Boost Your Back-to-School Campaign with Influencer Marketing

As kids enjoy summer, playing their hearts out before school comes back around, it’s time for companies to start thinking about their back-to-school campaigns. Research shows that over 60 percent of back-to-school shoppers plan to start purchasing before August.

This suggests that your campaign should run a good deal before school starts back up. This, in large part, is because parents are shopping for school supplies and clothing differently than they have in the past.

It used to be that parents would make a run to the store, gather everything on the school supplies list in one sweep, and head back home. Today, parents are spending a considerably larger amount of time researching and shopping for their supplies which means that their shopping starts earlier in the summer.

Most of that research is done online. It makes sense, then, that morel shopping takes place online as well. As school shopping goes digital, so should your back-to-school campaign.  

Whether you’re focused on parents, college students, or little ones entering their first year of school, connecting with your demographic can be difficult. Influencer marketers make it a lot easier to make connections, though, and we’re going to list a few instances where influencers have helped companies win big in back-to-school campaigns.

Target and the Quinn Sisters

Target paired with elementary and middle school influencers, the Quinn Sisters, last year and made waves. The Sisters engaged in a “Target shopping challenge” for back to school supplies, bringing a lot of energy and excitement to the sometimes boring process of picking up supplies.

Their YouTube video generated over 1.2 million views, showing us all how fun it can actually be to get ready for school.

Sara Lee and “Loveable Lunch Notes”

Sara Lee (you’ve probably packed a million lunches with their bread) capitalized on the age-old trend of leaving a note for your child in their lunch bag.

The campaign offered a selection of printable lunch notes to include in lunch boxes, paired with a coupon for Sara Lee bread. They worked with twenty influencers to promote the campaign on their blogs with the intention of upping engagement on the company’s Facebook and campaign sites.

They ended up getting almost 700,000 impressions on Facebook and a combined 124 million impressions on Twitter and Instagram.

JC Penny’s Back-to-School Music Video

Sara Rowe, Meghan Trainor, and Alfonso Ribeiro all worked with JC Penny’s back-to-school campaign, creating an exciting music video.

Using Meghan Trainor’s song, “Me Too,” the ad features a group of talented kids dancing and having a blast, wearing new JC Penny styles. The video is centered around Sara Rowe and Alfonso Ribeiro, who is best known for playing Carlton Banks in The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air.

This campaign is a creative example of a brand making its back-to-school push compelling and memorable for consumers.

Target’s Campaign with New Kids on the Block

You’ve probably noticed that your social feeds are getting pumped with engaging video content. If it hasn’t yet crossed your mind, browse through Facebook and Instagram for a few moments, taking note of the frequency of video content, whether or not it’s a marketing campaign, and how well you respond to it.

Consumers are shifting toward a preference of video content and have been for a while. That trend has led to a huge increase in the presence of entertaining videos as well as marketing content on social media.

We’re going to touch on the upward trends in video marketing, hopefully shedding a little light on why your marketing campaign should focus more heavily on video, whether that’s Instagram Stories, YouTube or Facebook Live.

The Importance of Video Marketing in 2019 & 2020

We’ll run through a few of the latest statistics, all of which point toward the fact that video marketing has been, and continues to be on the rise.

Whether or not you prefer video content to written material or traditional ads, it’s clear that the greater picture is one where video marketing is king.

An Upward Trend

Businesses have been using video for their marketing for a while, but the last few years have shown a sharp rise in the percentage of marketers that use video in their campaigns.

A Wyzowl study found that over 60% of businesses claimed to be using video in their marketing efforts in 2017. That number jumped 18% in 2018, and the 2019 percentage is up to 87%.

It makes sense, too, seeing as most business owners and marketers who use video say that it brings in excellent results. The same study claimed that 94% of marketers said video improved user understanding of a product or service, 84% said that it boosted web traffic to their websites, and 81% say that their video marketing helped to generate leads.

Those numbers are overwhelmingly positive.

Looking Forward at Video Marketing

The main ingredient in the whole equation, is, of course, the consumer. They’re on board with the trends in video marketing as well, with 87% of surveyed consumers saying that they’d like to see more brand videos and advertisements in 2019.

The marketing community is in agreement on the fact that video will keep pushing into 2020, and many brands plan to increase spending on video. Additionally, of those who aren’t already using video as a marketing tool, almost 75 percent of them plan to start doing so this year, according to HubSpot.

So, What Can You Do?

All arrows are pointing toward the fact that video is here and plans to stick around. That means there’s a lot of competition and the need for great content is extremely important. One way to greatly improve the quality and reach of your video marketing campaign is to work with influencers.

Influencers and video marketing go together hand in hand, often times with the influencer already having the skills and audience to engage your brand with thousands upon thousands of people. Video content can be crafted to any social media platform as well, seeing as some social sites aren’t as popular in certain niches. From product placements to reviews, influencers can work your brand or product into a meaningful customer experience.

It’s an exciting idea, and we’re here to help your brand move forward with its marketing campaign. Contact us to explore your influencer and video marketing options, potentially pairing up with one of our content creators and influencers.