The Holiday Hangover Remedy – 2019 Marketing Guide©2019, Colleen Eakins Design

The Holiday Hangover Remedy – 2019 Marketing Guide

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Whew – made it through the end of 2018! The holiday seasonal campaign is officially over and you think you can rest. Unfortunately, there is little to no rest as your company sets in to high gear to start off the New Year implementing new ideas, but how do you transition the end of one seasonal campaign to the next?

Thankfully, many of the same principles that were used to execute the high priority and visible campaigns can be used in lower periods and future campaigns.

Reboot the Year with New Strategy

Specifically the end of the year holidays come with consumers who will reach deep in to their pockets to get the best gift for their loved ones and donate to their favorite charities. The love for over indulgence during the holidays is a trap many consumers fall in to. After the season is over, they get their credit card bills or see what’s in their bank accounts and pull the purse strings super tight. Now all that is left is space for necessary purchases for them and their families.

Seasonal campaigns bring in high traffic and working on the next seasonal campaign is a must, but with the dead of winter, many are overcome with cabin fever and need an outlet – that’s where your brand can enter. How do you feed the beast of “consumer boredom”?

January is when we see the New Year’s resolutions of ‘becoming healthy and exercising’ come in to full swing. Everyone wants to go to the gym and start their fitness routine. Is this something your company can take advantage of with fitness apparel, equipment, food or nutrition?

The beer, wine and spirits industry may see a dip in January as many participate in the ‘Dry January’ – where you eliminate alcohol during this month due to the over indulgence of the holidays.

No-Shave November (“Movember”) is when men forego shaving in order to raise awareness for men’s health issues. Is this an opening to engage and offer products/services that will create and keep interest in your company? Can this be used a ramp up to the end of year holiday season?

Social movements and issues can be a time to create a buzz about your company when there is time in the campaign schedule. Do you take advantage of National Hot Dog Day or National Unicorn Day? What reflects best on the offerings of your company to capitalize on during the year?

Being able to mix in your company’s main brand strategies and mission with different opportunities are worth putting in to a calendar to understand the true lulls of the year with the high priority campaigns.

Same Tactics, Different Application

Through the seasonal campaigns you can decidedly identify consumers that will be interested in your brand and certain products or services within. How can that continue through the rest of the calendar year?

  • Data – bringing in your analytics team to debrief on the results of the seasonal campaigns is crucial to shaping the next campaign and strategy.
  • Calendar Keywords – just as you would have a content calendar for social media, blogs, podcasts, etc., you can align those tactics with specific keywords that will help boost sales during seasonal campaigns and the in-between.
  • Adjust Retargeting Ads – looking at the data to segment your audience differently for targeted ads may help during the low periods.
  • Highlight Seasonal Favorite Items – during seasonal campaigns many are inclined to review the items received or they gave as a gift. Use the highest rated items from the seasons to re-promote during the lulls.
  • Build Excitement – offer a competition or sweepstakes after large seasonal campaigns to keep and foster enthusiasm for your brand and products.
  • Social Media – the most powerful tool to story tell and engage with your consumers. Create thoughtful stories for followers that resonate with seasons, trends, issues, etc. Being able to utilize the platforms your company has to learn from your consumers during the “downtimes” to understand interest during different times of the year will only be beneficial to shape larger campaigns and to fill in the gaps.
  • Experiment – the lulls are the times to play around with new ideas whether it’s through social media, paid advertising, or print. Taking your results to shape these risks could grant high rewards that can be used in or reshape the larger campaigns.

Curbing the Craving

When it comes to its simplest form – how can brands curb the craving from over indulgence that the seasonal campaigns invite? Especially, that big end of the year seasonal campaign!

Consumers will want to spend as much as possible, while knowing they are receiving the best deals. So, how can companies use that lust the consumers have to power through to the next campaign?

What the everyday consumer wants:

  • Incentives – What will I get for buying your product or using your service? What’s in it for them?
  • Sales – How much do I really have to pay? What discounts are you offering?
  • Engagement – What will be my in-store shopping experience and service from your company? Will my overall user experience online be satisfactory?

Keeping these key features in mind when developing new strategies for your year will be crucial in how much you stay in the black vs red before the end of the year.

When determining your branding and marketing efforts for your seasonal campaigns, contact Colleen Eakins Design to set up a consultation to learn how we can best support you.

Brand Review and Digital Tune-up 2019©2019, Colleen Eakins Design

Brand Review and Digital Tune-up for 2019

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It’s time for another brand review, aka digital tune-up for 2019. Have you taken a look at and done the things in this infographic? Check out this infographic by Denese to see what you should do!

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Stock Photography Tips©2019, Colleen Eakins Design

Thinking Visually: Stock Photography Tips

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Do you need imagery for your marketing needs but unsure of what rights-managed, royalty-free and licenses mean? Here are some stock photography tips!

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How to make money from your website©2018, Colleen Eakins Design

How to Make Money From Your Website

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Did you know you can earn passive income from your website? It’s digital business real estate, with additional passive revenue potential!

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influencer marketing©2018, Colleen Eakins Design

Influencer Marketing 101

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What is it?

Influencer marketing is collaboration between a celebrity or an influential person (usually on social media) with a company to promote a service, product or campaign.

It used to be that celebrity endorsements (think of Michael Jordan with Nike) was the driving force that would influence an audience to buy products, but with this digital age, “influencers” can come from social media and blogs. These will be people with a large following with a niche audience.

Why Use Influencer Marketing?

This can be a powerful marketing tactic in your arsenal that provides the consumer with trust and value of your brand. A third party recommendation or ‘seal of approval’ can boost your company and offerings’ reputation.

The partner you work with will not only bring with them their own network of followers, but their follower’s network as well. You have automatically increased your social media presence and traffic to your site through this connection.

Even though there are many options to block out the marketing noise that people can hear through commercials with on-demand, streaming and settings to block certain items seen on your feed – the internet has become the avenue where everyone is corralled and influencer marketing provides an extreme opportunity to align with an influencer who will best support your brand’s vision and goals.

How Do I Choose an Influencer?

You must make sure that you assess your brand’s campaign goals and the influencer’s content before making any partnerships. Other items to consider are:

  • Relevance – does this person share content that pertains to your business and/or products?
  • Reach – what is the potential number of people that can be reached based upon the influencer’s following (remember to include all channels they are on)?
  • Action vs Engagement – will this influencer only drive awareness or convert them in to purchases?
    • Engagement in this instance is commenting, sharing or liking posts.
  • Saturation – is this influencer already promoting too many products?
  • Visibility – what channel(s) are the influencer on that will maximize visibility to total network?

You want the influencer to build trust and have their following value the opinions they present. Without this, there will be no conversion for your brand.

Working with the Influencer

This will solely be based upon your agreed upon terms with the influencer, but be prepared to release some creative control. They have built their entire following upon a specific passion, service or product. Collaborate with them on what they feel best will resonate with their following, but also adheres to your brand standards.

Legally, they must follow rules from the Federal Trade Commission, specifically under disclosure. This should be built in to your agreement.

  • Video reviews must have both written and verbal disclosures stating partnership.
  • Though each social media platform has their own rules, please use those as more supplemental to the FTC than the rules to abide by.
  • #ad and #sponsored are useful hashtags to use for disclosure, but they must be highly visible.

Compensation will and should be part of your agreement as they are providing a service to your company to drive traffic and increase sales. All influencers will want different types of compensation pending the level of involvement and visibility of their following.

  • Financially – pending the level of commitment and influencer’s visibility across platforms, this can be an option, but proceed with caution as the sincerity of the ‘paid recommendation’ may be diluted.
  • @Mentions/Shout Outs – being able to share a post or blog that the influencer has written on your companies’ pages will drive more traffic to their site which will make them feel recognized and honored to continue to support your brand in the future..
  • Discounts/Giveaways – offering the influencer a discount on the product or service can be a great incentive for future recommendations. Possibly offering them a trial package/time with a new product to use and put out the first review would be a great incentive for the influencer, informing their followers and building awareness to your company.
  • Commission – this could be a great alternative to financially compensating someone for their efforts. Also, this can be easily accounted for with certain discount codes or tracked URLs provided to their followers to make the purchase.

How to Measure ROI on Influencer Marketing?

First, you must determine what the main goal is for partnering with an influencer – awareness, lead generation, social media presence lift, sales, etc.? Being as specific as possible when setting your goals will be valuable in reviewing results in the end to determine the ROI. Examples below:

  • Drive an extra $X,XXX sales per week
  • Add an extra XX email addresses to its database each week
  • Add an extra XX subscribers each week
  • Increase their followers by XXX per week
  • Double their engagement on determined social media platform

We can apply the same items that are used to consider an influencer to measure the ROI (return on investment) that will optimize your success.

Sales: if you are looking to increase your sales of a service or product, an easy way to measure is to include a specific code or tracked URL to the influencer to include in their posts.

Lead Generation: was the content created inviting enough for the influencer to push out to allow for more subscribers or followers to further share the information?

Social Media: view the likes or subscribers to your page after an influencer campaign has ended. Make sure to record numbers before and after versus cost (compensation to the influencer plus any paid ads per social media platform).

Engagement: measuring the views, clicks, likes, shares and mentions will help analyze the success of the campaign versus cost (compensation to the influencer plus any paid ads per social media platform).

Reach: did the content that was crafted resonate and bring meaning with this niche group that the influencer is a part of?

Pending on the value that needs to be added to your brand, utilizing the influencer marketing tactic can be very beneficial and can come with a huge reward for minimal cost that the digital space leverages. Careful evaluation of the potential influencers and their network is a key component as you can reach a highly niche audience that is beneficial to your mass market product or service.

At Colleen Eakins Design, we can help strategize what design components will be needed in your campaign that the chosen influencer can utilize.