Last week, we took a moment to break down how much time it takes to get an influencer marketing campaign up and running. Now, we're digging into the next phase of the campaign and looking at how long a given influencer campaign should run.
Simply put, when it comes to a singular influencer marketing campaign, our agency looks for programs to run somewhere between two weeks and six weeks. The average being four, and there are a few reasons why we do this.
A successful campaign is one that's concentrated on a particular product, service, or event that revolves around a specific time frame. For example, chances are you're partnering with these influencers to promote a discount, a new product, a seasonal sale, something that gives people a reason to react to the content and take the action you're wanting. If you space the program out too long, audiences could forget entirely that this event is happening or simply not be excited enough to take action.
Another result we've found is when we're syndicating the influencer content, if there's a long gap between when the influencer first posts the content and the social boosting of that content, the results are less impressive than when we do concentrated campaigns. Just last year we did a campaign for Revlon that was only nine days long. Everything, from the content going live, to the scoring of that content, to the syndication of the content, to the sales we need to drive happened within that nine day period and was highly effective.
Let's not forget about ambassador programs, which run for much longer periods of time throughout the year (sometimes even the whole year). While these campaigns are fantastic, it's important to structure your program timeline with campaign flights that focus on a particular topic, product, or time of year. If you keep the program constantly running, you'll run into some of the issue's we discuss above.
A great example of a successful ambassador strategy with concentrated flights is one we did with Hallmark. We broke a year long program down to seven key periods in the year where people were likely to buy greeting cards, such as Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Wedding Season, Holiday, and more. Then, throughout the year we activated the influencers within the four-week time frame of each event, and drove audiences to a specific retailer to purchase cards.
To sum everything up, most of our campaigns run around four weeks because it's proven to be a good balance of influential content, timeliness of the content, and timeliness of taking action. Keep that in mind when you go to plan out your next campaign, or contact us using the form below for some expert help!