With the holidays fast approaching, brands and companies are starting to figure out how to market their products for Black Friday. Traditional marketing methods relied on print materials, referrals, direct mail, and TV commercials. But these are outdated tactics don’t necessarily resonate with Millennials.
Millennials – the generation with the largest purchasing power at the moment – follow influencers and trust their judgment. The Internet and social media offer countless avenues for promoting sales and new products whether via Pinterest, Twitter, Snapchat, or even TikTok. Influencer marketing, a growing market estimated over $3Billion, is another path that digital marketers can use to drive awareness and sales ahead of Black Friday.
Tap into an Influencer’s Voice to Reach New Audiences
Influencers are powerful because of their carefully cultivated and highly engaged audiences. An influencer’s ability to create a genuine connection with their audience sets influencer marketing apart from other marketing channels.
An influencer’s followers typically engage because they’re enthusiastically locked in with the messaging of the influencer. Brand marketers can tap into that enthusiasm to drive awareness for products and sales ahead of Black Friday and Cyber Monday. You’ll want to start developing a campaign that includes:
- A content calendar for planning all related posts and subsequent social platforms
- Unique content your team will distribute during the campaign such as hashtags, images, web copy, CTAs, and landing pages
- Influencers you’ll partner with for the campaign
- A campaign budget
Partner with Influencers to Promote Sales & Discounts
Influencer marketing is a proven channel for promoting sales and discounts ahead of Black Friday. During this time, influencer and user-generated content posts (on average) receive twice as many social shares. Overall, brands can expect to see a 25 percent increase in engagement though an influencer’s content. Brand managers are locked in because they can directly track revenues by providing influencers with unique discount codes. Influencers then include the discount code in their social media posts, with the goal of driving traffic, adding followers to the brand’s social accounts, and ultimately generating revenues thru the brand’s website.
Let’s say you run a small clothing brand. First you need to evaluate your customer based and identify influencers who align with your brand core values. You could provide a discount code to a social media influencer like Carli Bybel (@thefashionbybel), send her an outfit to wear for a post or story on Instagram, and have her mention the discount code (“XOXOCARLI”) in the caption. Assuming her audience members match the profile of your target customer and – assuming the outfit looks good – a promotional post like that can drive significant engagement and sales for your brand ahead of Black Friday.
Using Influencers for New Product Launches
Black Friday is a great time to promote new products, and influencer marketing is a great way to position your services and products in front of a new audience. Recruiting multiple influencers to showcase your products can drive social traffic to your profile and ultimately to your eCommerce store. It will drive awareness and spark interest in your new product.
Let’s say you run a makeup company that’s launching a new eye shadow palette. You want to promote this new palette ahead of launch to drive interest. You can send out the eye shadow palette to a beauty influencer like Genelle Seldon (@genelleseldon). She is well known in the beauty world and has an active audience of young women seeking expert makeup tips. You could even have Genelle build a quick look in the form of a tutorial. This will create great exposure for the new palette while teaching viewers some helpful tips for a beautiful look.
Boost Your Black Friday Sales with Influencer Marketing
This year, we expect to see influencer marketing budgets explode ahead of Black Friday. Start planning early, do your research on potential influencers that fit your targeted audience, and approach them with clear proposals. For many brands, Black Friday is a critical time of year for generating 30%-50% of their annual revenues! It’s important to ensure the strategy you put in place will resonate with your consumer while reaching them at the right time. With the right influencer, a consumer will feel like they’re receiving recommendations from a friend. This sort of relationship isn’t just hard to achieve with traditional marketing, it’s crucial for reaching certain demographics.
Failing to take advantage of this shopping craze can be crippling if you’re looking to make a huge profit in the fourth quarter. Remember: you don’t want your competition to gain a huge advantage. The experts at Premiere Creative can help you with that. Black Friday and Cyber Monday will arrive before you know it! Dial (973) 346-8100 today to speak to an account rep. Make sure to subscribe to our blog for the latest digital trends and industry updates.