December is one of the most amazing months of the year. Aside from the holidays and decorations, it’s also the perfect time for businesses to gain visibility and make a good chunk of sales. However, making sales and gaining visibility no matter the time of the year requires strategically planned marketing.

December is a great time to leverage influencing marketingand get your products to your target audience as a business owner. Campaigns and ads have incredible potential during the holidays, especially if it’s coming from a person that people trust (e.g., an influencer).

Why With Influencers?

Influencer marketing in any month is a strategic marketing strategy that improves brand awareness and takes your sales to the next level. However, influencer marketing scores even better during holidays. In December, every business owner wants to convince people to buy their products, and that’s why the month comes with a lot of marketing campaigns. Unfortunately, these campaigns may get so overwhelming, and instead of encouraging consumers to get your product, it may leave them feeling indifferent.

This is where influencer marketing comes into play. Rather than the traditional marketing approach, influencer marketing allows brands to create campaigns that will authentically reach their target consumers. Also, many marketing studieshave shown that consumers see user-generated content as more authentic than brand-created content. Therefore, one of the ways to stand out this December is to get an influencer to spread the word about your brand. However, holiday marketing isn’t always easy and may come with mistakes, as easy as that sounds.

Dos And Don’ts of Influencer Marketing To Take Note of This December

DO: Define Your Target Audience

When planning or executing any marketing strategy, the first step to take is to define the target population for your brand or the products you’re trying to sell. Identifying the target demographic makes it easier to select a suitable influencer and market your brand more effectively. If you do not know your target audience, you can do market research to determine the demographic that your products are most likely to serve. For instance, if you have a Pizza Store in Texas, you want to target people in Texas, not those in New York.

DON’T: Focus on The Wrong Platform

It’s not enough to just identify your potential customers; it’s also essential to know the right channel to reach them. This is because the way people behave varies from channel to channel, and as such, it’s necessary to focus on platforms that your audience mainly uses. Common channels for influencer marketing include Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, YouTube, and Twitter.

When searching for the right platform, you need to ask questions like;

Where does your audience spend their time? For example, if your target audience is 16-24-year-olds, you may need to focus on channels like Instagram and TikTok. Selling a product for older people? Consider Facebook.

How are they using the platform? TikTok users, for example, are there for the fun short videos, and Instagram users love breathtaking photographs.

DO: Choose the Right Time for Your Marketing Campaign

Unless you want to create a new marketing campaign for each day in December, you need to select the perfect time to launch your campaign. You want the influencer you work with to post content at the right time, at a period when your target audience will be looking for a good holiday/December deal. Some popular times for post-marketing campaigns in December are Thanksgiving and Christmas, and New Year’s Eve. But, of course, you will have to launch your campaign before the events.

DON’T: Blindly Product Place

There’s always a lot of promotional content from brands in December, and people may get turned off by traditional sales tactics. So, you want to make sure your brand catches attention through well-thought-out campaigns and storytelling that will make you stand out. December is a competitive time for businesses, and that’s why it’s essential to think outside the box when planning your influencer marketing holiday campaigns.

DO: Choose A Right Marketing Campaign

The last thing you want to do this holiday season is spending money on a marketing campaign that will bore your target consumers. To make massive sales this December, you need to create a campaign that will feel authentic and resonate with your audience.

Your campaign aims to show potential customers why your products belong on their shopping list. For this reason, it’s recommended to start by researching the perfect campaign that can work for your target audience and brand. You may also want to look at successful holiday campaigns from brands in your niche, or at companies from other industries.

DON’T: Pick The Wrong Influencer

The hard truth is, not every influencer with a large following will be suitable for your brand marketing. Therefore, randomly partnering with an influencer with large followers may not bring any significant results. That’s why it’s crucial to carefully observe the relevance and performance of an influencer before deciding to work with them. Before collaborating with an influencer, consider if the influencer shares content that aligns with your brand and if they have an impressive number of engagements.

To find influencers, you can search Google for popular social media influencers and create a list based on your results. You can then trim down the list based on your niche, their type of content, audience, engagement, number of followers, etc. To simplify this process, you can use analytical tools like Vlingto find top influencers in your industry.

DO: Focus on Products Fit for the Holiday Season

Another good influencer marketing campaign for the holidays is focusing on essential products or services that are the best fit for the holiday season. This is especially important if you are a company that offers different products.

Product-specific campaigns are more likely to bring significant results during the holidays than marketing the whole products you offer. If you have holiday-themed products or promotional offers, then focus on them to make your campaign more relevant to the holiday season.

Meanwhile, some brands create new products or tweak their existing products to fit the holiday season. Coca-Cola, for example, produced Christmas edition bottles and collaborated with 57 influencers to create 57 unique images to promote the new product in December. The influencer marketing campaign aimed to encourage people to buy the new bottles, and it worked. They were able to generate over 1,000,000 impressions during the season!

DON’T: Forget To Monitor Your Results

Once the holiday sales are over, don’t forget to measure how your campaign performed. This will help you know how to re-strategize for the next holiday marketing campaign. Popular performance metrics brands use to monitor the impact of their influencer marketing include;

- Engagement rate and impressions

- Followers Growth and Traffic

- Sales and Conversions

- Audience Reach

- Brand Mentions

- Brand Sentiment

Determine the metrics that will best measure the performance of your campaign goals and keep track of it through the month.

DO: Produce Creative Themes Contents

Influencer marketing often takes place on social media. Since your partnered influencers will direct people to your social media page or website, it’s essential to have an attractive page. Your potential customers need a reason to stay, follow or order from you when they visit your page. Therefore, invest in creative and holiday-themed content to encourage them to take targeted actions when visiting your page.

However, don’t make every post on your platforms an ad post or holiday post. When you over post campaigns and holiday posts, your message may lose its authenticity and drive your new followers away.

DON’T: Start Too Late

Things get hectic in December, and coming up with a holiday marketing strategy may be difficult. Therefore, try to start putting your ideas together before the holiday. It’s never too soon to start planning for your holiday marketing campaigns; the earlier you start, the easier it is to stay organized during the holiday rush.

Takeaway

Promoting your brand in December by partnering with influencers can help boost brand awareness and sales. Meanwhile, to leverage influencer marketing this December, you need to plan and set your goals first. Also, partnering with genuine and relevant influencers is a sure way to get desired results from your campaigns this December. Thus, be on the lookout for relevant influencers by taking advantage of services like Vling that help people connect easily with influencers that fit their brand.

Ready to Expand Your Brand’s Influence this December?

Get in touch with Vlingtoday for services and tools that can help manage your brand marketing effectively.