Preparing for the holidays is important for social media marketers. It’s an opportunity to share new services, products, and deals and unroll holiday specific campaigns that will gain the interest of your followers.
One way to boost engagement is to create holiday influencer campaigns unique to each holiday. Between November and January, there are numerous opportunities to share your amazing brand with the help of your influencer network.
Holiday influencer marketing continues to grow but finding creative ways to share campaigns can be challenging. To help you out, we’ve put together a list of ways to use influencers in your holiday marketing that are sure to wow your followers.
Traditional Influencer Holiday Marketing Campaigns
With 49 percent of consumers depending on influencer recommendations, it’s no wonder that brands rely on influencers to help boost campaigns, with many of those campaigns falling into one of the following categories:
- Social Media Takeover: When an influencer is given permission to curate content on a brand’s social platforms for a specified amount of time.
- Host Giveaways: When an influencer asks their followers to enter a brand giveaway by following certain guidelines, and then chooses a winner.
- Sponsored Content: Content that the influencer creates based on brand guidelines to post on their social media accounts.
- Gifts: A brand sends gifts to influencers that they then reveal on their social platforms, thus generating excitement over great products.
49% of consumers depend on influencer recommendations! Click To Tweet
One of the great things about influencer marketing is that it can often be beneficial to both the brand and the influencer, especially for nano- and micro-influencers.
Using these campaign ideas as a baseline, marketers and influencers can craft fun, engaging campaigns for the holidays that take your marketing from ordinary to extraordinary. Check out some of these fun holiday influencer marketing campaign ideas.
Cozy Up to Winter Holiday Influencer Marketing
With the end of the year fast approaching, it’s definitely time to think about how to use Instagram, Twitter influencers, LinkedIn, and Facebook influencers to launch your holiday campaigns. Preparing for those campaigns requires planning well ahead of the holiday itself, like budgeting, finding influencers, creating content, and scheduling posts.
Prepare your #influencermarketing campaigns ahead of time. Reserve a budget, recruit influencers, create content and schedule posts! Click To Tweet
Strategy for holiday influencer marketing campaigns should begin 1 to 2 months before the holiday. This gives ample time to prepare any necessary elements and ensure that communication between you and influencers is clear before campaign launches.
Even after the holidays are over, you want to be prepared for what’s to come. Here are some basic guidelines to follow for all holiday influencer marketing campaigns.
- Decide what platform posts will be featured on
- Choose hashtags, images, copy, CTAs, landing pages that will be associated
- Influencers you’ll partner with for the campaign
- Budget for the campaign
- Identify roles and responsibilities: who is responsible for creating posts, executing, engaging, and tracking results
Combining these essential planning guidelines with creative influencer marketing is sure to keep the holiday marketing momentum going well into the new year.
Spice Up Thanksgiving-Time Influencer Marketing
Thanksgiving is a great holiday to use influencer marketing, but with eCommerce booming, you don’t want to forget about Black Friday, Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday. While not traditional holidays, they’ve become great opportunities for brands to shine in the week following Thanksgiving.
Thanksgiving is a great holiday to use influencer marketing, but with eCommerce booming, don’t forget about Black Friday, Small Busines Saturday, & Cyber Monday. Click To Tweet
With the popularity of these shopping holidays, brands can target their holiday marketing campaigns to each day, drawing on influencers that can speak to specifics about each.
Thanksgiving Campaigns
Thanksgiving holiday marketing campaigns can go many different directions depending on your target audience. That’s why it’s important to choose the best influencers for your brand. Of course, food is an obvious way to inspire people on Thanksgiving. Here a few ideas for Thanksgiving influencer marketing:
- For the Foodies: Influencer shares a recipe or live video of them cooking a dish
- For the host: Influencer creates a holiday table featuring products from a brand, or household products that help with cleanup
- For the health conscious: Fitness influencer features services and products from wellness brands to promote wellness during Thanksgiving
- For Moms and Kids: Mom influencers share tips for feeding and entertaining kids at Thanksgiving dinner
Black Friday Campaigns
We know that 47 percent of consumers start thinking about gifts long before November and December, so it’s important to get Black Friday campaigns in order before the holidays hit.
Some ideas for Black Friday Influencer Campaigns and product promotions are:
- Have your influencer unbox an exclusive product that will only be available on Black Friday
- Provide coupon codes and hashtags to your influencers specifically for Black Friday Deals.
- Showcase your product with a detailed influencer video review.
Small Business Saturday Campaigns
This is a great opportunity if you are a small business or are marketing for a small business. Create holiday influencer campaigns that focus on using influencers whose target audience buys from small businesses like yours.
Small Business Saturday, while still an opportunity for sales, is also a mission-focused day to represent the positive things small businesses are doing and the unique products or services they offer. When choosing small business influencers consider:
- Do they fit in your niche?
- Do they represent your values as a small business?
- Do they speak to audiences who care about supporting small?
- Do they have their own small business that you can partner with?
Begin planning your campaign at least a month before the actual day, with posts beginning in the week leading up to the day. Some ideas for creative Small Business Saturday influencers campaigns are:
- Create branded hashtags unique to your business that influencers promote.
- If marketing a brick-and-mortar business using influencers, post live video showing them visiting the shop.
- Have influencers promote an event at the shop giving followers the opportunity to experience products in-person while meeting the small business owners. If the influencer is local, they could be a part of the event, too.
- Promote Small Business Saturday as a recovery day from Black Friday. Highlight unique products and services that help people stay calm and grounded after the holiday rush.
- Have influencers feature products in shoppable posts
Cyber Monday Campaigns
Cyber Monday has become more than just a one-day event but often carries into the entire week after Thanksgiving. This is an especially good day to market toward millennials, who are experts at using mobile devices to search and shop–and focusing on mobile is huge. Adobe said that on Cyber Monday 2018, “transactions on mobile devices were up 55.6 percent.”
Cyber Monday 2018 mobile device transactions were up 55.6%. Make sure your marketing campaigns are responsive & mobile-friendly. Click To Tweet
One great way to use influencer marketing for Cyber Monday is to create gift guides. These can be guides curated by your brand, or by the influencer, featuring Cyber Monday deals unique to your brand. It’s also a way to target specific audience segments. Choose influencers that align with your different segments and have them build a gift guide to share.
Other Cyber Monday holiday influencer campaign ideas include:
- Creating shareable coupon codes for each influencer you partner with to easily track campaign performance.
- Have influencer feature an exclusive item only available that day/week
- Consider donating a portion of Cyber Monday proceeds to a charity with the help of influencer
Unwrap the Power of Influencer Marketing for Christmas
We’ve already discussed how great a gift guide is, which is another wonderful way to use influencer’s for Christmas, too.
Consider your different audiences at Christmas. Are they simple, lavish, parents, millennials? Target influencers that can speak to these different types of shoppers to help you connect and engage with the right audience.
Storytelling Campaigns to Connect Emotionally
Some people prefer a more pared-down Christmas in which case try creating a holiday influencer campaign that focuses on storytelling featuring how your brand’s product lends to a slower, intimate Christmas experience.
12 Days of Christmas Campaign to Engage Followers
Most of us are familiar with the song “The 12 Days of Christmas” so why not integrate it into your holiday influencer marketing campaign?
This could be a challenge for an influencer’s audience in the 12 days leading up to Christmas, 12 days of gifts, 12 outfits, 12 good deeds. The options are endless, but a great way to encourage followers to get involved and tag their own 12-day posts.
Unwrap it Up
If you’ve got some exclusive gifts to feature, why not have influencers show how they wrap, or unwrap your products? People love the excitement of seeing what’s inside a package, right?
This is also a great way to encourage followers to share their own stories and posts of wrapping and unwrapping products with branded hashtags to mark the Christmas event!
New Year, New You
Just because Christmas is over doesn’t mean that you have to abandon your holiday excitement. Carry the fun into the new year with influencer marketing that targets those followers that are ready to set intentions, change their habits, and start fresh!
The New Year is the time when it seems like everyone is ready to get back in shape and eat well after the holidays. What better time to feature influencers for wellness related posts? Here are some ideas for New Year’s posts:
- Food influencers share healthy recipes and videos.
- Fitness influencer share post shareable workouts.
- Mom influencers share how to get organized for the New Year.
- Wellness influencers share their favorite tips and products for de stressing after the busy holiday season.
Influencer Marketing Works for Every Holiday
Social media marketing doesn’t end after the major winter holidays, so it’s important to keep a schedule going for other holidays like Valentine’s Day, Easter and Mother’s Day. You can use many of the same pre-planning strategies but add in unique content to suit the holiday.
Using influencers is a great way to build a social media presence, especially with the help of influencer marketing software. Don’t wait–start planning your campaigns today!
