or service every day
5. Don’t Forget to Give Some Gifts
In the true spirit of Christmas, don’t forget to give some gifts! Brands should engage with their audiences and influencers to show appreciation for the support they give throughout the year.
Host contests and giveaways
This is a great way to raise awareness about your holiday products. You can also grow your brand’s audience by making following the brand account or subscribing to the newsletter a rule of entry.
Encourage customers to share their experience with your brand
Have users tag your brand in posts that feature your products or create a special branded holiday hashtag. Like and comment on posts and get users excited about sharing by creating the opportunity to be featured on the brand page. Ultimately, this will be free advertising for the brand!
Extend the same kindness to influencers (outside of influencer marketing campaigns)
Celebrate influencers you’ve worked with before and solidify new partnerships by sending gifts. Some influencers will still unbox the products on one of their social channels even if it’s not sponsored content. Showing this appreciation can also lay the foundation for new collaborations in the new year.
Plan a Successful Holiday Influencer Marketing Campaign with Sway Group
Create an impactful holiday influencer marketing campaign by working with one of Sway Group’s top-quality influencers. Strategize your promotional holiday content with our digital advertising services. Fuel your holiday brand campaign with plenty of seasonal content from Sway Group’s Content Studio.
We’d love to discuss your holiday campaigns and offer creative options for your brand.
