How to Roll Holiday Brand Deals into Early 2021
A Strategy for Turning Current Brand Deals --> New Brand Deals
How has this holiday brand deal season been for you?!
While it seemed to start off a little rocky and slow, it looks like a lot of campaigns slid in at the last-minute, giving a much needed boost to make this a more profitable holiday season.
As those campaigns come to a close this month, creators should be highly aware brand deals tend to dry up in Jan/February. 🌵
Not that they are nonexistent, but it's definitely slower.
While the end of the year is highly profitable for most bloggers, the “January ad slump” is real.
According to Mediavine, “first signs may be evident after Christmas, on December 26”.
So why is there a drop in influencer brand deals during January?
- Leading up to the new year, brands spend a bulk of their yearly advertising budget during the holidays.
- Most brands allocate the smallest part of their marketing spend to January/February
- Some brands might be recovering and conserving spend after an expensive holiday season
- Products/inventory can be in low stock
Whatever the actual reason, Q4 can be an insanely profitable time for bloggers - and we want to carry some of that momentum into the new year.
Work Smarter, Not Harder - Avoid Starting the Whole Brand Deal Process Over Again
There's a few reasons we like to focus on optimizing the END of your brand deals.
1) New = Costly
It is 7X more expensive to find a new client vs. keeping a current one.
It's going to cost you more time, effort, energy, and probably money to start applying on networks again, pitching, etc vs. keeping your relationship with the current campaign.
2) Sequence bias
People are most likely to remember the first and last items in a list, not the middle.
Brands will remember you when your partnership ends on a HIGH note - and they'll absolutely remember if it ends on a low note, too.
Strategy Part 1: Data Filled Report
Why start with reporting?
✔️You get to stop being nervous, wondering if you "did well" for the brand
✔️You'll also quit going dark after content is posted because you're kind of afraid to ask for results
✔️ You'll get the confidence and clarity to move forward with our next 2 steps
Here are 3 more reasons why influencers should send reports.
How NOT to create a report: 🆇
- Spend hours screenshotting analytics from multiple social media platforms
- Try to add numbers together in Google Sheets
- Bring your results into some sort of PDF you mess around with for 3 hours
How to create a report: ✔
- Make use of Kalypso’s brand reporting platform to avoid hours of screenshotting
- Aggregate all your data from individual posts and videos from Instagram, Instagram Stories, YouTube, Google Analytics, Tik Tok, Facebook
Step 1: Set up your campaign details
- Select your individual posts & videos for that specific campaign - from Instagram, Instagram Stories, YouTube, Google Analytics, Tik Tok, Facebook
Step 2: Auto populate all your content
- Within seconds have all your content at your fingertips with the click of a button
Step 3: Display all your key metrics
- Display all your overall campaign key metrics in one view (Reach, Impressions, Engagement)
- Along with unique data points like Story Retention Rates, Earned Media Value, CPM, & more
- Don’t be afraid of these metrics! Instead take your time to learn how they can help you
Strategy Part 2: Secure the testimonial
Why a testimonial?
- Testimonials are incredible tools to put in your media kit, pitch emails, about me page, etc.
- Helps the brand formalize and articulate their opinion on you
- In the long run this will help you build lasting relations with the brands you’ve worked with.
- Want to learn more? Here are 3 overlooked ways to build good relationships with brands
We want testimonials to be…
- Short and sweet
- Results-focused
- A headline!
Ex:
"Mohisha was a talented creator who drove awareness & engagement with her Instagram audience surrounding the launch of our new bakery products."
Strategy Part 3: Offer up a new idea
This is a strategy very much stolen from my publicist side -
Pretty frequently in PR when pitching to journalists, a lot of times we will do something similar.
If we wrap up a story on a brand new partnership, we will probably immediately say,”Actually, we’re announcing another similar partnership in about eight weeks - would you like first exclusive rights to that?”
Why?
- It helps keep everything top of mind
- You keep the conversation going
When you are offering up a new campaign idea, we want it to actually be valuable to the brand - not just the first thing you pulled out of your head.
We want these new campaign ideas to be…
Timely and contextual:
Think seasonal, real-time trends, upcoming holidays, new platforms that are emerging. You want this to be an on-the-pulse, GOOD new idea
Ex: "I'm planning a goal-setting series for January; I'm growing on Tik Tok pretty rapidly - would you like to explore partnering on some videos?
Framed with a sense of urgency:
Everyone works better with some sort of deadline in mind.
Ex: "I'm finalizing my content calendar, I'm booking January partnerships, I'm starting a new YouTube series soon" etc.
To Wrap Up Your Holiday Brand Deals...
We want you to end 2020 strong and set yourself up for a solid Q1 in January.
- You’re going to start by getting a confident grasp on your data and results.
- You're going to get an incredible testimonial that you can use for a future pitching and negotiation.
- Third, you're going to pitch a new campaign idea based on context and framed with some urgency.
