How Retail & E-Commerce Brands Can Win with Influencer Marketing in Q4: From Black Friday to Dry January

Q4 Dominates: The High-Stakes Retail Season

The fourth quarter of the year is a crucial time for retailers. While Christmas gift exchanges are a considerable revenue driver, other holidays and celebrations in Q4 are additional opportunities to engage with your audience and increase revenue.

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Why Seasonal Retail Moments are Influencer Gold

There’s value to ongoing, year-round, and even multi-year campaigns. But seasonal promotions captivate audiences with topics they’re focusing on and can drive urgency. Consumer behaviors shift throughout the seasons and savvy brands can tap into these interests by tying influencer activations to cultural and retail milestones.

We’ll take a look at the peaks throughout Q4 and share how influencer campaigns can boost brand engagement.

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Halloween

Halloween has become a part of Swiss cultural life since the mid-1990s. Department stores offer Halloween deals, restaurants add pumpkin to many dishes, and cinemas show classic horror films.

It’s a holiday that naturally generates excellent social media content, from adorable children’s costumes to impressive frightening décor. Influencers can apply their creativity and inspire followers with fun ideas, such as:

• Costumes: Influencers can share DIY tutorials for fun costumes or impress followers with elaborate cosplay complete with animatronics that few will attempt, but all will enjoy watching.
• Makeup Tutorials: Ranging from beautiful themes to gory zombies.
• Recipes: Incorporate seasonal favorites such as apples, pumpkin, and walnuts, or bake delicious foods that look scary, like classic chocolate chip cookies with spider legs.
• Décor: Like costumes and makeup, Halloween decorations can be charming and seasonal, like pumpkins and colorful changing leaves, or scary and gory, like zombies and skeletons.
• Party Prep: Select a theme and share a comprehensive party-planning guide complete with costumes, décor, and recipes.
• Last-Minute Solutions: Attending a costume party tonight with no time to shop? Influencers can post creative ideas using items most people have at home, such as safety pins and socks to dress as “static cling.”

Black Friday & Cyber Monday

Black Friday traditionally marks the start of the Christmas shopping season. For decades, brands have offered special deals to capture their share of consumer spending. Brands can further boost revenue during this time by working with influencers on campaigns such as:

• Surprise Unboxings: Unboxing is fun for the consumer as well as viewers on social media. Combined with the thrill of finding a rare collectible, the result is highly viral content. Brands can tap into this trend by not revealing everything at once, and instead having influencers unbox live in front of their audience.
• Leverage FOMO: Announce timed drops in advance. Offer early access for creator communities with influencer-exclusive discount codes and early access teasers.

Nestlé has been working with Kingfluencers since 2018 to implement creative and impactful influencer marketing campaigns for 14 of its brands in Switzerland. Kingfluencers develops innovative and engaging concepts to create authentic connections with Nestlé's target audience.

The CINI MINIS 2024 winter campaign invited fans to enjoy the cozy winter spirit with the delicious CINI MINIS and CINI MINIS CHURROS winter packs. A fun raffle was held, giving away limited-edition winter packs and a festive ugly Christmas sweater. Creative and playful content put the Winter Edition front and center and encouraged the community to participate via a special landing page. The campaign achieved over 2.9M impressions with an engagement rate of 3.0%.

Christmas Holiday Season

Christmas is a time of joy, gratitude, generosity, camaraderie, and celebration. It’s a perfect match for feel-good, emotional storytelling. Brands can partner with influencers to highlight the many joyous attributes of the season and boost brand affinity. Consumers are eager for unique and fun gift ideas, making gift guides an ideal holiday influencer campaign.

• Influencer-Led Gift Guides & Giveaways: Boost community engagement with influencer-led promotions incorporating targeted guides such as gifts for teenage boys or busy working moms.
• Showcase Social Proof: Repost user-generated content, reviews, and unboxing reactions. Use existing enthusiasm to build more in a cumulative way.

To increase ALDI SUISSE's brand awareness, Kingfluencers developed a year-round influencer campaign for 2024. The focus: seasonal highlights and attractive offers, presented creatively and authentically by selected creators. One highlight of the campaign was the "Christmas in Summer Dinner" event in which influencers received a first look at ALDI SUISSE's upcoming Christmas range. The campaign had 3.3M impressions with engagement of 20K.

January Reset: From Revelries to Dry January & Fitness

While purchases made in January don’t impact Q4 revenue, New Years is an important component of Q4’s retail peaks. Brands will want to plan in early Q4 so campaigns are ready to launch as soon as consumers recover from their hangovers.

For many people, January marks a shift from indulgence to health, as endless sweet treats and cocktails make way for fitness, self-care, and financial wellness. With New Year’s resolutions, consumers are seeking to make changes and engage in activities that aren’t currently a regular part of their lives, making this a time when they naturally search for helpful content. January is an excellent time to partner with lifestyle influencers focused on fitness and wellness.

Kingfluencers’ collaboration with Migros spans various brands within the retailer’s ecosystem. A highlight of our partnership was the Dry Migros campaign, in which we showcased Migros' non-alcoholic range in a cool and stylish way – and encouraged the community to mix their own drinks.

Kingfluencers also ran a successful Easter-themed campaign with Migros in 2024. With a focus on family, food, and decorations, influencers demonstrated how Migros products make Easter effortless and exciting – from baking ideas to the latest chocolate highlights and creative gift ideas. By combining seasonal traditions and creativity, our campaign brought Easter to life and ensured Migros was at the heart of every celebration.

Creative Strategies to Maximize Impact Across All Seasons

1. Match Influencers to Seasons & Audiences

Searching for influencers and selecting the best matches is an ongoing challenge, considering 61% of brands collaborate with ten or more influencers. As the leading full-service influencer marketing agency in Switzerland, Kingfluencers can help you select and collaborate with influencers of all types. We help give brands a real face that people relate to, stand out from the noise, and connect to consumers.

2. Use Limited-Time Offers

Create scarcity with limited availability, increasing perceived value. Brands can announce the release of product lines that will be scarce from the start – for example, by restricting production quantity and limiting sales to the week of Black Friday. Provide influencer partners with exclusive drops.

Spark urgency and drive revenue in Q4 by promoting special offers that have a looming expiration date.

3. Leverage Micro- and Nano-Influencers

Influencers of varying community sizes all provide different sets of advantages. While macro influencers deliver a broad reach and awareness, niche influencers can enable a high degree of targeting. Often, the smaller following of nano and micro influencers corresponds to a closer connection to community which tends to translate to higher engagement.

4. Incorporate Multiple Platforms

From Halloween makeup tutorials on TikTok to gift guides on YouTube and costume ideas for Instagram, brands should incorporate multiple platforms into their Q4 seasonal promotions.

If your content naturally lends itself to amusing posts and you’re targeting a younger generation, you may find more success on TikTok or Snapchat. However, if you offer something that’s inherently visual, such as fashion or home decor, Instagram or Pinterest might be your best fit. For professional positioning and thought leadership, LinkedIn is a powerful addition. And for niche communities, platforms like Reddit, Twitch, or naoo can help you engage in more authentic, interest-driven ways.

Focus your investments and customize your content accordingly.

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Conclusion: The Year-Round Opportunity

Q4 is an ideal time to captivate audiences and drive urgency with seasonal influencer marketing. Contact Kingfluencers now to get started selecting influencers, planning campaign themes, and building a complete calendar for continuous engagement. Build momentum in Q4 and continue beyond.