These are the 3 main reasons why:

1. Too Many Christmas Ads

Christmas time is one of the busiest times of the year for retail, and this includes marketing and ads. During this season there is an oversaturation of ads everywhere. From TV and radio to display ads and social media feeds. Most people take notice of the first few festive ads to pop up. But they soon grow tired and even the sparkliest Christmas ad won’t draw their attention.

Banner and content blindness are stronger than ever among audiences. A condition that is causing much concern in the digital marketing world. You may have crafted the most beautifully designed ad with a thoughtful copy—but people are still going to ignore it. There are over a million advertisers on Instagram and over 5 million on Facebook. It’s no wonder many companies struggle to get their customers to see and hear them on their busy feeds.

While it isn’t impossible to run a successful holiday campaign, it’s much tougher when compared with the rest of the year. Influencers with highly engaged audiences may be a better bet to get your Christmas content noticed.

Another thing to consider is the use of ad blockers. Ad blockers are used by 11% of internet users and they block display ads and social media ads alike. The number of people who use blockers is growing every day. And they’re now also turning up on mobile devices. Using influencers to run your Christmas campaign is a simple way to circumvent this issue.

2. Better ROI with Christmas Influencers

If you’ve been part of the digital marketing world for a while, you may have started to notice a worrying trend. Social ads are starting to cost more and more while providing less. A rising cost of ads has been recorded across all online channels. While at the same time users are getting better and better at tuning them out.

The cost of using influencers in marketing campaigns has also risen over the past years. However, these increases tend to correspond with an individual influencer’s audience size, reach, and engagement rates. You may pay more, but you’re also getting more. In addition to this, the new surge in the popularity of micro-influencers means that there is truly an influencer for every budget.

Many influencers offer package deals that allow you to choose the collaboration model that best suits your needs as a brand. Whether that is multiple image posts, a video, stories, or any combination. Influencers can reach their followers’ social feeds in a much more meaningful way than an ad could, even with a huge difference in cost.

3. Building Trust and Respect

An influencer’s brand and well, influence, depend on delivering content to an engaged audience that respects and trusts their recommendations. Making sure that their sponsored posts will perform well is in the influencer’s best interest. As they want to keep their audience’s trust and the companies’ interest in future collaborations.

Most influencers work extremely hard to build and maintain a certain level of trust and respect from their audience. And that is something they’re not willing to jeopardize. This means that they’re usually selective about the brands they choose to work with. They won’t enter into a partnership with a company they don’t respect.

This is a way to guarantee to their audience that they should trust their recommendations, and by extension, your brand. Building trust and respect for your brand are one of the biggest benefits of using sponsored influencer posts for your Christmas marketing campaign.

The post Why Influencers Should Be A Part of Your Christmas Marketing Strategy appeared first on AFLUENCER.

Let’s start this blog with something you should not do when finding an influencer for your brand.

If you’ve reached out to a wildly popular celebrity or influencer. Then approached them with a request to endorse your brand/product/service. And if they’ve refused—just let it go. Don’t go behind their back (once they’ve turned you down) and make it look like they do endorse your brand.

Let’s say you’re a clothing store and you find a celebrity influencer who isn’t interested in endorsing your brand. Don’t get mannequins made that have an eerie resemblance to them. And absolutely do not dress these mannequins up like them. That’s totally creepy.

Remember: consent is key.

Why Are We Telling You This?

We’re telling you this because Forever 21 did exactly what we’re telling you not to do. They did it with Arianna Grande, and Grande sued them for something around $10 million. Perhaps Forever 21 could take that blow—but if yours is a business nowhere near a sprawling clothing empire, always be on your guard.

Finding an influencer to endorse your brand is hard, yes. But connections, social media websites, and innovative platforms, such as Afluencer, have made finding some of the best social media influencers fairly easy. However, that’s only half the job. You still need to create rapport with them, and you still need to convince them to partner with you.

Reach Out—But Only to the Right People

This is one of the mistakes many businesses that are just starting out make. They manage to find an influencer for their brand, but the wrong ones. Mostly it’s because they haven’t done their research about the prospective influencers they’re contacting—and it is their fault entirely if the person they’re contacting is already well-known.

For instance, if you reach out to Bear Grylls for a vegan product, the onus of not knowing it’s a terrible idea is on you entirely. You’ll have the wrong target audience on your end, and once the going gets tough, you’ll have bigger fish to fry.

Mutual Benefits for Brand & Influencer

Partnering with a social media influencer isn’t just about you, your product, your service, or your brand. It’s supposed to be a win-win situation. Explain to your prospective partner what’s in it for them.

Let’s say you’re the same vegan brand who reached out to Bear Grylls but now you’ve found the right influencer. How can it be better for their personal brand? You can say, for example, that your product is eco-friendly. Highlight all the positives to your business—if you have a zero-waste facility, if some of the proceeds go to charity, highlight them all so that the influencer can see for themselves it’s a symbiotic relationship.

Also, be generous and give away gifts to them. Yet another trick is to let the social media influencer carry out giveaways from their platform. This way people will get to try your product and you’ll find the base ground for word-of-mouth publicity.

Ready to Find an Influencer for your Brand?

Sign up with us for help finding A-list social media influencers so you can start building your brand.

The post Finding an Influencer and Convincing Them to Endorse Your Brand appeared first on AFLUENCER.

If any brand deserves a standing ovation for influencer marketing, then it’s the one and only disruptive Daniel Wellington.

In fact, this global designer watch brand pioneered the influencer marketing revolution on Instagram.  How many brands can say they grew to $200+ million in sales over 4 years from Instagram influencers?

Boasting the most influencer mentions in 2018, Daniel Wellington has in fact achieved this with 7,000+ influencers.  Heck, if DW hosted an event for all their influencers, they’d need 15 Boeing 747s to fly them all in and they’d fill up a stadium.

Yes, Daniel Wellington is quite deserving of this grand intro.

Like no other brand, DW does it big with influencers.

Because their charming designer timepieces never looked this irresistible on social media, they’re going even bigger with their Campus Influencer Program.

Want to join the DW influencer fam?

We’ve dug up all the details to give you a full review of the Daniel Wellington Campus Influencer Program.

About the Daniel Wellington Campus Influencer Program

This Daniel Wellington program expects influencers to go beyond the usual taking pictures and posting them on Instagram type of collaboration.

The global brand is in search of influential students with inspiring personalities to be a part of the DW lifestyle and represent the brand both online and on campus.

Being a DW influencer means you’ll have an active presence at your college or university to grow brand awareness.

What Daniel Wellington Campus Influencers Do

Working closely with the DW Marketing Commerce Department, you’ll craft custom strategies to build brand awareness on your campus.  From hosting sponsored events to on-campus activations, your job as an influencer will be to engage with your campus community in non-traditional ways.

And yes, of course, you’ll be responsible for creating social media content and you’ll even have the brag-worthy privilege of taking over the @dwoncampus Instagram account.

No influencer campaign is complete without your very own discount code.  Influencers get their own custom discount code to share and promote within their network to drive product sales.

Ultimately, you’ll introduce DW to your college and be the eyes, ears, and motivating voice of the brand.

Requirements

1. Be a student at a college or university.
   
2. At the moment, the Daniel Wellington Campus Influencer Program is available to students in the U.S.A.  (If you’re an influencer outside the U.S.A and would love a collaboration with Daniel Wellington, get more info here about other potential influencers opportunities.)
   
3. Have an Instagram following of 2,000+.
   
4. Have a strong presence in your college community – whether you’re a geek, an athlete, or a leader.
   
5. You’re a socialite and you love attending events.
   
6. Social media is your world and also you have a creative knack for producing content.
   
7. Being a rockstar DW influencer can’t be possible without being a passionate lover of the DW lifestyle, of course.

Influencer Benefits

Daniel Wellington offers a unique reward system for its influencers.

Campus influencers are recruited for a full school year and performance will be reviewed at the end of the year.  Of course, if needed, meetings can be called for during the year.

As an influencer, each complete campaign mission and assignment will earn you points.  Influencers can redeem their points for Daniel Wellington products, amazing incentives, and unique prizes.

At the end of the day, you’ll get what you make out of it.  So commit yourself and promote DW with your everything and your performance will be duly rewarded.

Pros

1. Professional Work Experience

Collaborations with Daniel Wellington as an influencer are more than just a fun social media fad.  This is your chance to work with a global brand and get real work experience that you’ll be proud to highlight at your next job interview.

If you’re serious about ticking some boxes as far as your career is concerned, the Daniel Wellington Campus Influencer Program is your opportunity to do so.

I mean, how accomplished will “crafting brand awareness strategies for Daniel Wellington” look on your resume?

2. Fairly Accessible Requirements

Surprisingly, you don’t need millions of followers to be a DW campus influencer.  A minimum of 2,000 Instagram followers certainly makes this opportunity within reach to many – provided you match their other requirements, of course.

3. Performance-Based Rewards

As detailed earlier, high-performing influencers will be rewarded highly.  Your campaign performance determines how many points you’ll earn. So you’re pretty much in control.  Want to earn well? Then you know what to do.

Cons

1. Time Commitment

If you’re looking for a once-off influencer gig, then this is not for you.  This is not one of those low-commitment types of relationships. As an influencer, you’re committing yourself to a full school year of promoting Daniel Wellington within your campus community.

So if you become a campus influencer for DW, you’re kinda going all in for a while.

2. Influencer Responsibilities

As we’ve uncovered earlier, there’s more to partnering with DW than posting on Instagram.  Consider this influencer gig as good as a part-time job. You’re responsible for pretty high-demanding activities:  strategies, events, missions, assignments, etc.

Yeah, this influencer gig kinda requires you to work.

3. Influencer Competition

Because the program requirements are accessible, this means that many influencers qualify.  Which means influencer competition for you.

Being on top of your game here will work in your favor.

DW Influencer Showcase

Before diving into your application for the DWC Influencer Program, it’s probably a good idea to see what you’re getting yourself into.

A hashtag search for #DWONCAMPUS on Instagram will reveal just how creative DW campus influencers are with their content.  From enchanting library scenes, and entertaining concert shots to a fun weekend and holiday vibes.

Here’s where you really get a feel of the Daniel Wellington lifestyle.

Apply for the Daniel Wellington Campus Influencer Program

In the influencer universe, adding Daniel Wellington to your profile is quite a privileged opportunity.

Having fun while promoting an appealing and lovable brand like Daniel Wellington PLUS achieving valuable work experience, is the ultimate influencer gig for students.

Ready to make it happen?

For more info about the Daniel Wellington Campus Influencer Program, visit DW on Campus.

The post Review: Daniel Wellington Campus Influencer Program appeared first on AFLUENCER.