Mark your calendar: Mother’s Day is quickly approaching! Last year, Americans spent over $23.6 billion celebrating Mother’s Day and that number is expected to grow in 2018. From new TV commercials to exciting in-store events, brands are pulling out the big guns to help capture their share of the Mother’s Day spending pie. With so much invested in Mother’s Day marketing, it’s critical for brands to ensure their marketing messages are seen by their target demo.
That’s why this year, more and more brands are leveraging the power of advocacy marketing to help spread the word about in-store celebrations, new product launches, and upcoming sales. Whatever the goal for your Mother’s Day marketing, advocacy marketing can help your brand crush it.
5 Ways Advocacy Marketing Can Help Crush Your Mother’s Day Marketing Goals
1) Support Your Paid Marketing Initiatives
Running ads during Mother’s Day is expensive. In general, CPMs are highest one to two weeks before Mother’s Day. Brands that want to ensure their paid messages get seen during these pivotal weeks have two options:
- Spend a ridiculous sum of money
- Utilize other distribution channels like, (say it with us) Advocacy Marketing
The average advocate is connected to about 600 friends and family. That means an advocacy program with 1,000 members has a potential reach of 600,000 individuals! If a thousand advocates share your videos, blog posts, and sales announcements with their friends, you have the potential of having that message seen by 600,000 friends, family members and followers. Plus, unlike your brand page’s social reach, your advocate’s social reach isn’t throttled to quite the same extent, meaning more of their audience will organically be shown your message.
Keep in mind, this isn’t a one-time reach. This reach exists regardless of how many pieces of content you’re sending out. It’s up to you to maximize your ROI and earned media value by upping the frequency of your share requests. The more content you ask your advocates to share, the more “free” impressions your content receives.
2) Create Mom-Inspired User-Generated Content Campaigns
Think of your advocates as a multi-use tool. Not only can they help share your content, you can also ask them to create content for you. User-generated content (UGC) is powerful: UGC posts see on average a 28% higher engagement rate when compared to standard posts. They are also 2x more likely to get shared than branded posts.
Harness the power of your advocates and encourage them to create content by hosting a UGC contest. From posting themed selfies with Mom to sharing shots of how an advocate is spending the day celebrating, the opportunities for UGC creation are endless. Start the contest in the weeks leading up to Mother’s Day and use that content to promote not only your Mother’s Day sales, but potentially other marketing initiatives throughout the year.
Pro Tip: When managing an advocacy marketing campaign, be sure to choose an advocacy marketing platform that makes it easy to manage all aspects of a UGC solicitation contest. Not only does SocialToaster allow you to monitor your contest hashtags, you’ll also be able to curate all submissions to ensure they meet your guidelines. Plus, SocialToaster makes it simple to award points and rewards to your UGC contestants.
3) Drive In-Store Foot Traffic
In-store sales account for most of Mother’s Day spending. In fact, last year 70% of Mother’s Day shoppers planned to purchase gifts from a brick-and-mortar store. If your business has a physical location, be sure to leverage your advocates to increase foot traffic during the weeks leading up to Mother’s Day.
“How?” you ask.
Activate your social fans and advocates (ideally through an advocacy marketing program/campaign). Award advocates that participate in your UGC challenges with unique discounts or offers. Likewise, if you have advocates that are aggressively sharing your Mother’s Day marketing commercials, blog posts, or other marketing messages, invite them to your store for a special event. Take your advocates from the online world to the physical world by creating unique opportunities available to them only if they swing by your store.
Better yet, encourage your advocates to bring their friends with them by extending a discount or invitation to the whole group. It’s a win-win for all involved. Your advocates benefit from receiving the exclusive offer as well as the increase in social respect by making that offer available to their social network. You benefit from an exponential increase in store traffic and in-store purchases.
4) Celebrate Your Employees
Not every Mother’s Day campaign has to be tied to driving retail sales. After all, not every mom needs an enterprise-level asset management platform. B2B brands can lean on Mother’s Day to help share their marketing messages by asking their employee advocates to share content that spotlights moms in their workplace.
As with consumer advocate programs, your employees have an average of 10x more connections than your B2B brand’s social profile. Employee-distributed content is shared 24x more frequently than content shared by a brand. They also see 8x more engagement than content shared by a brand.
However your B2B brand chooses to handle your Mother’s Day marketing, remember to ensure that your messaging comes across as authentic. Employees (and their connections) can spot hollow messaging a mile away.
5) Hold A “Flash”-y Online Mother’s Day Sale
In-store purchases work for the planners, but what about those of who live for the thrill of barely beating the clock with last-minute shopping. (Hey, it still counts if it’s postmarked by the 12th, right?) Ecommerce stores should consider saving a few discounts for the actual weekend of Mother’s Day. Flash sales or one-day-only events can be just what it takes to convince the procrastinators of the world to pull out their credit card and make that purchase for Mom.
With so many gifts available, it might come as a surprise that the humble greeting card is the true Queen of Mother’s Day Gifts: who doesn’t buy a card for their mom on Mother’s Day? Kick your sale up a notch by offering free cards to consumers as a gift with purchase. You’ll benefit from the extra sales, they’ll benefit from the added convenience of not having to make a separate trip to the store and mailbox.
Regardless of the online sale choice you make, your advocates stand ready to make your Mother’s Day marketing a success. Use your advocacy marketing program to send content pieces announcing the upcoming sales in the weeks leading up to Mother’s Day.
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Whether your brand’s mission is to celebrate new moms, seasoned moms, moms-to-be, or moms-of-three, advocacy marketing can help ensure your content and marketing messages are seen where and when it counts.
Want to learn more about how you can harness the power of advocacy marketing to support your Mother’s Day marketing initiatives? Schedule a free demo with a SocialToaster expert today!