Partnering with Social Media Influencers for the Holidays

DIY Sprocket Solutions

The holidays are officially in full swing and marketers and businesses everywhere are scrambling to push their last minute Christmas sales and New Year’s buys to the masses. I have a few ideas for the weeks ahead and for you to consider as you’re planning next year’s marketing strategy. It’s a good idea to plan in advance for promotions or specials that you may want to run for each given holiday. The concept of planning ahead also rings true for introducing influencer marketing to your bag of tricks.

We introduced you to influencer marketing: HERE.

Here’s a quick re-cap of the basics:

[B]rands take their products and team up with an “influencer” to demonstrate/sample/review their product. For instance, a monthly subscription box of makeup samples might team up with a YouTuber. That YouTuber would receive a free box, make a video where they use and try the products, and all of their followers would see the video. Very simple and extremely effective.

Think about the possibilities of this kind of marketing during the holiday season. The perfect time to push your products out to influencers is probably the end of October to the beginning of November. You want them to have a chance to receive, sample, and review your product in time for the serious holiday shopping to begin.

The key here is to make sure you’re not just limiting yourself to pre-Christmas marketing. Remember that lots of people are getting cash and gift cards for Christmas. This means January is also going to be a month that people are looking for things to buy. In December, you’re pushing for great gifts. In January, your pushing for great buys for individuals.

Keep in mind also that influencer marketing is not limited to YouTube. Instagram and Pinterest are also huge channels for this same result. Actually reaching out and connecting with an influencer is going to be the hardest part of the interaction. You have to find the person with the right following to try your product and you have to be prepared enough to have this scheduled in enough time to get the right bang for your buck.

From Convince and Convert:

If you’ve never dabbled in influencer marketing, it can be tricky to get started. Especially with the holidays in full swing, influencers are busier than ever. And when it comes to the rules of influencer marketing, they don’t really exist. Bloggers and social media influencers are essentially making them up as they go. This makes it difficult to gauge logistics like pricing and contracts. Fortunately, once you start communicating with various influencers, setting up becomes a lot easier.

But even though working with influencers isn’t the easiest marketing strategy, it is indeed one of the most effective. Given the returns it yields, it’s worth diving into (or at least dabbling in) influencer marketing—or as I like to call it, the “Wild West” of marketing.

If you have never considered influencer marketing in the past, and you have a product worth trying, I would highly recommend you attempt to incorporate it into your marketing strategy for the upcoming year. Depending on the product, there are several gift giving holidays that you could see a big return from. The first step is to rip off the band aid.

Have you been considering influencer marketing? What’s held you back? Did you already take the plunge? What were your results? Comment below!

Breanne BannonBreanne Bannon

Breanne is a Content Writer, Social Media Marketeer, and Sales Associate for Sprocket Websites.

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