Time to get your decorations out of the box and scramble for something to gift your friends and family. For some, this may be the only time of year to splurge and gift themselves a little something special.

In other words, everyone’s looking for something to buy, especially with Cyber Week kicking off the holiday shopping season.

In fact, Adobe found that the major holiday shopping weekends can lift sales by an impressive 200%. For business owners and marketers, this is the perfect time to start planning your holiday marketing campaigns so that you can make the most of it.

You don’t want to miss out on the only season where almost everyone finds a good reason to shop more than usual.

At the same time, it may be easy to shy away from planning your holiday marketing campaign because there’s so much involved in the process. Not to mention, the fact that you have to compete with more businesses than usual.

Fear not! In this post, we provide you with a detailed guide on how to plan your holiday marketing campaign. We also give you a few holiday marketing ideas to inspire your campaign this year.

1. Start Planning Early

When it comes to planning your holiday marketing campaign, never procrastinate. You’re already behind if you haven’t already cooked up some ideas for how you want to run your campaign.

The goal is to get your target audience to start thinking about your products and your brand well before the holiday shopping season actually begins. August and September are a good time to start so that you have everything you need to launch your campaign by the end of October or early November.

You don’t want to just target the last-minute shoppers but the early birds as well. In fact, targeting early-bird shoppers and offering special deals and rewards for shopping early could be highly profitable for your campaign.

A Deloitte survey even found that early-bird shoppers who began shopping before Thanksgiving planned to spend about $400 more than those who shopped later. And over 60% of respondents planned to do their shopping before Thanksgiving.

2. Holiday Marketing Means More Competition

Of course, with people shopping more this season, you’re bound to see more businesses trying to capitalize on it too. Even businesses that have avoided running a marketing campaign throughout the year wouldn’t want to miss out on winning over holiday shoppers. That means the competition is going to get much tougher and you’ll need all hands on deck for your holiday campaign.

To face the tough competition, make sure you deliver outstanding experiences at every stage of the conversion funnel. Right from the discovery and awareness stage, leverage creative promotion campaigns that stand out from the competition and speak to your target audience.

You’ll also have to plan campaigns spanning across multiple channels and social platforms to reach as many people as possible. For instance, you might have to invest in new but popular platforms like TikTok. Since it’s still a fairly new concept for most brands and marketers, you’ll have an advantage over the competition.

Once shoppers land on your site, make sure you offer a seamless shopping experience. It doesn’t hurt to review your current website performance to look for any bugs that could get in the way of your customers having an exceptional experience.

Are there any lags in your page load speed? Do you need to update your page security? Perhaps there are some broken links that you need to fix. Make a note of all of these issues and fix them before your campaign goes live.

3. Create an Irresistible Offer

What will your customers get out of the campaign? Planning your holiday marketing campaign requires a strategic approach, which also involves creating an offer that they can’t refuse.

At the same time, the offer should still be profitable for your business. You can’t just offer 50% off everything if you’re going to lose money on most of the sales.

So, it’s crucial that you plan well ahead of time for an irresistible offer that benefits both parties. Start by selecting the items you can afford to run a sale on and then offer a reasonable discount on those. You could further sweeten the deal with exclusive experiences that your competitors don’t offer.

For example, all customers who sign up for early access could stand a chance to win a free TV, or a trip to Bali, or something along those lines. It could also be something as simple as free shipping for all subscribers.

4. Invest in Creative Promotion Strategies

The most important part of your holiday marketing strategy is your promotion approach. In fact, this should make up for about half of your entire strategy. You’ve created an irresistible offer and now you need a way to effectively promote it so that you attract a massive and relevant audience.

It’s crucial that you spend some time devising promotion strategies that stand out from the competitors. You could use the following holiday marketing ideas to promote your offer:

Craft Exclusive Offers to Attract Early-Bird Shoppers

Generate hype around your holiday sale by providing shoppers with the opportunity to unlock deals a little earlier. You could set up an opportunity to sign up for early access to your sales and get exclusive offers and deals that won’t be available to last-minute shoppers.

This means you get to capitalize on the big-spending early shoppers before they spend their money anywhere else. And you also get to build a buzz for the sale as those early-bird shoppers tell their friends all about how good of a deal they managed to get.

Anastasia Beverly Hills, the makeup brand, regularly runs limited period offers to sign up for early access to its Black Friday sale. And the brand makes sure that this offer doesn’t get out of control by limiting the signup period.

That means that if you don’t sign up early enough, you’ll miss out on early access, which creates a sense of urgency.

Use Attractive Graphics across All Channels

Graphics instantly catch the eye, so they’re a must have for your holiday marketing campaign. Regardless of which social media platform you’re using or whether you’re promoting your sale via email, you need to craft attractive graphics that’ll instantly draw in your target audience.

See the following Black Friday promotional graphic from Morphe Brushes’ Facebook page, for example.

You could use free design tools like Canva to create your own promotional graphics. But make sure you follow a similar theme and color scheme for the same campaign. This will help with your campaign branding efforts by making it more memorable for shoppers.

Make The Most of Countdown Timers

There are two ways countdown timers can help your promotion campaign – they can build up excitement for an upcoming sale, or they can create a sense of urgency for an ongoing one. Set up a timer on your website counting down to the start of your sale. You could also create social posts counting down to the same event to further promote it.

Then create a sense of urgency by setting up a timer counting down to the last day of the sale. A “Sale Ends in…” timer could compel many shoppers to grab the offer before it’s too late. But make sure you only do this when there’s an authentic time limit or you’ll end up losing the trust of your customers.

Create Content that Adds Value and Inspires Purchases

Content marketing can be a highly effective tool to promote your holiday marketing campaign. Create holiday gifting guides and shopping guides that not only add value to your target audience but also inspire their purchases.

These types of content will work as blog posts, infographics, videos, and social posts too. You could even publish video reviews and tutorials of popular products that people might be considering.

You can use content marketing to target both early-bird shoppers and last-minute shoppers. For example, you could create a gifting guide and publish it in late October, urging shoppers to start planning their gifts early so they can avoid the last-minute rush.

You could also publish a list of last-minute deals for those who still haven’t done their holiday shopping.

Take for example how PhotoShelter provided subscribers with a gift guide for photographers in partnership with Feature Shoot.

Pro tip: Use a social publishing and scheduling tool to be able to visualize and analyze your social media content strategy.

Capitalize on Influencer Marketing

You could further amplify your holiday promotion efforts by working with influencers and content creators within your niche. Perhaps, they could include your products as a part of their shopping guides or reviews. Or you could ask to feature your product in their social media posts or blog.

Look into keywords and hashtags within your industry to find the most influential content creators in your niche. Find an influencer or micro-influencer that fits your brand and budget, and reach out for a potential collaboration.

Influencer marketing is a great way to get your business in front of hundreds of thousands of followers could be a great way to promote your holiday offers. Use an influencer tracking tool to track, measure, and help optimize the performance of your influencer.

Use Interactive Games/Posts to Keep Things Fun

You could even get shoppers more involved in the promotion by sharing posts that they can interact with. Share fun polls and quizzes through your social media to keep them engaged. For instance, Home Depot created a holiday Bingo card and shared it on Instagram.

Alternatively, you could also use user-generated content and hashtag campaigns to build a buzz around your holiday sale. This is a great way to involve your target audience in your promotion efforts.

Share a Referral Code with Your Thank You Notes

Improve your chances of getting more sales out of each purchase with the help of a referral program. Each time someone makes a purchase during the sale period, you could send them a “thank you” email or note with a referral code for an additional discount that they can share with their friends. You can also use influencer discount codes by getting famous faces on board.

Alternatively, you can also use the same approach to reward long-time customers with special holiday deals exclusive to them. Send them an email thanking them for their support and include a referral code they can share with a certain number of friends.

You can even use referral tools to make the referral process automated and scalable.

5. Seal It with A Winning Landing Page

Next, make sure you have a place for your target audience to land once they click on your link. Create a landing page that matches your offer so visitors know that they’ve reached the right place. This page should clearly highlight the top benefits of your offer, i.e. what your customers are getting out of the deal.

Design-wise, it should also match the promotional graphics that you’re using on other platforms and channels. If you’re leading shoppers to a sale page and not a specific product page, you could have a banner matching the design of your promotional graphics.

Check out Cult Beauty U.K’s landing page for an upcoming Black Friday sale. Since the sale hasn’t started yet, they’ve invited visitors to bookmark the page. They’ve also added some additional information about when the event is going to start. And for those who can’t wait till the sale begins, they’ve also encouraged them to check out other deals and offers.

6. Prepare for Possible Setbacks

Hiccups are bound to happen, especially during major events such as the holiday shopping season. You may have anticipated an influx of traffic and orders for your holiday marketing campaign, and you would’ve made the necessary preparations to handle the extra activity.

But there may be situations outside of your control, especially if your campaign reaches more people than you’d originally expected. So make sure you have a solution in place in case anything goes wrong during your campaign:

What will you do in case people can’t click on your ad link? How will you fix any checkout issues in the middle of your campaign? What happens if your server can’t handle the increase in traffic?

Be prepared with solutions for all of these possibilities so that you can deliver a quick fix.

7. Analyze and Adapt

You may think that you can kick back and relax once your campaign goes live, but that’s far from the truth. There’s still one thing left to do and that is to measure your campaign performance.

This is easily one of the most critical aspects of your holiday marketing campaign as it gives you important insights on how your effort has paid off. It will indicate whether you need to change something, and so on.

Use this step of the campaign to see whether you’ll be meeting your goals and if not, what could be hindering your efforts? Look for areas where people dropped off in your conversion flow, which platforms seem to be performing worse than others, and so on. Then look for possible reasons and fixes behind these problems to quickly adapt your holiday marketing campaign.

Make the most of the Keyhole Campaign Monitoring Tool to measure the ROI of your holiday marketing campaigns. The machine learning prediction feature is particularly useful as it helps you anticipate how your campaign might perform in the next 24 hours, 7 days, or 30 days. Use this feature to find out if you need to switch things up to drive even better results.

Ready to Launch Your Holiday Marketing Campaign?

While the holidays are the best time for businesses to launch a marketing campaign, it can be challenging to stand out in a sea of competitors. Follow the steps given above along with the holiday marketing ideas to develop a winning strategy this holiday season.

Don’t forget that the analytics process is a critical aspect of the whole campaign because it’s the very thing that tells you how well your investment is paying off.

If you’re still new to the whole campaign tracking process, use our free social media reporting template for a detailed guide.

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Keyhole helps marketers make data-driven decisions while streamlining their social media management efforts. On top of campaign tracking, influencer marketing, and social listening, you can also schedule and publish your social media posts, all in one platform.

Our customers report that Keyhole saves them 5 hours a week on gathering and reporting data, which translates into over $7,000 saved every year.

The post 7 Holiday Marketing Campaign Ideas [+ Awesome Examples] appeared first on Keyhole.

“When people come to Napa, the first thing that they think of is great wine. What goes along with great wine is great food, and what pairs perfectly with food and wine is music. Add beautiful rolling hills, vineyards, and world-class hospitality and you have what we call BottleRock Napa Valley.”

-Jasa Laliberte, Marketing Manager.

The festival was originally started in 2013, and by 2015 was selling out. In 2018, with an impressive lineup, festival tickets sold out earlier than ever before, spurring successful sales and a dedicated fanbase in the years of the festival after.

“We really focus a lot on customer experience, paying particular emphasis to our 4 different levels of VIP and providing an all-around amazing experience for the concert-goer from start to finish. In the same way that Napa provides such amazing hospitality, we try to do the same thing at our festival.”

Why Keyhole?

The marketing team at BottleRock accomplishes some pretty awesome feats through our tool year-round. Check it out! They include:

Identifying & Finding Influencers

Jasa’s team is able to regularly find and engage artists and influencers they didn’t know were speaking about BottleRock through Keyhole’s Influencers feature.

The ‘Influencers’ tab in Keyhole shows top users engaging with your hashtag or keyword, allowing you to engage with them and their content directly from the platform.

“Before Keyhole, I wasn’t seeing some of the bigger accounts that were talking about us. I just never knew they were out there being a positive influencer for us! So now I’m definitely looking into those people. We have kind of a daily ‘a-ha!’ moment with Keyhole.”

Identifying Trends by Tracking Hashtags Year-Round

According to Jasa, Keyhole’s biggest impact is saving time by clearly depicting cross-platform data.

We asked Jasa what she did before Keyhole, to which she laughingly replied, “Well, I had lots of spreadsheets!”

“The biggest thing that’s been helpful for us is being able to actually see our overall impressions online. The data was on different platforms and we were not able to see what other people were saying about us very easily. Now we are actually able to put a number and a statistic behind it.”

By tracking relevant hashtags and keywords year-round, Jasa’s team is also able to identify relevant trends as they happen, and adjust their marketing strategies and event accordingly.

“The biggest things are the analytics behind it, the numbers. We’ve tracked hashtags for the last 5 years, but we’ve never done it all year round–so it’s been beneficial for us to see different trends and quantify them.”

By being able to identify trends and track keywords and hashtags, it brings numerous benefits to the team by being able to measure reach and engagement, benchmark against competitors or other similar festivals, as well as track how people feel about milestones such as lineup announcements. 

Sharing User Generated Content Live At Your Event

Keyhole offers a Media Wall feature that’s extremely easy to moderate, and allows your audience to share content and connect on any sized screen. 

Whether it’s a massive jumbotron or simply a mobile app, help your event attendees connect and share experiences through the Media Wall feature. 

BottleRock uses Keyhole’s Media Wall to live stream content that festival attendees share on their social media to enhance the experience.

The team can also control what is actually being displayed on the Media Wall with the handy moderation feature – filtering out any content that may be inappropriate or irrelevant. 

Optimizing Content

Lastly, Keyhole helps with content creation by giving insight into the types of conversations users are having.

Keyhole’s word cloud for the ‘#BottleRock’ Keyword tracker shows what else people discuss when talking about Napa online.

“It is influencing our strategy. As we are moving to figure out specific copy and content, we are looking at what we’re putting out there in terms of hashtags and keywords, and figuring out what themes and trends we are seeing…what is being engaged with the most. We try and find that theme and replicate it.”

The word cloud helps to identify relevant themes and topics that can bring insights into marketing strategies by shining light on subjects that are also being buzzed about. 

Keyhole Streamlines Marketing Processes

Overall, Keyhole’s data has helped BottleRock’s marketing team save time and simplify their processes, allowing them to focus on what’s most important: creating unforgettable festival experiences and selling out year after year.

What can Keyhole do for you? Sign up for a 3-day free trial and find out!

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Keyhole is a real-time conversation tracker that provides keyword + hashtag analytics and social media analytics across platforms such as Facebook, Twitter and Instagram. Get started for free here.

The post How BottleRock Music Festival Amps Up Influencer Engagement With Keyhole appeared first on Keyhole.

It’s true: Instagram offers one of the latest and greatest ways to advertise your brand, whether you’re selling hair products, a meal kit delivery service, or a mattress in a box.  

In this article, we’re diving into all of your Instagram influencer FAQs, including the definition of the word “influencer” and the true power of Instagram influencer marketing. 

Next, we’re setting you up with a comprehensive guide on how to run a successful Instagram influencer campaign—from scoping out candidates to post-campaign etiquette. 

Best of all, we’re pulling back the curtain on the taboos of Instagram, like the typical cost of an influencer marketing campaign and the types of potential roadblocks to keep in mind before you launch. 

By the end of this read, you’ll be well on your way to dominating your niche with Instagram influencer marketing.

Let’s get into it!

What is an Instagram Influencer?

When you think of prominent influencers on Instagram, your mind likely gravitates to someone like Kylie Jenner or Selena Gomez — millennial money makers with millions of followers on the platform, raking in attention by the masses through just a single post.

But here’s the truth:

Celebrities are only one subset of influencers, and while their latest IG posts might ooze glitz and glamour, they’re not necessarily the best choice for your next campaign. 

We know what you’re thinking:

“Who has more influence than an A-list celebrity?”

The answer lives in your personal Instagram feed: macro and micro influencers.

These general “macro” and “micro” categories account for the non-celebs out there who have grown their following based on their lifestyle, hobbies, the clothes they wear, and the food they eat. 

Even though humans dominate Instagram, some of the most popular Instagram accounts actually revolve around the life of a pet—typically a dog or cat!

No matter the species, macro influencers are Instagram users who have harnessed their niche to build up an Instagram following between 100k to 1,000,000. 

Micro influencers typically have a following between 1k to 100k, and tends to drive higher engagement with every post compared to their macro counterparts. 

Celebrities typically fall into the category of mega influencers, with followings of over 1,000,000. 

Like it or not, micro and macro influencers come across as much more authentic and down-to-earth to their audiences than the average model or singer. 

The Power of Instagram Influencer Marketing

Okay, but how influential are these so-called influencers? Where did it all start?

Back in the early days of Instagram, brands would occasionally gift their products to prominent Instagram influencers in exchange for brief promotion. There was usually no formal contract in place and no guidelines to follow; it was a simple, casual transaction that allowed brands to dip their toes into the world of new media. 

That didn’t last long. 

As Instagram began to grow into one of the most powerful online platforms in the world, influencers in all categories realized they could charge a pretty penny for their opinions—and the business of Instagram influencer marketing has been thriving ever since. 

Listen:

You may still think traditional advertising is the way to bank most of your marketing dollars, but by focusing solely on traditional advertising, you’re missing out on the vast majority of your target audience.

While you’re running commercials, your potential audience members are scrolling through their Instagram feeds with the other 500 million users who browse the platform each and every day. 

What happens when a platform is owning audience attention? Viewers become followers, and those followers convert into active consumers who build their buying choices around what their favourite influencer is promoting. 

Still don’t believe Instagram influencer marketing is the way to go? Check out these statistics:

• A 2017 Retail Dive survey revealed that 72% of the Instagram users who participated said they have made fashion, beauty, or style-related purchases after seeing an Instagram promotion. 
• A more recent article from 2019 reported that one-third of Instagram users have purchased through the platform from their cell phone. 
• Instagram has 2 million monthly advertisers who are making waves through Instagram influencer marketing. 

Not only does the Instagram platform itself influence buying decisions, but it may shock you to know just how much weight is placed on the opinion of a macro or micro influencer over a celebrity endorsement. 

A 2016 Collective Bias study showed that 70% of millennial consumers are influenced by peer recommendations in buying decisions. The same study reported that only 3% of consumers would consider buying something in-store that was endorsed by a celebrity. 

The logic behind these statistics makes sense: people are much more willing to purchase a product that comes across as a recommendation from a friend, rather than an endorsement from an unrelatable celeb. 

Sure, a skincare recommendation from your favorite actor can be entertaining—but what about an endorsement from someone who looks like you, has similar interests, and likely sticks to a similar budget? 

In the world of social media, #relatable wins out every time. 

The Basics: 6 Types of Campaigns

So now that we’ve covered the definition of “influencer,” what happens next? What are your options? What will your first campaign look like? 

Here are the basics:

An Instagram influencer campaign is a partnership between a brand and a popular Instagram account to promote a product or service. These campaigns come in a variety of forms, depending on the brand’s budget, needs, and goals.

The most common types of Instagram influencer campaigns are:

1. Sponsored Posts

In the case of a sponsored post, a brand will pay an influencer to provide exposure for a product or service directly through a post (or a series of posts) on the influencer’s Instagram feed. 

Sponsored posts can be a single image, or can be a carousel of images, and are usually permanent posts.

They are a fantastic choice if you want to track post performance and metrics, allow the influencer of your choice to tag your brand within the image, and also disclose the partnership for transparency. 

It’s also a good way for influencers to incorporate storytelling in an authentic way and gives them creative reign.

Sponsored posts can also be shared on the influencer’s or the brand’s Instagram stories for further exposure.

2. Contests

Who doesn’t love free stuff? 

Sometimes a brand will allow an influencer to host a contest for their followers to win the promoted products or services directly through their Instagram account.

They typically involve asking the user to complete an action to enter, such as liking the contest photo, commenting on the photo, following certain accounts, tagging friends in the comments, or even sharing the post on their story.

Contests or giveaways can be conducted in a variety of different ways.

This type of campaign is great if you want to reach a wide audience, and also emphasizes your product or service.

3. Branded Content

Branded content allows for advertisers to promote an influencer or creators’ organic branded content posts as ads that appear in a user’s Instagram feed or through Instagram stories. 

The brand can work with influencers to naturally integrate their products or services into the influencer’s content in an engaging way. 

When these ads appear, users will see “paid partnership with” alongside the name of the brand on each post, emphasizing advertising transparency. 

This type of influencer campaign is optimal for brands who want to target specific audiences and see measurable insights.

It should be noted that branded content is still being gradually rolled out by Instagram, and may or may not be available to you. 

4. Reviews

Extra! Extra! Read all about it!

If you want to build trust in your brand, get an influencer to review it. 

Gifting an item in exchange for the influencer to put forward their honest opinion and sharing it with their followers can build trust and foster a relationship between you and the influencer.

An honest review also builds credibility between the influencer and their audience. It can drive audiences to your page to check out your product or service.

It also doesn’t hurt to build on your relationship with the influencer for future positive reviews or collaborations.

5. Brand Ambassador Programs

Brand ambassadors are influencers who receive free products or services from brands and promote through word of mouth. It is a long term relationship between the brand and the influencer with repeated promotion.

Selecting individuals who have already engaged with your product or service are the best fit for brand ambassador programs, especially if they have already expressed positive sentiments about your offerings.

After identifying someone who is already committed to your brand, you can set them up with complimentary products or services in exchange for continued positive exposure and promotion for your brand.

6. Influencer Takeovers

Instagram takeovers are common, especially if the influencer is promoting a particular service.

This type of campaign involves influencers agreeing to take over a brand’s Instagram account for a day, which can attract the influencer’s followers to the brand’s account. Selecting someone relevant to your niche and audience will drive traffic and brand awareness.

Instagram takeovers usually begin with a post containing a short bio of the influencer doing the takeover, and invite audiences to follow along with the takeover via Instagram stories. 

The takeovers can showcase content such as a day in the life of an influencer or special events.

10 Steps to Running a Successful Campaign

1. Set Your Budget

Before you open the Instagram app at all, you have to know how much you’re willing to invest in a campaign. If you start your outreach prior to establishing your budget, your brand is in for a world of hurt!

Many brands are still very green to Instagram influencer marketing and don’t have any solid reference points for what to charge for a post. 

With this in mind, it’s important to note that most influencers quote flat rates, but others base their fees on the number of sales or leads generated as a result of the campaign. 

Rates also vary widely by industry. This blog post from Coschedule.com explains that niches like modelling, photography, and food generally charge the highest rate on Instagram, while travel, lifestyle, and music usually come at a lower cost. 

As a general rule, $250-500 per post is a good guideline for influencers with below 10,000 followers. Influencers with over 10,000 followers tend to command rates between $5000 and $10,000. But buyer beware: if you’re looking to work with an influencer with over 1 million followers, they can begin to charge upwards of $100,000 per post. 

Looking to run a longer influencer campaign? According to Hootsuite, the baseline formula to calculate pricing for influencers is:

Your budget not only defines the scope of your influencer campaign, but also which category of influencers you can work with.

2. Find the Perfect Influencers

When you decide your budget, you also need to decide which type of influencer you’re looking to collaborate with.

Will it be a celebrity, macro influencer, or micro influencer? It’s important to be realistic here; unless your brand is akin to Coca-Cola or Nike, macro or micro is the way to go. 

If you’re a smaller brand or a local company, start scoping out micro influencers and potentially a few macro influencers in your niche if your budget allows for it.

Make a checklist of the most important qualities you’d like your influencer to have, and stick to it! 

You can use an Instagram marketing tool like Keyhole for this step, as well as surfing the popular hashtags that already exist in your niche. 

You’ll want to make sure the influencer(s) that you identify align with your brand values, appeal to the right audience, and will also help you meet your campaign goals.

Make sure to also vet your influencers thoroughly – you may not want to work with someone who has been involved in PR disasters or controversies.

Next, analyze the popular accounts associated with these hashtags and how they align with your target audience. Go the extra mile to get to know their followers and the way they engage with the influencer’s content. 

Don’t be discouraged if this step takes some time!

According to a joint study by Tapinfluence and Altimeter, over two-thirds of marketers tout that shopping for influencers is the biggest challenge in a campaign. 

While you’re scouting profiles, answer the following questions for each influencer:

• How many followers do they have?
• Are their followers genuinely engaged with their content via likes, comments, and shares? 
• How much traffic does this influencer generate as a whole?
• Does the influencer’s audience reflect your brand’s target audience?

Once you find your ideal influencer who checks all these boxes, it’s time to plan your outreach.

3. Prepare for Influencer Outreach

Before you send that DM or email, take a dive into the mind of the influencer.

Do your research.

What interests do they have? What was the meaning of their latest post? How can you introduce yourself in a way that will attract them to your brand? 

By paying attention to how your ideal influencer uses social media, you’ll be better equipped to propose the collaboration and communicate your brand values clearly and effectively. 

Engaging with your selected influencer on Instagram and other platforms before reaching out to them will also establish a positive relationship with them – possibly before you even formally reach out to them!

4. Be Aware of Potential Problems

Let’s be honest. If you follow the steps outlined here, your campaign should go off without a hitch.

But it’s important to be aware of all the potential problems that can arise from an Instagram influencer campaign so that you can steer clear of them. Here are a few pointers:

FTC Guidelines And Best Practices

Our biggest tip for you, regardless of your campaign choice, is to be well aware of the latest FTC guidelines, follow best practices, and be completely transparent in your communication with influencers. 

The legal aspect of Instagram influencer campaigns is tightening quickly, and it’s always a great idea to stay informed with the most up-to-date Instagram FTC guide!

Fake Followers And Bots

You can never be too careful!

True influencers will have an audience of engaged, authentic followers. Scope out the comment section of your chosen influencer to determine if their comments are genuine or suspicious.

More suspect comments will be very broad in nature—they usually don’t show any real connection to the account or the associated post. Generic comments like these are typically from an account that’s paid for followers.

Examining an influencer’s followers are also important, as it is very common to have botted followers. An example of a few bot accounts may look like this:

You’ll notice that botted accounts may have a display photo, a username, and possibly even some posts, but tend to have little to no engagement on their account.

It is also important to inspect the ratio of followers to likes, comments, and engagement.

If an influencer has over 100k followers, but only one or two authentic comments, it is likely that they purchased fake followers or used bots to grow their following.

5. Reach Out!

You’ve done your due diligence and planned out your campaign – let’s kick it up a notch!

It’s time to “slide into the DMs,” as the kids say. 

When it’s finally time to reach out, treat your chosen influencer with the utmost respect. Take this opportunity to clearly demonstrate how your brand aligns well with their mission or interests. 

Better yet, guarantee the influencer creative freedom in your campaign!

The influencer knows their audience better than you do. If you’ve made the right choice in your research, prep and outreach process, giving the influencer full creative licence will result in a campaign that’s built on trust and authenticity. 

We said it before and we’ll say it again: nothing beats #relatable. 

When crafting your outreach messaging, whether through email or direct messages, make sure to adhere to email etiquette; be concise and pique their interest!

Be sure to introduce yourself thoughtfully and make sure your message is personalized to who you’re reaching out to. Perhaps mention a recent Instagram influencer campaign that the influencer has worked on that you liked or comment on similar interests between the influencer and your brand.

Express to the influencer why you’d value working with them, and leave the conversation open ended. Pitch your ideal campaign collaboration, but give them the opportunity for input and to share their own ideas. 

Stuck on writing your message? Oberlo has a few great email templates for different types of influencer collaborations. Here’s an example of a product gifting template:

Even if the influencer is unable to collaborate with you now, chances are it could lead to projects down the road!

6. Follow Up

Don’t forget that this campaign will likely be an ongoing conversation between influencer and brand, rather than a one-off message.

Be open to questions and feedback from the influencer, and respond to their inquiries promptly.

Haven’t heard back from an influencer? 

Lee Vosburgh, an influencer, admits that she misses some direct messages from companies or brands because they get redirected into Instagram’s message requests inbox. 

Don’t hesitate to follow up with them if you don’t get a response.

If they haven’t engaged with your numerous communication attempts, move on to other opportunities or other influencers.

7. Seal the Deal

So, it’s official!

If the influencer agrees to your campaign, take the time to familiarize them with your brand and campaign KPIs or expectations.

Making sure you’re on the same page throughout the campaign is crucial to attaining your campaign goals!

Introduce them to your brand’s Instagram account, offer a thorough explanation of your mission with this campaign, and maybe even create a mood board to inspire your influencer. 

Ensure that all necessary contracts are signed, and take the time to check in with your influencer to see if they require any support in their content creation.

8. Launch Your Campaign

Now that the influencer is fully comfortable and confident with what’s in store, it’s time to launch! 

Kick off your campaign with posts from your brand’s account, share posts from influencers you’re working with, or more!

Again, giving the influencer creative reign is ideal, but consider throwing in a branded hashtag for the campaign itself or running associated promotional material across your brand’s socials while the campaign is running. 

An example of a campaign hashtag can be as simple as something like #tiff2019:

9. Track Your Success

Tracking engagement and metrics is the best way to measure the true success of your Instagram influencer campaign.

Keyhole helps you manage your influencers, keep track of the number of likes, shares, reach, and impressions your campaign generated, while also making recommendations for your next launch. 

Many brands prefer to measure their engagement rate to define campaign success, calculated as a percentage.

There are many different methods to tracking success. Another method is by using branded hashtags over the duration of the campaign, if you’re looking to solely measure active participants in the launch. You can also track if there was an increase in followers or page traffic to the company’s Instagram page. 

How you decide to track your success is in your hands!

10. Keep in Touch

Don’t be a stranger!

It’s always a good idea to stay in contact with the influencer after the campaign is over to provide an open door and maintain a positive relationship. Who knows—if all goes well, you might want to work with them again in the future!

Cultivating relationships will benefit you in the long run for your Instagram influencer marketing strategy moving forward. They may also be able to refer you to other key influencers within your space!

Power Your Instagram Influencer Campaign with Keyhole

While it may appear to be a straightforward photo and video sharing platform, Instagram has a ton of untapped marketing power. 

A lot of work goes into influencer marketing for Instagram—from doing your research, to staying up to date on best practices, to effective communication with your chosen influencer—and that’s all before you even launch the campaign! 

With these newfound tools in your toolbox, now is the perfect time to jump on board and get started with your very first Instagram influencer marketing campaign. 

Ready to get started?

The post Instagram Influencer Marketing: A Start-To-Finish Guide appeared first on Keyhole.

10 years ago, Co-Founders John and Leo Resig began a Men’s Lifestyle digital platform you may be familiar with: theCHIVE.

“They created a culture where people can escape from politics and the annoyance of everyday life and come and have a good laugh.”

-Jill Broek, Director of Brand Strategy

As you scan through the platform, you’ll find three types of posts: feel-good, funny images, pictures of women that the platform calls ‘Chivettes’, and stories from the CHIVE’s charity division.

Director of Brand Strategy, Jill Broek, shares with us that although some people may see theCHIVE as a “bro site”, this is actually just a misconception. From a woman’s perspective, the company culture is very inclusive of women and has a strong humanitarian focus.

“I think that from an outside perspective if people don’t know theCHIVE, it seems like this bro-centric culture but it’s really not. There are Chivettes on our site, and most of those images are submits from women across the country who want to be on the site. There are tons of women who visit the site on a regular basis themselves, and a ton of women that work here. It’s humor-first, and then humanity as well and trying to help the community.”

Helping the Community

TheCHIVE’s charity group helps the community by finding people in need and inspiring their massive platform, which has over 20 million monthly users, to take action.

They focus on people with rare medical diseases (for example, those that affect 0.04% of the world’s population), veterans, special education initiatives and first responders.

Through these efforts, theCHIVE has raised over 10 Million dollars for these various causes around the world in the past 10 years.

“Our audience is very motivated when there is a charity tie-in. We’ll usually ask our audience to share a post with a hashtag, and donate $1 per post to the affiliated charity.”

Unique Hashtags

But engaging such a wide-spread following can be challenging. How do you keep track of 20 million people a month and monitor how they’re engaging with your content?

TheCHIVE’s solution is using unique hashtags.

They’ve done this with multiple campaigns, like when they partnered with Netflix to promote The Punisher by asking their community to share a photo of the show’s famous skull design with #ThePunisher in their post.

“The show was about a former military person, and those Punisher skulls are so prevalent within our community. So we asked them to post a photo with the skull and #ThePunisher and we donated $1 to CHIVEcharities to help veteran initiatives”

They ran a similar campaign to promote the new Dave Chappelle show, this time donating to DC public schools, which is Chappelle’s big charity initiative.

“Without Keyhole we wouldn’t have been able to do these campaigns.”

Unique Hashtags and a National Beer Pong Tournament

They also use unique hashtags to run other CHIVE-wide events, like the first-ever national beer pong tournament.

“We started our partnership with you guys because we did our first ever national beer pong tournament. A client of ours was working with us to advertise their hangover relief product (FAST). The campaign was around March Madness, so we ran a bracket-style beer pong tournament.”

As the company couldn’t run full tournaments in every state, they used 50 unique hashtags (1 per state) to track the state-wide CHIVE beer pong tournaments being held around the U.S. The top 2 winners from each group were then flown into Austin for a National championship match.

“We were tracking 50 different hashtags & figuring out who’s in the lead at each state in real-time. We would update it throughout the week to know who’s most likely to win. Without Keyhole, tracking this many hashtags would’ve been impossible, so that’s where our partnership started.”

So if you need to engage a massive community, keep unique hashtags in mind to anchor their conversations to each other and to you. Plus, running hashtag analytics on owned #s always provides an amazing opportunity for consumer insights.

The post How TheCHIVE Uses Unique Hashtags To Engage A Massive Follower Base appeared first on Keyhole.

Now let me tell you about Dr. Blevins’s research.

We all remember the Women’s March of 2017. It was one of the largest demonstrations in US history, with millions of people marching in the US alone, and hundreds of other marches happening around the world.

It quickly became a source of interest for many. How did a movement with no defined goal or governing body make such an impact, mobilizing millions? This is what Dr. Blevins sets out to answer in her paper “The Women’s Convention: Reclaiming a Movement”.

In it, she explores how the Women’s March movement was able to gather much-needed resources through social media, ultimately allowing it to scale to the Women’s Convention of 2017.

Using Keyhole, Dr. Blevins analyzed the posts being made by the Women’s March Facebook page, noting what posts were being shared with the intention of gathering resources for the convention.

She also tracked the overall impact of #WomensConvention on Twitter and Instagram, analyzing overall reach and impressions.

As she shares within her paper:

“During the same two month spread that this paper focused on for official posts from the Women’s March Facebook page, there were 85,867 posts tagged with the #WomensConvention hashtag. Those user posts had a reach of 142 million unique users, and made over 456 million impressions.

Those metrics are almost impossible to manage using traditional media tactics, especially for decentralized, activist organizations and movements.” (Blevins, “The Women’s Convention: Reclaiming a Movement”)

She shares with us that many researchers are not yet using tools like Keyhole to gather data in this way, but this is a change we will likely start to see in the future.

“A lot of social media researchers gather data manually. Mostly because most of us come from a social science background and we’re not used to being able to use a lot of software. This idea of being able to gather live info on a huge scale is something we are not used to.”

For Dr. Blevins, however, using Keyhole has proven to exponentially increase the amount of data gathered. She also shared with us that our historical offering was particularly useful, especially “at a price point that an academic can afford” (historical offering= gathering old posts that were shared on social).

“The ability to gather data like that is something I’ve never seen before. Being able to actually see that data with discourse and seeing attitude [Sentiment] is really unique. I really appreciate that as a researcher. From a couple of months of using Keyhole I have enough research and raw data that I could get sufficient publications written to get tenure.”

Overall, working with Dr. Blevins has helped us understand how Keyhole can be successfully applied as a research tool, an exciting use that we can’t wait to see more of.

As Dr Blevins shares,

“While this software is usually used by advertisers as part of their in-depth social-media analytics, it holds valuable insights for social media research as well” (Blevins, “The Women’s Convention: Reclaiming a Movement”).

The post University Of Idaho Professor Uses Keyhole To Gather Live Info On A “Huge Scale” appeared first on Keyhole.

“Media plays an impact, we had 1.6 billion impressions on #WorldElephantDay. Now, we have to find a way to turn that engagement into funding and sponsorship so that it can continue to help the elephants”.

Every August 12th, the world gets together to save elephants for #WorldElephantDay. The annual awareness campaign, which began in 2012, was created by documentary filmmaker Patricia Sims and her colleagues.

“When I started to learn about elephants, their intelligence and their emotional capabilities, I learned also about how complex some of the issues that affect them are, and decided it was important to bring the world together on finding solutions. That’s what inspired me to create World Elephant Day,” shares Patricia.

Today, Patricia continues to lead this annual campaign as the Co-Founder and Executive Director of the World Elephant Society, a nonprofit tax-exempt 501(c)(3) charity organization that supports World Elephant Day as well as its website and related events.

Patricia amplifies World Elephant Day through Keyhole year-round by a) finding and connecting with influencers and b) easily collecting campaign data to help secure investors and sponsoring partners.

Influencers: As the campaign has gained traction over the years, it has become globally recognized in the elephant conservation movement. Patricia shares that, as a result, influencers and organizations often use the campaign’s hashtag year round in connection to other elephant conservation movements, sponsoring programmes, and more.

By using Keyhole, Patricia and her team are able to easily identify top influencers engaging with their hashtag, and directly reach out to them to amplify their message.

“Influencers have really helped us with growth- when you can target them specifically, it can help get your message out so much more effectively,” tells us Patricia.

Data for Investors: Patricia’s team works with Keyhole to help identify campaign reach, engagement, and growth, easily organizing all this data and helping Patricia present it to potential collaborators and sponsors.

“With the data collected using Keyhole I turn engagement into action, drafting reports for potential partnerships and funders that demonstrate our growth, reach, and impact.”

Result

Keyhole has helped World Elephant Day get more value out of its social media presence.

In 2018, Patricia and her team will use this data to create a more formal brand strategy, taking advantage of the large brand impact her campaign has in the conservation space to attract sponsors and partners to support the World Elephant Day campaign and her organization year-round.

*All images courtesy of World Elephant Society

The post How #WorldElephantDay Uses Keyhole To Help Find Investors appeared first on Keyhole.

The Challenge

When Billboard was planning its first ever Hot 100 Music Festival, the internal team needed help with their social media strategy. It was more important than ever to identify key influencers and a social measurement of success.

How Keyhole Helps

1. Using Social to Track Marketing KPIs

With Keyhole, Stephanie and Katherine can easily track real-time data and post engagement. This allows them to choose event partners strategically and measure success metrics, such as the reach and engagement, of their digital campaigns and events.

• Follower growth before and after influencers are engaged
• Type of content fans love
• Fans’ reactions and sentiment to the posts
• Who to partner with to drive most fan engagement for Billboard

2. Capturing Buzz in Real-Time

Stepping into work every morning, social chatter around trending artists is on the social media team’s radar. Using Keyhole’s alert feature, Billboard can find out who’s mentioning them on social media. The ability to get real-time alerts and insights on these social conversations provides immediate value.

3. Easy Reporting to Show Your Impact

Katherine needs to provide high-level reports to business partners and executives. Using Keyhole, she can pull together meaningful metrics with just a few clicks.

Event Sponsors Love It!

For the 2016 Billboard Women in Music Awards, the social team tweeted video clips from the event post-broadcast, and successfully garnered engagement from an extended millennial audience who might not have tuned in on traditional TV.

Event sponsors loved it as they were targeting the millennial audience specifically.

In Stephanie’s words, “The ease of Keyhole is extremely valuable to social media managers.”

The post How Billboard Uses Keyhole To Boost The Hot 100 Festival appeared first on Keyhole.

FITCRUNCH® IS THE FITNESS COMPANY known for FITCRUNCH® Baked Bars–inspired by world-renowed chef Robert Irvine and FortiFX founder Sean Perich.

Like many other businesses, FITCRUNCH® started with traditional marketing. A $14,000 budget on print ads for example, would amount to about 100,000 e-mail subscribers. Soon, the company’s marketing strategy expanded to include social media marketing and influencer marketing.

Influencers

The company started working with Keyhole to engage with influencers (you can do this through the influencer tab in your dashboard), in order to expand and engage their customer base, eventually also using the tool to measure their impact.

Since launching their influencer program with Keyhole, FITCRUNCH® has found and engaged with around 20 new influencers a month. This allows the company to get the word out about new flavours they are testing and the latest news and promotions.

Tracking Influencers Through the Keyhole Dashboard

FITCRUNCH® creates a unique hashtag for each influencer partner, and uses Keyhole to measure social success against actual sales.

They easily monitor who’s talking about them, who’s driving fan engagement, and each influencer partner’s success, so it can plan strategic partnerships. Keyhole’s visual reports allows FITCRUNCH® to easily assess their marketing efforts with hard meaningful data.

Alerts

Alerts also notify FITCRUNCH® when specific users, or users with more than [x] number of followers posts using their hashtag, keyword or handle. This allows the marketing team to repost this top user-generated content to their accounts to drive buzz to their social campaigns.

“Alerts is my personal favorite. When NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt Jr. tweeted he was having a FITCRUNCH® bar, we were able to jump on it and capture the buzz in real-time.”

Robert Irvine with Dale Earnhardt Jr.
Via Twitter

Social Listening

An important aspect of FITCRUNCH®’s marketing strategy involves social listening, or using social media to get to know your audience. The company looks at trending conversations among its audience using Keyhole’s word cloud when making strategic decisions. Reminder: The word cloud shows you other Keywords and Hashtags that users included in posts alongside the term you’re tracking. Here’s the word cloud for #fitcrunchbar:

Via Keyhole

“We rely on the world cloud to identify trending conversations, so we can include them in our posts and attract new target audience. For instance, when searching for our protein bar #fitcrunchbar, the word cloud showed that ‘snack’, ‘chocolate’, ‘butter’, ‘peanut’ as trending keywords. This gave us insights on what customers may like as new protein bar flavours.”

Case in point: When FITCRUNCH® launched a new protein bar flavor called birthday cake, they were able to use the word cloud and see certain retailers popping up. This helps FITCRUNCH® to make strategic decisions such as which retailers to partner with.

The post How Fitcrunch Gained 23K Followers By Engaging Influencers On Keyhole appeared first on Keyhole.

MELT Atlanta is a premier full-service agency that amplifies major brands through collegiate athletes and athletic events.

Right now, for instance, one of MELT’s projects is working with the Olympic athletes that form part of the #CokeFamily at the PyeongChang winter Olympics, and simultaneously getting ready for Tokyo 2020 (NBD, right?).

In order to best work with influencers, create future influencer strategies and report their successes with clients, MELT needs a reliable method to drive, track, and report on multiple influencer-based campaigns. This is where Keyhole comes in.

“Having a reliable number of impressions and reach for the hashtag that we are able to get within seconds of logging in has definitely solved our biggest pain point.”

-Jenna Cook, Digital & Social Media Manager

Why Keyhole

The MELT Team shared with us how Keyhole helps their team optimize influencer campaigns through Account Tracking, Hashtag Tracking, QuickTrends, and Reports.

Account Tracking

The MELT team tracks all influencer accounts within Account Tracking, giving them full visibility into how the accounts are performing.

Insights from this dashboard include top performing posts, follower growth, and insights such as most engaging post type, best posting times, optimal post length, follower insights & more (within the Optimization tab).

By combining this information with their own internal strategy, the MELT team was able to work with one of their current influencers to strengthen their Twitter performance, achieving consistent follower growth.

QuickTrends

We were also delighted to hear about MELT’s positive experience with our new feature: QuickTrends! The team uses this tool to run competitive research, which is one of the tool’s primary purposes.

“I love QuickTrends,” shared Digital & Social Media Manager, Snigdha Dhar, “We used it to see how our campaign was performing against other Olympic sponsors and learned a lot.”

-Snigdha Dhar, Digital & Social Media Manager

Here is what that looks like. QuickTrends gives a quick overview of the number of conversations happening on Twitter around specific topics. It gives insight into who is being most talked about in the Twitter world.

Hashtag Tracking & Reporting

Through Hashtag Tracking, the team measures overall campaign performance for #CokeFamily and any other campaign hashtags, collecting all related insights such as sentiment, influencers, related topics and more.

And, Keyhole’s easy reporting tool makes sharing these campaign results a breeze. The dashboard allows MELT to share results quickly and efficiently with clients by sharing a direct link or downloading a PDF. They simply log in, quickly generate a report and share it with clients.

“We are recapping every single week. Keyhole has been extremely helpful to turn that around so fast.” – Jenna Cook

Results

With Keyhole, MELT is able to focus their time and energy on campaign success and creating winning campaign strategies, ensuring that they are nurturing and managing their influencer program, and always looking forward to the next campaign.

How can Keyhole help your company? Sign up now to find out!

The post How MELT Tracks Influencer Success With Keyhole appeared first on Keyhole.