Supercharge Your Black Friday Marketing Campaigns with These Influencer Marketing Tips

Set clear expectations

Before starting any influencer marketing campaign it’s important to get clear on your goals and how you will measure success. 

For one brand, that may be a focus on increasing brand awareness while for another, it may be a big holiday push specifically geared toward driving traffic and conversions. 

Regardless of your goals, setting clear expectations is where every successful campaign begins. This includes everything from setting a budget to establishing how you’ll track KPIs. 

If you’re new to influencer partnerships, then check out The 2023 State of Influencer Earnings and The State of Influencer Equality reports to learn about payment and diversity trends in influencer marketing.

Start early

It’s almost never too early to start planning your holiday marketing campaigns. The sooner you can get your holiday campaigns ready to go, the better. Most brands start making Q4 plans during the summer months, so it’s especially important to get started as soon as possible. 

If you work with our Managed Services team, for example, a typical campaign can take weeks to execute for the best results. While we do quick-turnaround campaigns as well, a well-thought out Black Friday push could take weeks to plan. 

If you’re managing your own campaigns and already feeling behind, try our new AI tools in our influencer marketing platform, IZEA Flex, which can help you quickly write campaign briefs or even brainstorm ideas for the campaign itself. 

The more detail you can include in the campaign brief, the better your results will be. Be sure to include information like: 

• Your goals for the campaign
• Brand messaging points
• Ideas for imagery
• Links to similar content to what you expect
• Any dos and don’ts for the campaign 

Be clear on messaging

Highlighting the sales promotion and product benefits is only one part of the story; the other is making sure the visuals created by influencers align with your brand.

For that, putting together a storyboard or sample imagery that aligns with your brand is ideal. If you don’t have content for this already, try our AI Storyboards tool, which can helps generate visual inspiration for marketing campaigns. AI-generated storyboards can be a powerful tool in influencer campaign, cutting down on content revisions and saving on production costs.

Come up with creative campaign ideas 

With a sea of sales happening during Cyber Week, it can be easy for your promotion to get lost in the noise. To stand out, try some of these unique influencer marketing campaign ideas: 

Try a virtual challenge 

Recruit influencers to promote a special challenge that encourages shoppers to participate for a chance to win special deals or even free product. If your goal is increased engagement and awareness, this is an excellent one to try.

Start a trend

Work with a popular influencer, such as a dancing influencer, to create a dance challenge, shop with me challenge, food challenge or similar trend for shoppers to try. Include a branded hashtag and offer prizes for creative entries.

Launch a giveaway

Giveaways can be a really effective way to grow a following as well as raise awareness for a brand. Collaborate with influencers on a few targeted giveaways leading up to, or during, Cyber Week. 

Offer bonus incentives to influencers

If your goal is to drive sales and conversions, you may want to consider offering limited time performance incentives or tiered commission bonuses to influencers. This can be a really effective way to drive additional sales and you may even see additional organic posts and social shares. Use our Tracking Links feature in Flex to generate unique links for each creator to track sales and traffic.

Host an influencer gift exchange 

Not all influencer partnerships have to be a dedicated post; instead, look for a gift exchange opportunity that will feature your brand’s products. These are often more affordable placements and customer engagement tends to be high since readers look forward to seeing what their favorite influencer is gifting other popular creators. 

Try a social media takeover

Allow influencers to curate content on your brand’s social platforms, giving them creative freedom to engage with their audience in a festive and authentic way.

Don’t overlook UGC

User-generated content (UGC) is a vital component of any successful marketing campaign, including Black Friday initiatives. 

With UGC, you can re-post content on social media, paid ads or other content verticals, like a brand newsletter. 

One of the most important things to keep in mind when looking for UGC creators is that it’s all about the content creation — follower count doesn’t matter! 

You’ll want to look for influencers who have the proven skills to capture your product in a way that aligns with your visual aesthetic.

What’s more, embracing UGC means starting the next year with a library full of visual assets to use in your marketing campaigns. Just be sure to ask permission to repost the content as needed and offer payment when appropriate.

Budget for paid ad campaigns

Even if your budget is small or you are working with influencers on a gifted basis, it’s crucial to set aside a budget for paid ad campaigns to maximize your results. 

You can leverage UGC to run targeted ads as well as boost some of the best-performing posts from your influencer marketing campaigns, ultimately maximizing engagement, visibility and overall ROI.  

Check out our blog post on the Benefits of Paid Media in Influencer Marketing.

Aim for a well-balanced campaign

Gone are the days of one-off influencer posts. The most successful influencer marketing campaigns are well-rounded and include multiple posts over a period of time across multiple social platforms. They also include a mix of nano-, micro- and larger creators.

Remember, marketing is about trial and error. No one can predict what will go viral. 

Oftentimes creators will cross-post the same content across different channels, and one channel will greatly outperform the other. 

This is why it’s important to focus on promotions across various social channels and, if possible, work with the same creators multiple times or even on an ongoing basis. 

Leveraging longterm partnerships can be an excellent strategy for success. The closer you can work with the same influencers, the more familiar they, and their audience, becomes with your brand. 

It may also be time to try something new. If you’re new to Pinterest or YouTube, perhaps it’s an avenue worth exploring this holiday season.  

Ready to get started? Tap into our Managed Services team or use IZEA Flex influencer marketing platform to discover the right Influencers for your holiday campaigns.