Influencer Marketing Strategy

How to increase your e-commerce sales during Valentine’s Day ?

January 20, 2022

It’s almost the season of love! Valentine’s Day is coming at full speed, you know what that means? Time to plan a fantastic marketing strategy for the occasion! Like all special events of the year, Valentine's Day is an opportunity to drastically increase your sales! On the other hand, you will not be the only e-commerce shop to communicate for Valentine's Day, so you will have to use the best acquisition channels. In this article, we will focus on three tips on boosting your e-commerce sales. So let’s get into it!

Increase your sales with ads and discounts

The first tip includes Ads and pricing options. The most common solution is to pay a search engine or a social media platform to boost your brand visibility. Since Google is the number one most used search engine, it goes to say paying for Google Ads seems like a good compromise!

How does it work? With a PPC (pay-per-click) model, a brand chooses a few keywords, makes a bit, and the Google Ad highlights its website. In the end, the brand pays whenever a user clicks on the ad.

Advantages:

✅ Reaching the right target market: your ads will be relevant since they will appear on the search of people with specific interests

✅ Controlling your costs and measuring your ROI: you can decide on the bids (the price they are willing to pay for an ad) and track every click.

✅ Campaign simplicity: no need to be a genius to create a google ad campaign. The process is simple and easy to use

Disadvantages:

❌ For important events (Valentine's day, Black Friday, etc.), there is a saturation of Google Ads. With all brands paying, prices escalate, and your brand's visibility can diminish.

❌ Competition: Google Ads won't differentiate your brand from your competitors. It can boost your visibility indeed, but it adds no value to your brand.

The second option revolves around the giant American company, previously known as Facebook, now called Meta. We are talking about Facebook Ads, and as the biggest of all social networks, boosting your brand presence on Facebook's apps can result in excellent visibility.

Advantages:

✅ Visibility and micro-targeting: with a significant number of Facebook users, being present on its social network boosts your brand visibility to a large audience. Yet Facebook has an outstanding level of granularity. Thus you can target a specific audience based on their behavior, demographics, connections, interests, and other data.

✅ Budget: It is easy to manage your budget with this option since the cost is defined per number of clicks (like the previous model) or impressions.

Disadvantages :

❌ Just like Google Ads, prices vary greatly. When other brands start paying for advertisements for specific holidays, prices go up, and visibility decreases.

❌ The brand must manage its publicity; thus, there is no other party to plan the advertisement.

The final option regards Website promotions: adding new value to your website by communicating a change of prices or other models that would make your offer more attractive.

Advantages:

✅ Very attractive for special events, periods

Drawbacks:

❌ Low visibility: since your offer is directly shared on your website, it concerns customers and prospects. Thus this option is not about attracting new prospects.

❌ Depends on other factors such as brand communication, SEO, campaign organization, etc.

Set up collaborations with influencers

After going through the advertisement's options, let's discuss another plan to boost your e-commerce sales: influencer marketing! But why would collaborating with content creators be beneficial for your brand?

🌟 High visibility: appearing on an influencer's feed means you are reaching their community. Thus, thousands of users will come across a post your brand features.

🌟 Engagement: unlike google ads, working with influencers will result in more interactions. Influencers' following isn't about the numbers but the engagement of the community. If an influencer has a great engagement rate, there is a high chance of conversion when posting an ad on their account. Why? Because their followers trust the influencer they follow, like their content, thus are interested in the brands they showcase.

🌟 Brand image: as we said previously, investing in Google or Facebook ads can have a positive ROI, but it brings no added value to your brand. However, influencer marketing can help your brand strengthen or build up its brand image. Collaborating with an influencer means you link your brand with their image and reputation. What better way to promote your coffee brand than to plan a collab with a skilled barista? Just like phone case brand Casetify's partnership: by collaborating with a rising popstar, the brand's image gained value by appearing with a famous singer.

🌟 Competitive advantage: with Favikon you can check if influencers have already partnered with your competitors. This way, you are sure to be the only brand of your sector to appear on the influencer's feed. Moreover, even though two brands can plan similar influencer campaigns, every influencer is unique and has a specific community niche. In other words, the choice of influencer and how you plan your campaign is your golden ticket to differentiate your brand from your competitors. Especially for occasions like Valentine’s Day!

Now that we understand the value of influencer marketing, how exactly does a brand plan an influencer campaign?

👉 Finding the right influencer! The number one priority is to plan a collab with the right influencer for your brand. With the Favikon Discovery feature, you can find the perfect match in a flash! Depending on your needs and objectives, you can search by location, language, age, influencer tier, keyword, and so on. For example, planning your influencer collabs for Valentine’s Day will depend on which influencer you’re targeting. Are you looking for a couple? A makeup artist? A food account? A travel vlogger?

👉 You have the perfect influencer for your brand? Time to reach out! But before making the first step, you must have an offer in mind, and we’re not only talking about pricing. Influencers get numerous collab propositions every month, so what can differentiate your brand from others? The message! Personalize your offer, let them know what you like about their work, and be concise about what you expect from them.

Need more information on how to contact an influencer? Here is how you should contact an influencer!

👉 Work on your relationship. Working with an influencer can generate great ROI and positively impact your brand image and awareness, so you might want to build a relationship based on trust and goodwill. Suppose your influencer campaign’s evaluation is positive. In that case, you could plan a long-term partnership. So focus on creating a great experience with your influencer since they will be the ones to decide if they choose you or another brand. For instance, the influencer you choose for your Valentine’s Day campaign could also work with your brand for future events such as summer sales, Black Friday, Halloween etc.

Here is an example: Kendal Jenner, an American model, media personality, and influencer, has been working with the yoga-wear brand Alo for a long time. Their partnerships bring immense visibility, excellent brand image, authenticity, and consistency.

P.S.: Social media trends vary greatly! If your influencer’s post goes viral and your brand was identified in it, expect your sales to go through the roof. Thus planning your inventory according to the influencer marketing strategy is crucial if you don’t want to be short on stocks and create a bad buzz!



That’s it! Now you can plan a solid strategy to boost your e-commerce sales for Valentine’s Day. Which one will you choose? Google ads? Influencer Marketing? If you feel ready to start an influencer campaign, go check out our blog! Discover our TOP 20 Jewelry Influencers to find your future influencer ! The Favikon House makes influencer marketing accessible to everyone by sharing tips, advice, and expertise. We explain everything you need to know, from understanding influence and choosing the right influencer to evaluating your influencer campaign!