Supercharge Your Holiday Giveaways with Influencer and Brand Collaborations

Holiday giveaways are a key promotional tactic marketers can deploy to ensure their brand stands out from the crowd. We’ve talked in other blog posts about how important it is for consumers to feel like they are getting something back with a purchase. This is especially true during the festive time of year, when we are all spending more than usual. Spending is getting savvier.

Competitions, sweepstakes and instant-win incentives are just some giveaway promotions that can help consumers engage with your brand, instead of others. After all, they offer the opportunity to get something extra. A free prize, an unexpected treat, and a winning high.

With the right holiday messaging, giveaway promotions can tap into the hedonic side of a consumer mindset at an exciting (and expensive) time of year and turn passive consumers into active participants, creating a buzz and dynamism around your brand that’s hard to beat.

But what if you’re looking to supercharge your giveaways even further? Influencer and brand collaboration is a powerful strategy that can be used to increase the consumer pull of any giveaway promotion.

Let’s delve into why partnering with the right influencer or brand can be a dynamic marketing weapon when it comes to creating excitement and awareness about your brand’s holiday giveaway in a crowded marketplace.

According to Statista, the global influencer marketing market reached $16.4 billion in 2022, doubling since 2019, with an estimated value of $21.1 billion in 2023.

Let’s take a deeper look at why influencer marketing has become such a force to be reckoned with.

By leveraging the combined reach of two or more companies, brand partnerships allow businesses to expand their target audience and explore new markets they may not previously have had access to.

Giveaway brand partnerships

Partnering brands can leverage their combined resources, audiences, and expertise to create a more impactful and engaging giveaway experience.

For instance, by combining prizes, brand partnerships can create a more attractive and valuable giveaway package. This can attract a larger audience, increase participation, and generating double the excitement among potential entrants.

Here are a couple of examples of giveaway partnerships:

Cross-Promotion: Two brands from complementary industries or target markets may unite to orchestrate a joint giveaway, aligning prizes with their respective products or services.

Co-Branding: In a collaborative effort, two brands with similar target audiences and shared brand values unite to initiate a joint giveaway campaign. By integrating their products or services into one prize pool, participants get the chance to engage with both brands, nurturing a deeper brand affinity and introducing customers to novel offerings.

By participating in giveaway partnerships, both brands can merge their strengths and resources, crafting a more compelling giveaway experience that fosters engagement, heightens brand awareness, and potentially cultivates long-term customer loyalty.

Here are some ways successful influencer and brand partnerships can take a holiday giveaway promotion to the next level.

• Expansive reach:

By joining forces with influencers, or entering into brand partnerships, brands can gain access to a ready-made engaged and loyal community, extending their reach far and wide. Endorsements from influential people and brands can be a potent force in steering purchasing decisions within their tribe of followers.

• Genuine and captivating content:

Influencers are the virtuosos of authentic and captivating content creation and can become invaluable allies for brands. They can harmoniously blend a brand’s offerings with their personal style, aligning both themselves and their recommendations with a holiday campaign.

• Trust and credibility:

Amid the crowded festive marketplace, the trust cultivated by influencers cannot be underestimated. Data from Deloitte shows that 67% of social media users consider a brand endorsed by their favourite influencer. When influencers or an influential brand vouch for a particular brand or product, their endorsements resonate with weight and credibility, instilling trust and positioning the brand as a festive essential. In the era of influencer marketing, trust and authenticity reign supreme in shaping consumer spending habits.

• Cost-effective marketing: 

Influencer marketing frequently outperforms traditional advertising when it comes to return on investment (ROI). This is because brands are reaching a highly targeted audience already interested in your niche.

• Long-term collaborations: 

An initial collaboration can result in a long-term partnership that can benefit future promotions and other marketing campaigns.

So, what should you consider when embarking on a brand or influencer collaboration? We’ve outlined some tips to mitigate any potential risks and ensure your partnership strategy is set for success.

1. Establish your goals: What are your desired outcomes for collaborating with an influencer or brand? Increasing brand visibility? Expanding your audience? Generating sales? These need to be clearly defined and quantifiable, so you can monitor and evaluate ROI, during and after the campaign.
2. Determine your target audience: It’s imperative to select an appropriate promotional partner who can effectively engage with your target audience. To do this, identify your campaign’s audience beforehand and develop influencer or partnership personas that align with your target audience.
3. Choose the right platform: Where are your target audience consuming information?  Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, X (formerly Twitter), or LinkedIn? To guarantee maximum exposure for your brand, make sure you are visible where your target audience consumes their content.
4. Know the legal ins and outs: Understand the influencer regulations in the country you are working in, so you don’t fall foul of any rules.
5. Perform a deep background check: Using an influencer agency can be helpful, as they can conduct background checks and vetting. Put together a contract with the influencer or partner to determine key performance indicators.
6. Check out previous influencer campaigns: If previous partnerships don’t feel authentic, neither will yours. Ask for numbers, data and results from past campaigns.
7. Provide creative freedom: Authenticity is critical in influencer collaborations. When influencers are free to authentically integrate your brand or product into their content, their audience is more likely to trust their recommendations.
8. Ensure a cultural fit: It’s crucial your brand values align with those of any brand or influencer you are thinking of entering a partnership with. Take your time to identify influencers whose values, content, and audience align with your brand’s identity and objectives.
9. Check references: Someone may have a good following but that doesn’t make them a good partner. Make sure they understand your goals and have expertise in your specific industry and check a reference or two.
10. Finally, ask yourself whether a potential partnership with a brand or individual influencer will represent your company well. After all, your brand’s reputation is on the line.

There is risk associated with partnering with another brand or influencer. You cannot control what your collaborators say or do outside of your campaigns – it’s this honesty and lack of censorship that appeals to more and more consumers.

By conducting due diligence and seriously assessing the influencer’s fit and credibility (see above!), you can mitigate most risks.

But, if the worst was to occur, here are some initial steps you could take.

• Start by being proactive. Before embarking on influencer or brand partnerships, have a crisis management plan in place and ensure your team has regular refreshers on what course of action to take for a range of scenarios. Being prepared will give you a clear and logical course of action if the worst should happen, meaning no panics or knee-jerk reactions.
• If a scandal occurs, take immediate action as per your crisis management plan. Acknowledge the issue and take responsibility if needed.
• Communicate clearly with your consumers – they will appreciate your authenticity.
• Next, implement necessary changes. You may need to pause, modify, or cancel some of your activities or content involving the influencer. Keep customers front of mind and ensure communications, especially when it comes to the giveaway promotion, are clear and easy to access during this time.
• Learn from it. Consider revising your vetting process for influencers and your crisis management plan.
• You may also need to diversify your influencer portfolio and ensure you work with other influencers who better align with your goals and values in the future.

Two heads are better than one, especially when it comes to competitions.  A holiday-themed competition endorsed by a high-profile influencer will greatly increase its reach. Encouraging participants to share their entries on social media will broaden this reach even further.

Consider having an influencer describe how to enter the competition via a short form video, where they list what lucky winners will receive as a prize and the deadline for entry to give it a personal touch with that all important dose of urgency.

You could even go one step further and ask an influencer or a partnering brand to host your competition on their social media platforms.

When it comes to brand partnerships, look for a trusted brand that offers complementary products to your own. Consider offering dual-branded prizes across the partnership competition to leverage the power of two consumer audiences.

Influencer partnership case study: Ninja / NZXT Custom Gaming Rig Giveaway

Host: NZXT (brand) and Ninja (influencer).

Prize: Gaming PC with custom Ninja branding.

Entry Method: Multiple entry methods: submit an email to enter. follow Ninja and NZXT on social media, etc.

NZXT, a peripheral gaming brand, leveraged Ninja’s popularity in the gaming world when they launched its online giveaway. The giveaway was hosted on NZXT’s website and was promoted by Ninja on Twitter and during his live streams.

Ninja was an ideal match for NZXT as consumers who follow Ninja or watch his streams are most likely to have an interest in NZXT products.

The prize was unique, too. It was a computer that’s built by NZXT and features Ninja’s custom colours and logo. Not only did the prize align with the influencer’s niche, making it an authentic partnership, it was a one-of-a-kind, heightening the buzz of entry and desire to win.

Brand partnership case study: Krave Beauty and ZitSticka

This social media giveaway competition demonstrated the perfect partnership between Krave Beauty and ZitSticka, generating over 4,000 entrants.

The two like-minded beauty brands teamed up to create a co-branded giveaway bundle for lucky winners.  Both brands had robust engagement strategies with entrants needing to follow both on social media to be successfully considered for the prize.

Participants were offered additional entries for following the brands on TikTok too, which had a really positive impact on follower numbers on a channel where both brands specifically wanted to increase reach.

This case study shows that co-branded giveaways are a smart way to introduce your existing fans and customers to your social presence elsewhere and leverage a new group of consumers that are already aligned with a complementary brand.

A festive example: Elf Cosmetics

Well, we couldn’t publish a blog post in December, without a Christmas example, could we?!

The Elf cosmetics campaign is a great example of how a brand used influencer-generated content to grow its reach. In this campaign Elf ran a social media giveaway every day for twelve days to promote its holiday collection and dedicated advent calendar.

To build anticipation and showcase the product, they promoted the giveaway with a short video made by a beauty influencer as she retrieved each product from the advent calendar. This campaign utilised relevant influencer-generated content on the brand’s own channels in a way that resonated perfectly with target consumers.

• Keep the excitement going, even after the competition ends. With your partnering influencer or brand, announce winners at intervals after the competition has ended to build trust and extend the buzz – and keep your brand and products top of mind.
• Tailor your prize to your audience and the niche of your partner influencer or brand. It should be something your target audience craves, driving sales and generating quality leads.
• Consider a tiered prize option, so more people can win something special. Offering smaller, more attainable prizes along with larger, grand prizes can encourage more participation.
• Plan follow-up engagement to extend the impact of the partnership, like email sequences or special offers, and keep the momentum going.
• Harness the power of sharing. Encourage referral entries to extend your reach.
• Create a sense of urgency with a limited entry timeframe, encouraging quick action.

We’ve talked a lot about social media in this post as that is where a partnership with an influencer or brand is likely to have maximum impact, but don’t neglect your other marketing channels.

Ensure any partnership that aims to boost a holiday giveaway promotion maximises the opportunity for consistent, authentic messaging across the entire marketing channel mix.

We’re talking in-store collateral, email, specific landing pages and more. Oh, and if you are partnering with another brand, make sure to capitalise on any reach by ensuring they are promoting to their network across their channel mix too.

A quick word to the wise. We’ve focused on festive collaborations in this blog post, but there is a huge opportunity to unleash the power of collaboration, all year round.

Easter, Ramadan, Halloween, to name just a few, should be part of your marketing collaboration considerations, as well as the classic holiday season (Cyber Monday, Black Friday, Christmas, and New Year). There are also a multitude of regional and local holidays or events that you can collaborate with brands or influencers on to boost your marketing efforts.

Collaborating with influencers and brands is becoming a marketing tool that is being used more and more to help create online buzz, strengthen a brand’s reputation, improve audience engagement, and increase conversions.

In fact, brands shouldn’t be asking ‘if’ they should embark on these kinds of partnerships, but ‘how’ and ‘when’.

When it comes to a marketing promotion or holiday giveaway, a collaboration with the right partner, at the right time, can truly supercharge its impact and reach.