If the thought of engaging with creators is already on your mind, then you’re likely already aware of how effective they are at driving sales.
Creators are able to showcase your product with creative flair, and provide trustworthy recommendations that encourage informed purchases. In fact, an influencer campaign successfully converts, on average, 8 out of 10 social scrollers into shoppers. This makes it one of the most beneficial marketing tools for key occasions like product launches, business milestones and events.
To help you choose the best time to run an influencer marketing campaign, take a look at some of the occasions where they’re invaluable.
#1 You’re launching a new brand, product or collection
When launching a product or service to market, you need to build trust with your audience. Whether you’re launching a new business, promoting your latest collection or highlighting a completely new offering, you need to get your audience on your side.
Partnering with influencers, particularly micro influencers, is a great way to build that trust and encourage people to consider your brand. In fact, 65% of people discover new brands or products through influencers, and that is only set to continue as ecommerce sales rise globally.
Creator’s authenticity, strong engagement and trustworthy recommendations help brands build a positive reputation that can drive online sales.
Pro tip: To help your launch feel relevant to consumers’ feeds, tap into current social trends or challenges that you can easily adapt to your niche. This will make your influencer’s content feel native to the social platform and will leave a lasting impression on customers.
#2 You’re opening a new store or hosting an activation
Creators are trend-setters and their audience love to follow in their footsteps. Literally. They’re always visiting fresh, new locations to shop, eat, experience and shoot content at. And their followers tend to look to them for these location recommendations.
This is why they make perfect collaborators to spread awareness and drive customers into your new brick and mortar store, or to your latest marketing activation. Being expert storytellers, creators can bring their followers along to include them in the experience. Learn more about how to use influencers to drive footfall in our recent article.
Pro tip: Dedicate a spot at your new store or marketing activation for creators to shoot content. Whether that’s a free sample stand or aesthetic flower wall, have a spot where your influencers can create beautiful content that will entice shoppers to visit you.
#3 You’re hosting a brand event
Hosting an event is a great way to build loyalty and credibility with customers, connect with your audience and promote your products. But to host a successful event, you need people to attend who can help boost your media coverage and impressions.
Inviting a squad of influencers to attend and promote your event will help you achieve mass reach. By inviting creators to your launch or brand event, you’re inviting their entire audience too.
Pro tip: Create a branded hashtag for your creators to use in all of their posts about the event. This helps make your influencer activity feel more cohesive, and can boost brand awareness. The more your target audience sees your branded hashtag, the more they’ll recall your brand.
#4 You’re running seasonal sales
Major shopping events, such as Black Friday, Cyber Monday, AfterPay Day and Boxing Day, turn our social feeds into scrollable versions of Times Square. This can make engaging your consumers even more challenging and the pressure is on for brands to cut through the noise.
To break through this clutter, you need to engage with relevant creators to drive website traffic and conversions. Influencer content is more authentic and relatable when compared to targeted ads that are set up directly by brands, so they often see higher ROI during busy sale periods. Plus, their organic recommendations are trusted by customers, making them the perfect advocates for your sales deals.
Pro tip: Provide influencers with discount codes and trackable links to your ecommerce site that can be placed in their Instagram bio’s or as a Story link. This way, customers can quickly and easily make purchases, and you can measure the sales conversion rate from an individual influencer’s post.
#5 You’re celebrating milestone moments
Nostalgia is currently trending (find out why in our recent article), and one of the best ways your brand can tap into this trend is by celebrating your own history. Brands of any size can celebrate their anniversaries. Whether you’re a new business that’s made it through the gruelling first year, or an established brand with whole archives to uncover.
With their storytelling skills, creators are the perfect solution to help you celebrate your brand’s biggest milestone moments. Take Vamp as an example. When we celebrated our 5th birthday, we partnered with some of our creators around the globe to take a trip down memory lane and celebrate the accomplishments we achieved together. Check out some of our campaign content on Instagram for inspiration.
Pro tip: If you’re celebrating the birthday of one of your first products, brief your influencers in to use that product to recreate an old look or recipe. This will spark old memories and emotions with your audience, helping your brand tell its story in an authentic way.
#6 You’re launching a new brand initiative
Has your brand recently gone vegan or switched to an entirely sustainable manufacturing process? Maybe you’ve started paying it forward and now donate a percentage of your sales to charity? Whatever your latest brand initiative is, you need to get the word out about it. Influencers can help you do just that.
An influencer campaign will not only help you spread awareness, it can also help you reach an entirely new audience. For example, if your brand has just gone vegan, you can now start targeting vegan consumers with your campaigns. And the best way to do that is by partnering with vegan creators who already have an engaged audience in that space.
Pro tip: Brief your creators on how to speak correctly about your new initiative, including what they can and can’t say. This ensures your customers receive all the correct information they need, and will make your campaign content feel more cohesive.
#7 You’re hosting a giveaway or competition
Running a giveaway or competition is a great way to grow your social media presence, celebrate a new product drop, drive email sign ups or just give back to your customers. And collaborating with creators will help spread mass awareness and spark an uptick in entries.
By creating engaging content that entices their followers to enter, influencers give your brand access to speak directly to their audience. Their authenticity and genuine connection to their followers will also help you build trustworthy relationships with your customers.
Pro tip: Set out clear guidelines and conditions of entry so your influencers know exactly how their audience can enter. If influencers that you’ve partnered with don’t know this vital information, it could call your authenticity into question.
#8 You’re celebrating an international holiday or event
Valentine’s Day, Lunar New Year, Halloween and Christmas. They’re all huge events in the marketing calendar, and almost every brand you can think of will likely run a campaign during these times. But what about the weird and wonderful dates you may not know about? Like World Sleep Day, World Pizza Day, International Self-Care Day and Love Your Pet Day.
These are all perfect times of the year for you to run an influencer marketing campaign. By tying your influencer activity to these quirky holidays and events, you’ll never be lost for content ideas. Plus, you can incorporate trending hashtags to position your campaign within the social conversation, increasing your discoverability. This approach can also help you achieve an ‘always on’ content strategy.
Pro tip: Download Vamp’s free 2022 content calendar and use it to plan successful social campaigns around seasonal themes that you know will be top of mind with your audience. And trust us, whatever your niche is, there’s a national day for you!
