While success looks different in every situation, we want to share a few of the best practices we have seen create some of the most successful campaigns!
1. START WITH A WELCOME CAMPAIGN
An evergreen campaign is KEY to grabbing the attention of your biggest fans right off the bat. This is the first campaign they will be invited to in order to see how your program works. We recommend to every brand that they start with a Welcome Campaign and use it to invite all new advocates in and get them acquainted with the program. In the campaign brief, be sure to give them a taste of what’s in store for them as your brand advocate. Give them an easy task to complete like an Instagram post or story showcasing their favorite product of yours.
2. CHANGE IT UP
Depending on how you set up your program, there should always be an incentive for your advocates to continue engaging with you through campaigns. For example, one month you could offer one higher priced item, and the next month try offering 10 random participants a lower priced item. Change up your campaign tasks as well. This is a great way to increase conversation across platforms and offering a variety of options will increase overall participation.
3. HASHTAGS
This will be included in every single advocate post. Creating a new and catchy hashtag that hasn’t been used very much is a great idea. This is because you will be able to view all of the posts from your campaign at any time. When launching a specific campaign, be sure to use a unique hashtag to properly track posts for that campaign. If you only use one advocate hashtag on multiple campaigns, posts that are not relevant to a particular campaign will get picked up. So, use a new hashtag for each campaign.
4. HAVE CLEAR & CONCISE GUIDELINES
Be specific. Guidelines are important to ensure that you get the content you want to see. The more specific you are, the fewer one-off questions you will have to answer. But, remember your advocates don’t want to see paragraphs of instructions. It can be confusing! Be clear and concise with what you’re asking them.
5. CONTENT
If you’re stuck trying to figure out what type of campaigns you should launch, we recommend aligning your campaigns with your editorial or social calendar. Do you need summer content to post? Great! Create a campaign based on summer styles or activities! We also recommend taking a look at your tagged social posts to see what your customers are already tagging you in. Make your campaign tasks easy for them to integrate into what they already post about.
6. ANNOUNCE WINNERS
Ever wonder who won that giveaway you entered on Instagram? Us, too. Be sure to publicly celebrate your winners in an email or social post to all advocates. This will also encourage people to participate next time.