It’s that time of year again: the end-of-year holidays are just around the corner and influence marketers are gearing up for what promises to be a super-charged season on the social networks. But with the looming shadow of an economic slowdown and the European energy crisis threatening to dampen consumer spending and enthusiasm, the trajectory and success of the 2022 holiday season is difficult to predict. Because of this — and perhaps more than any other year previously — reaching the right audiences with your KOL marketing this year is more important than ever. From choosing the right KOLs for your brand and campaign, to personal relationships and co-creations, and generating organic reach, following are some tips and tricks to help your brand succeed this year.
If you haven’t already begun reaching out to KOLs regarding potential partnerships for the holiday season, you need to start. Now. The Christmas period is a crucial time for all businesses, not only yours. This means KOLs’ services will be in high demand, but equally that they are likely to be more choosy about which brands they partner with in order to not saturate their audiences with sponsored posts during such a busy time of year.
Starting your KOL outreach early gives you and your KOLs ample time to agree on partnership terms and conditions, and to prepare and review content ahead of time. This second point is particularly relevant given the extra personal demands your KOLs are likely to have on their time during the busy end-of-year period. Preparing content and scheduling posts in advance means both parties avoid the stress of rushed campaigns, and reduces the risk of silly mistakes.
Finally, given content prices can be expected to rise in line with demand during the end-of-year period, working with creators early on content may provide a bargaining chip in your efforts to keep prices down. It’s worth a shot, at any rate.
With a plethora of new and seasonal products released by brands, the Christmas season is a natural fit for organic influence campaigns. Sending free products to your favorite KOLs is an effective means of generating organic reach within a tight marketing budget.
But it’s important to take care how you do it. As awareness grows around the unnecessary waste generated by product gifting, instead of a blanket product mailout take the extra time to reach out to your KOLs to check if they are interested in the product first.
It may take more time, but sending gifts only to KOLs who are truly interested in the product makes it more likely they will post qualitative content about your brand.
And in addition to reducing waste (and costs), communicating with your KOLs along these lines enables you to personalize the products and messages that you do send out, helping to develop closer relationships.
With competition for audiences’ eyeballs at a premium during the Christmas period, activating a high number of KOLs is an effective way to expand reach and prominence.
Micro-influencers are especially effective in this equation. Delivering higher engagement rates at lower prices, activating a high volume of nano and micro influencers around Christmas can deliver hefty reach and stronger connections with the target audience.
The trick, however, is to thoroughly research your KOLs ahead of time to ensure that their audience is a good fit for your brand. Nano and micro influencers may be better for the budget, but as with other times of the year, there is not much point in working with them if their audience is not aligned with your objectives.
There is a reason the Christmas period is rife with competitions: they work. Running competitions in collaboration with influencers who invite audiences to like, follow and tag a friend to have a chance at winning enables you to publicize your product or brand, while growing your own accounts. It is also a handy means of offering KOLs interesting content formats with which they can reward loyal followers.
Running funny, interesting competitions is also a great way to stand out in a crowded field. Other than simple like/tag to win, why not come up with a fun concept that invites competition participants to create UGC to win? Dance challenges on TikTok are an obvious option, but thinking outside the box to combine something iconic about your brand or product with the Christmas theme can be very effective when done well.
As livestreaming gathers pace and popularity on the major social networks, brands, KOLs and audiences are learning that aside from sales, a deeper value of the medium lies in fostering stronger links between presenters and the audience.
Direct interaction during a livestream can be powerfully persuasive, whether for awareness or sales purposes. Collaborating with KOLs on livestreams could take any number of forms during the Christmas period, and offers an additional emotional element that is absent during other times of the year.
Christmas is a great time to strengthen relationships with brand ambassadors through co-created content. With so much happening, why not invite them to the office or factory to create some behind-the-scenes content? Giving your KOLs and, by extension, their audiences, a sneak peek into how decisions are made and products created provides an additional opportunity to share your values at a time of the year when audiences are particularly engaged in the purchasing process.
Co-creating products with your KOL ambassadors for promotion and sale around the holiday season has long proven to be a winning formula. And while product co-creation often makes one think of global brand/celebrity collaborations, it doesn’t have to be the case. What about co-creating a Christmas card with the profits donated to a favorite charity?
As you can see, there are plenty of ways to successfully activate KOLs around the holidays, but given the intense competition in the marketplace, strong personal relationships and targeting the right audience is more important than ever.
Kolsquare is Europe’s leading Influencer Marketing platform, a data-driven solution that allows brands to scale their KOL Marketing strategies and implement authentic partnerships with KOLs (Key Opinion Leaders). Kolsquare’s technology enables marketing professionals to easily identify the best Content Creators profiles by filtering their content and audience, and to build and manage their campaigns from A to Z, including measuring results and benchmarking performance against competitors. Kolsquare has built the largest community of influencer marketing experts in the world, and offers hundreds of customers (Coca-Cola, Netflix, Sony Music, Publicis, Sézane, Sephora, El Corte Inglés, Lacoste, …) the latest Big Data, AI and Machine Learning technologies to drive inspiring partnerships, tapping into an exhaustive network covering 100% of KOLs with more than 5,000 followers in 180 countries on Instagram, TikTok, Twitter, Facebook and YouTube. As a Benefit Company, Kolsquare has been pioneering Responsible Influence by championing transparency, ethical practices, and meaningful collaborations to inspire change.
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