Seasonal trends are a great opportunity to boost your brand awareness, engagement, and sales with influencer marketing. But how can you create a successful influencer campaign that leverages the power of seasonal trends? Here are some tips to help you plan, execute, and measure your influencer campaign around a seasonal trend.
Before you start looking for influencers and trends, you need to define what you want to achieve with your campaign and how much you are willing to spend. Do you want to increase your brand awareness, generate leads, drive traffic, or boost sales? How will you measure your success? What is your return on investment (ROI) expectation? How much can you afford to pay your influencers or offer them as incentives? These questions will help you set realistic and specific goals and budget for your campaign.
Before you jump in feet first, ensure this is something that is relevant to your company and business. If you can't answer basic questions or feel confident that the powers that be will find value in the end results, perhaps skip it this year. You also need to ensure that everyone is ok letting go (at least somewhat) of control.
To build an influencer campaign around a seasonal trend: Choose a relevant seasonal trend. Set clear goals. Partner with suitable influencers. Create authentic content. Develop a unique campaign hashtag. Time content releases strategically. Track and measure performance. Engage with the audience. Analyze results and make adjustments as needed. Ensure legal compliance and disclosure. Consider long-term influencer relationships.
Firstly find out the seasonal trend that is relevant to your brand. Then look out for influencers whose content aligns with the trend and your target audience and collaborate with them to create engaging content. Make sure you develop a unique campaign concept that showcases your brand in relation to the trend. Amplify your campaign via social media platform.
Once you have your goals and budget, you need to understand who you are trying to reach and what they are interested in. Who is your ideal customer? What are their demographics, preferences, pain points, and behaviors? What are the current and upcoming seasonal trends that resonate with them? You can use tools like Google Trends, social media analytics, keyword research, and customer feedback to find out what your target audience is searching for, talking about, and buying during different seasons.
Now that you know your target audience and trends, you need to find influencers who can help you reach them. Influencers are people who have a large and loyal following on social media and can influence their audience's opinions, decisions, and actions. You can use platforms like BuzzSumo, Upfluence, or AspireIQ to search for influencers based on their niche, location, reach, engagement, and relevance to your brand and campaign. You also need to vet your influencers to make sure they are trustworthy, authentic, and aligned with your brand values and goals. You can check their social media profiles, content, reviews, testimonials, and past collaborations to assess their credibility and suitability.
One thing to force your percentage of going viral is to identify influencers who already made content about the exact season you are working on! And now they can link it with your brand!
Once you have selected your influencers, you need to establish a mutually beneficial relationship with them. You need to communicate clearly your expectations, guidelines, deliverables, timeline, budget, and payment terms. You also need to respect their creative freedom and input, as they know their audience best and how to create engaging content for them. You can collaborate with your influencers on different types of content, such as product reviews, tutorials, giveaways, live streams, or stories, depending on the platform, trend, and goal of your campaign.
After you have launched your campaign, you need to promote and monitor it to ensure its effectiveness and performance. You can use tools like Hootsuite, Buffer, or Sprout Social to schedule, manage, and optimize your social media posts across different channels. You can also use tools like Google Analytics, Facebook Insights, or Instagram Insights to track, measure, and analyze your campaign results. You can look at metrics such as impressions, reach, engagement, clicks, conversions, and ROI to evaluate your campaign success and identify areas for improvement.
Analysing the performance of an influencer campaign can get tricky if you don't have clearly defined objectives and KPIs for your campaign. Before you start, lock one key metric to be tracked - like if you are driving purchases an affiliate model with influencers works best, providing them a code and tracking the purchases. If you are focused on branding and creating more awareness about your presence, tracking the follower growth, and spike in engagements during the campaign would help gauge the performance best.
Finally, you need to learn from your campaign and improve it for future opportunities. You can use the data and feedback you collected from your campaign to understand what worked and what didn't, and what you can do better next time. You can also ask your influencers and audience for their opinions, suggestions, and testimonials to improve your relationship and trust with them. You can also look for new trends, influencers, and platforms to expand your reach and impact with your influencer marketing.
Not all influencers are created equal. When choosing influencers for your campaign, it is important to consider their reach, engagement rate, and overall aesthetic. You should also make sure that their values and interests align with your brand.
Step outside the box…. Just because it’s a seasonal trend does not mean it has to remain a seasonal trend. Find ways to incorporate other aspects into your promotion that will give your product longevity outside the perceived seasonal time frame.