How Social Influencers Inspired Mother’s Day Gifting

Mother’s Day can be kind of a stressful holiday. What do you buy for the woman who gave you life (and continues to offer unsolicited advice on how best to live it, but that’s not the point)? Flowers die quickly, cakes and cookies only cause complaints (“I don’t have the metabolism anymore”) and gifts are “way too much to spend on me.”

Challenges aside, the team at Aura knew they had the perfect gift for mom (a digital photo frame imbued through and through with sophisticated elegance) and they were committed to making Mother’s Day gifting simple and easy. But to do so, they needed to spread the word about their new frame amidst an onslaught of mom’s day messaging. Not only that, since Aura was such a new product, storytelling was pivotal in conveying the appropriate look, feel, and emotion of the brand.

Aura in action, courtesy of Kelle Hampton’s influencer post.

Social media influencers to the rescue!

Because of this need for storytelling — and a splashy entrance into the Mother’s Day marketplace — we knew social influencers had to be part of the Aura Mother’s Day campaign. After all, a well-conducted social media influencer campaign creates unusually exciting opportunities for storytelling depth, originality, measurement, reach, and engagement.

Influencer Opportunity #1: Depth

The long-form content influencers produce, in many cases an extensive blog post or 10+ minute video, allows for a deeper dive into a product’s benefits than a typical branded advertisement would be able to. And since influencers have an ongoing relationship with their followers, the content they produce can have a much deeper meaning than traditional marketing language. This depth matters: According to a recent survey, one in three consumers trust an influencer’s words over what a brand says.

Influencer Opportunity #2: Originality

Because we wanted to provide as much originality and differences in perspective as we could (and because having a backup is crucial) we chose to include four different influencers in our campaign. The women we moved forward with were of all different ages, writing styles, interests and audiences. From a globe-trotting millenial to a vlogger with an eye for decor, each of our influencers had a different reason for loving their Aura.

Our vlogger influencer MissLizHeart showing off the frame.

Influencer Opportunity #3: Measurement

Solid measurement is pivotal when you’re conducting any marketing campaign, but especially one as new and potentially nebulous as influencer marketing. To keep tabs on our influencers and track which ones were inspiring which sales, we assigned each one a personalized promo code to share with their audience. That way, we knew exactly who our top performers were, and could generate an accurate ROI with startling immediacy.

Influencer Opportunity #4: Reach

With only modest promotion, our influencers produced over a half million impressions for Aura, thanks to the strength of their individual audiences. Not only were we able to capitalize on their followings on their blogs (or vlogs) but also their followers on Facebook, Instagram and Twitter.

Multiple generations of Aura fans made an appearance in HungryRunnerGirl’s influencer post.

Influencer Opportunity #5: Engagement

Each of our four influencers has a loyal following and a high engagement average on most of their posts. By trusting our influencers to produce content that would resonate with their unique audience, the result was four entirely different approaches, with engagement rates that were just as varied. Some influencers saw tremendous engagement, while others lagged slightly behind. The good news? Since we tracked our influencers’ engagement in real-time, we were able to boost the social posts of our top-performing influencers, thus maximizing their impact and driving sales even further. By being able to boost so strategically, we didn’t waste any resources on lower performing posts.

Treasured family photos made a cameo in SimplyTaraLynn’s influencer blog post.

Results

Because of the depth, originality, measurement, reach and engagement made possible by influencer marketing, Aura celebrated Mother’s Day with a 220.80% return on ad spend. Even better, the content created by our influencers continued to make waves well into Father’s Day, with Mother’s Day social content sparking continuous engagement through the month of June.

Want to learn if social media influencers would be a good match for your brand?

Schedule a free consultation with us today!