Which Influencer Marketing Strategy for Valentine’s Day ?

Setting the Right Marketing Goals for Valentine's Day

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Ready to plan your Valentine's Day campaign? Then let's start with the basics! Setting your concept depends on your objectives and needs. Like a marketing strategy should be defined according to a brand's needs and wants, a marketing campaign should function the same way.

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Set up a strong concept to impact your customers

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Several objectives can define your campaign strategy:

Conversion 💰

Your brand needs to up its sales, and Valentine's Day is the perfect time of the year to scale your revenues! Thus your goals are all about catching the eye: attractive offers, prices, bundles, sales, etc. 

When collaborating with influencers for conversion, the message is essential. Appearing on the influencer's feed isn't enough. The campaign must focus on communicating the discounts, new offers, and so on.

👉  Promo codes, special pack offer, etc.

👉  Announcing sales

👉  Co-creation

Visibility 🤩

‍Your brand is growing, so let's keep the curve going! You have a community, your customers are loyal, yet now is the time to reach new niches! Your Valentine's Day goal? Reaching out to new communities, expanding, and gaining popularity. 

What's the strategy in this case? That depends; what's your budget? When it comes to gaining visibility with influencer marketing, brands have several options: running an influencer campaign with numerous content creators from nano to mega. A small brand with a limited budget can run a campaign with micro-influencers to reach new niches. On the other hand, a worldwide known company like Prada can afford to create an influencer campaign with mega influencers.

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👉  Ambassadors program

👉  Launching a trend 

Engagement 🔥

Starting off? You are reaching a few niches, yet your brand needs a loyal community! The goal, in this case, revolves around creating a feeling of belonging? Why? To get your customers or prospects to choose your brand over your competitors. Thus Valentine's Day is the perfect event to stand out!

What better way to build a community than to work on the brand's authenticity. In this case scenario, your influencer campaign objective is to engage with your audience. Creating a relationship between you and your community is crucial. Thus, influencers must communicate with their community about your brand to install trust. By creating a stronger relationship, you are gaining competitive advantage! 

👉  Count down 

👉  Contests

Brand Image ✨

‍Your brand might be stagnating a bit in this situation. You are not in a downfall but aren't rising either, and your brand needs a fresh makeover! For Valentine's Day, your goal targets originality: a plus to create change and make your image exciting again for your customers. (Or perhaps, the brand is going through a bad buzz. In that case, must redeem the brand image.)

Now, this part is fun! If your brand aims at a fresh start like Lady Gaga's come back, you must think out of the box! The company has fallen into a routine, and that's no good. The goal is to find the influencer representing your brand values but breaking the former codes. An example? American Eagle makes a string come back with its Back To Scool campaign.

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👉  Ambassadors program

👉  Co-creation 

In each of these cases, the brand must always think one step ahead. Your competitors might already be present on social media, planning influencer campaigns as well. So what will differentiate your collab from others? Originality, authenticity, a wow effect, attractive offers… Don't forget to stand out!

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Which platforms for your collabs?

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Now that we know what kind of collab corresponds to our objectives, it's time to define which type of content, and for that, we must choose the right social media platform! Will it be Instagram? TikTok? YouTube? Let's find out!

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TikTok the platform to go viral 🚀

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The Chinese video platform is known for its unexpected and variable algorithm. Users can go viral with few followers and very little content; one post can create a trend followed by millions of users. 

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However, few values are noticeable when using TikTok. The platform values authenticity, content quality, variety, and regularity. And that will have a significant impact on your choice of social networks. (Psst we wrote an article on how to go viral on TikTok 🤫)

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Planning an influencer collab on TikTok means creating a specific format: TikTok is all about short-timed videos. Thus, planning a post means planning a video with an influencer showcasing your product.

If you were looking forward to partnering with a TikToker, you better check their account and, more specifically, their audit on Favikon. As we said previously, TikTokers can gain millions of followers in just a few weeks, yet that doesn't necessarily mean they have experience or good content quality. And same goes the other way around: a TikToker might have thousands of followers, yet their buzz ratio could decrease, meaning their engagement rate is dropping. So not the best timing for a partnership. That is why with the Favikon audit, you can check if influencers are at their best stage for a Valentine's Day partnership!

All in all, if your strategy is about gaining visibility, working on your brand image, or creating a trend for Valentine's Day, TikTok is just the right social network for your influencer campaign.

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Instagram, the multi-format platform for a Wow effect! 🌈

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Instagram is well known when it comes to influencer marketing. The platform has numerous content options to market a product or service. Stories, posts, carousels, reels, IGTV… From pictures, illustrations, short or long videos, or even specific tools like live shopping, polls, e-shops, Q&As, etc. With Instagram, you will have a lot of options to promote your collab. So the brand must do a lot of organization and planning. 

Planning a collab on Instagram means:

• Creating quality content
• Promoting your product with many different formats
• Engaging with your audience

All in all, if your Valentine's Day objective is about converting, sharing a new ambassador program, or boosting your engagement with count-downs and contests, Instagram is your go-to platform! 

Keep in mind that the factor that differentiates Instagram from TikTok is time. TikTok is the definition of speed: going viral, gaining views and likes in no time, short-timed content, etc. The content must be dynamic enough to grab the users' attention. 

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However, Instagram is about consistency and harmony. Users can't make posts randomly. They must build a consistent feed. Thus quality content is seen as an entity. An important notion to keep in mind if you were planning an Instagram collab: your campaign must fit your objectives just as much as the influencer's organic feed.
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YouTube, the platform for building content over time 🦕

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YouTube, TikTok's antecedent,  is also a video platform; however, it is known for its longer content.

YouTube content creators are videographers. Rather than creating mass content like TikTokers (posting from 3 times a week to 3 times a day), they focus on the quality of their videos, which implies editing skills, filming, montage, good sound, and image quality. We could say their work is a bit more technical.

With the platform's tools, influencers can create different video content such as short videos, short movies, series, etc. In other words, this platform is excellent for specific concepts that need time to be explained, showcased, or tested.

What makes YouTube very special is their communities, like gaming accounts, travel vloggers, makeup artists, fitness coaches. Unlike Instagram and TikTok, YouTube allows its users to take their time to share their passions or occupations with their audience. There is no time limit, no need to summarize it in pictures. They have no limitations to creating strong content.

Collaborating with micro-influencers and macro-influencers

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To set up an impressive campaign during Valentine's Day, it is necessary to appeal to different influencers and not limit yourself to working with a single one. Selecting different kinds of influencers based on their community and content will allow your brand to reach many niches and catch users' attention.

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Find influencers who share the same values ​​as your brand

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The promotion of your products must be done by an influencer who likes your product and could buy it on their own. An influencer's community knows the content creator more than anyone and sometimes more than their own family. They know what he eats, what he does in his days and the products they use. When an influencer makes partnerships irrelevant to their environment, it shows.

To find a suitable influencer for your campaign, you must search for them using keywords related to your brand. For a cosmetic brand, it would be interesting to explore: #mua #glammakeup #glowingskin #makeuptutorial

Jewelry brands are a hit on Instagram for Valentine's Day. Many influencers are taking part in the campaigns with very glamorous jewelry.

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If you don't know what keywords to search for, you can look at the hashtags used by influencers you know are present in your field or the ones your competitors use.

Once you have found the keywords, you can start your search with Favikon.

To have even more relevant searches, you can select the location, age, type of social networks, engagement rate, etc.

Planning a campaign with a macro-influencer for Valentine's Day?

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During Valentine's Day, a lot of shopping is done for both men and women. It's a great time of the year in terms of consumption, a high point that you can't miss! If there is a time when you can invest in influencer marketing, it's now.

Working with an influencer with thousands of subscribers can be scary because the budget can be higher since the ROI might also scale. For this reason, your choice is going to be very important.

Using a macro-influencer will give you excellent visibility with a fairly large audience. Macro influencers have between 200,000 and 1 million followers, which is huge for your brand. It's a golden opportunity to become the new trending brand on social media.

Most of the time, macro-influencers became popular through social media and not because they were famous. Therefore, they are great content creators, capable of producing content that buzzes easily. The jackpot would be working with a couple of Valentine's Day influencers like Lena Situations and Seb!

The fact that they have made themselves known on social media to reach a community of several thousand people shows that they can create according to a subject and a passion.

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They are the ideal partners for your Valentine's Day campaign. They will make your products known and know how to highlight them.

However, contacting ten macro-influencers for Valentine's Day isn't feasible for everyone. We must not forget that influencers are not free. On the contrary, they can be quite a budget!

Regarding the price, expect a minimum budget of $7,000, and the cost can increase up to $20,000. Everything will depend on what you offer to the influencer and what you offer to their community. Many big content creators use contests to increase their engagement rate, which is lower than smaller influencers'.

Offering a contest can therefore be a good idea, allowing you to negotiate the price. However, do not forget to take a good look at their saturation rate because some macro-influencers have too many contests; thus, yours could get lost between other bigger brands. This matter can be negotiated during the contract, however.

The power of nano-influencers during Valentine's Day

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To build up your engagement and conversion as much as possible during the Valentine's Day period, nano-influencers will be your best allies!

A nano-influencer is a content creator with less than 10k subscribers, they are not necessarily social networks experts, yet they do spend a lot of time on social media. The exciting part is the proximity these content creators have with their community.

Many small creators talk every day with their subscribers in private messages. They answer their questions, give them advice and comfort them when they can. They are real friends, and trust reigns!

With this approach, you can convert more during Valentine's Day. Working with your nano-influencers will allow you to create giant word-of-mouth around your unique Valentine's Day campaign.

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Another advantage of working with nano-influencers is that they can do product placement for free; the trick is to send them your products with a note. Some may ask for a small remuneration, but it is not a large sum, and it may also be because the influencer is aware that their account is growing.

Overall, for a successful Valentine's Day campaign, the ideal is to use ¼ macro-influencers and ¾ nano-influencers. It will allow your brand to have a powerful campaign without neglecting neither conversion nor engagement.

We also advise you to look at influencer couples, it can be a great idea to offer them products for Valentine's Day.

Launching a collab on Valentine's Day

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Collaborating with influencers during Valentine's Day must be planned and scheduled at least 1 month in advance. You have to take time into account to find the right influencers, it can take a few minutes on Favikon but, without a tool, it can take up to 1 week of research and analysis. Then you have to plan to contact them, brief them, etc.

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Your special Valentine's Day communication agenda

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The secret of a well-communicated campaign is to have a well-programmed campaign. For this, you have to plan when influencers are involved in it.

The longest part will be contacting influencers.

To contact influencers on time, take about two months in advance. This may vary depending on the type of influencer. For influencers with more than 500k subscribers, you have to plan a time margin since their schedule is mainly planned for several months ahead. While a small influencer may be available right away, they still have to check their emails!

Let's say that generally to contact them you should expect:

👉  > 6 months for influencers over 500k

👉  > 3 months for influencers between 10k and 500k

👉  > 2 months for nano-influencers

These margins will allow you to ensure the participation of as many influencers as possible for your campaign. In addition, if a mega-influencer has responded positively to your campaign 3 months before, you can also boost the value of your campaign with nano-influencers during their contact (2 months before).

Regarding Valentine's Day, the ideal plan is to have contacted all your influencers before the end of the previous year, at the latest in early January.

However, don't give up if you haven't thought of contacting them yet, it's never too late to try! They may respond quicker than expected and might be available. The last deadline includes the time needed to send your products to them.

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When should your influencers post for Valentine's Day?

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We must not forget that consumers will buy gifts 1 to 2 weeks before Valentine's Day. Products for men are often purchased in advance, while products for women (bought by men) will probably be purchased at the last moment. To start putting your products in your customers' minds, you must post at the beginning of February or even at the end of January in a more subtle way. Also consider scheduling special Valentine's Day content on your Instagram or TikTok accounts.

Once your content is programmed, all that remains is to analyze the results.

Track the results of your influencer campaign

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Launching an influence campaign for Valentine's Day is a great idea, but to be sure that this collaboration had an impact, you have to take the time to monitor the results.

Several metrics will allow you to quickly see if your campaign is having an impact. The most known ones are the reach (number of people reached thanks to the campaign) and the engagement rate (all interactions on the publications, divided by the reach).

Apart from these two metrics, you can also look at some figures such as the buzz ratio on TikTok or the number of video views on your reels and the growth of your brand account.

It can be challenging to assess the success of a campaign when our objective is visibility or engagement. How to estimate the price of commitment or the number of people reached on social media?

It's very simple. It's called EMV (Earned Media Value)! It's a way to assign a monetary value to the different types of results you can get on social media. 

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This value is calculated from all the data of the campaign (users reached, engagement...) and allows you to measure the value of your partnerships. So you can easily know if an influencer is profitable or not and calculate your ROI.

On Favikon, the campaign tracking is done automatically by the tool. The software will search all the posts of the campaign as well as the different stories! 

Once your campaign is scheduled, you don't have to do anything else. The results will be calculated live to give you the most realistic overview possible. In case of a problem, you will quickly see that you need to adjust your strategy, have a word with your influencers or review your brief.

So now that you have all the keys in hand to establish a good influencer strategy for Valentine's Day, what are you waiting for?