Holiday Influencer Campaigns: The Step-by-Step Guide for Q4 & Q5 Success

During the holidays, everyone’s competing for the same eyeballs and wallets. 

Without a clear plan, it’s easy to blend into the chaos that hits our feeds at this time of year. Getting your timing wrong, missing a shipping cutoff, or (shock horror) skipping the prep phase altogether, could mean watching your entire holiday season and the extra revenue it promised slipping very quickly through your fingers. 

But get it right, and you can reach more customers and build serious momentum that carries you through the lull of Q5 and beyond. 

Whether you're running campaigns on Instagram, TikTok, or Facebook, this guide will walk you through exactly what to do, when to do it, and how to make sure you're not leaving money on the table when the biggest shopping season of the year rolls around.

Plan Your Holiday Influencer Campaigns

Holiday campaigns work best when you build momentum early. Here’s how to do that. 

Q4 Timeline

Success during the busiest shopping season is never a fluke. It needs to be meticulously planned (we’d say around 80% preparation and 20% execution), and if you haven’t already started warming up your audience, you might already be behind. 

Don’t worry, there’s time to catch up. 

Here’s how the rhythm of BFCM usually plays out: 

• October to early November. Hire creators, seed products, and collect user generated content (UGC) you can reuse later. The aim of this phase is to get your brand involved in the scroll so people are aware of who you are before you start sharing your discounts. 
• Early November. Creators and influencers you’re working with should start teasing bundles or deals but staying hush-hush on the code. This is to build anticipation and encourage shoppers to build wishlists and save products ready for the big day. 
• BFCM week. Get your most trusted, best-performing creators to go live with the actual offer. Ideally, you’re also running Partnership Ads/Spark ads through the creators’ handles for extra social proof. 
• Mid-December. Once the initial frenzy dies down, your messaging should switch to gifting and last-chance shipping cutoffs. 
• January. We’ve found that there’s 5-8% extra revenue on the table if you don’t drop the ball in January (a.k.a. Q5). Take this opportunity to retarget holiday traffic with new year deals and angles, and use the same creator to reinforce trust. 

Budgets and Targets

Q4 can get very expensive very fast if you don’t have a handle on your finances. 

The key is putting enough budget forward at the right time. Here’s a rough structure you can stick to. 

Obviously it’s nice to go viral, but that’s not what you should be aiming for here. Instead, you want to be able to repeat and scale. To do this you need to have a plan, which means setting: 

• CPA guardrails (what you can afford per conversion)
• ROAS targets (and when to scale or pause a creator)
• Time-based evaluation windows (like giving each creator at least 72 hours before judging their performance)

Product Seeding & Shipping Cutoffs

Lock creators, addresses, and last-ship dates.

It’s easy to underestimate how early you need to lock in for BFCM. If you’re seeing products, you need time to reach out to creators and send them their products. It can take 2-4 weeks between your first bit of outreach and the actual content going live, so it’s important to start early. 

• Lock in creators ASAP (October is ideal)
• Collect addresses and preferences up front
• Build in shipping delays (carriers get slammed before Christmas)
• Know your last guaranteed ship date and reverse-engineer creator deadlines from it

If your cutoff is December 14th, creators need your product in their hands by the first week of December at the latest. So, agreements and dispatch ideally need to be wrapped by mid-November. 

Black Friday and Cyber Monday Influencer Campaigns

Black Friday and Cyber Monday are huge dates in the diary because they’re when your warm audiences finally convert. At this point, your content should shift from awareness to driving those conversions. 

Offer Angles That Convert

The angle of your content matters just as much as the discount during BFCM, because people don’t just want an arbitrary “20% off”, they want a reason to grab it now instead of waiting. 

Some of the highest-performing formats we see are: 

• Tiered discounts. This might be something like “buy more, save more” or giving 20% off for 1 item, 30% off for 2, and 40% off for 3. 
• Bundled deals. These are great if your margins are tight or you don’t want to heavily discount your bestsellers. 
• Doorbusters or limited drops. Tap into shoppers’ FOMO with a limited number of products on sale or a first-come-first-serve deal. 

Beauty Pie offers a tiered discount on its holiday offers.

Creator Formats

Your BFCM content doesn’t need to be a huge, slick production. In fact, we’ve noticed that the most effective content tends to feel native and scrappy. 

Some formats that consistently convert include: 

• 3-hook UGCs. Three quick openers filmed back-to-back, like “why I use this,” “what it replaces,” and “the deal you can get today”. You can then remix them into multiple ad variations. 
• Price drop Reels and TikToks. Show the before and after pricing alongside a product demo. Extra points if the creator overlays the new price before the hook finishes. 
• Cart-build videos. Show a walkthrough of exactly what shoppers can put in their cart to unlock the best deal. 

You can also consider formats like live reactions, side-by-side comparisons, and basket round ups to show more of your catalog. 

Sephora often shares content from creators filling up their carts. 

Ad Activation

The best results usually come when you amplify organic content with ads. One bolsters the other, so to speak, because you’re not just “hoping” people will see it, you’re actually putting money into making it visible. 

We always recommend running Partnership Ads and Spark Ads through the creator’s handle instead of your own. 

This gives you built-in social proof (because the creator’s audience already trusts them), more believable UGC, and a quick view into which creator performs best so you can double down on their content. 

Check out this potential workflow: 

1. Test content organically or through gifting
2. Spot the top performers
3. Request licensing or whitelisting 
4. Turn content into Partnership Ads and/or Spark Ads
5. Add more spend to top-performing creators 

Christmas Social Media Campaigns with Creators

Christmas campaigns are all about helping shoppers decide what to gift, so creator content should focus on inspiration, storytelling, and the emotional side of giving.

Gift Guide UGC

Christmas is a time to help people decide what they should buy for their loved ones (after the chaos of BFCM, shoppers often need a little nudge in the right direction). This is why gift guide style UGC works so well. 

Try these simple but effective formats: 

• For him / for her / for parents / for coworkers
• Under $50 / under $30 / stocking fillers
• If they love X, get them this 

These usually work best as short, fast-paced videos rather than a full walkthrough so people can see a selection of products in quick succession. Creators can also film multiple variations from the same product batch and reuse the footage in different guides. 

Everlane shares a gift guide every holiday season. 

Unboxing & First-Look

Gifting plays a huge role at Christmas, and a large part of the experience is the packaging and actually opening the gift. Hence why unboxings and first look content are incredibly popular in the lead up to shipping cutoffs. 

Think: 

• Wrapping and reveal (like peeling open paper, bows, and tissue paper)
• ASMR touches (crinkles, clicks, textures)
• POV-style framing that shows what people will see when they open the gift

Community Plays

Obviously you want your holiday campaigns to convert, but sometimes you have to play the long game. Building a community is a great way to keep the momentum going and bring in more revenue during the Q5 retention phase. 

Here are a few examples that work especially well with creators:

• Giveaways. If you can, tie these to a theme, like “gift a friend”. 
• Charity tie-ins. Give a percentage of proceeds to a relevant cause and get creators to share why the cause matters. 
• Countdown stories. Think of these as “series”, like sharing 7 days of gifts or the 12 gifts of Christmas.

Platform Tactics For Holiday Influencer Campaigns

Each platform plays its own part in the buyer journey, so tailoring your influencer strategy to how people shop on Instagram, TikTok, and Facebook can make all the difference.

Instagram Holiday Influencer Campaigns

Instagram is still one of the best places to drive conversions and social proof, especially for people who need a little more validation before they hit purchase. 

What typically works best: 

• Reels with strong hooks. Use fast, punchy intros, like “here’s the gift everyone’s asking me about this year”, or “3 gifts for under $30 they’ll actually use”. 
• Stories with polls or a mini Q&A. Answer questions and tackle hesitations head-on with polls like “which color should I gift?” or “would you choose bundle A or B?”. 
• Carousel gift guides. Use Instagram’s carousel format to share mini catalogs of your products. 

Magic Spoon brings back a limited-edition product for the holiday season. 

TikTok Holiday Campaigns

Last year, 55% of shoppers found holiday gift inspiration via TikTok. It’s a great discovery engine, but the down and dirty nature of the platform means your campaigns should lean hard into native storytelling. 

Try these formats: 

• Trend-based hooks. Attach your products to a trending sound or visual format. The hook matters more than the price here, simply because TikTok scroll speed in December is brutal. 
• Day-in-the-life gift POVs. Show why the product is a good fit rather than just what it is or what it does. You can make it more emotional (and therefore more compelling) by adding a personal POV, like “I surprised my sister with this”). 
• Spark Ads from creator handles. Strike while the iron’s hot, as they say, and jump on a piece of organic content that lands well by turning it into a Spark Ad and running it from the creator’s handle. 

Gymshark ran an advent calendar campaign encouraging creators to film content of them opening the doors. 

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Facebook Holiday Ads with Influencers

Facebook is still a monster in Q4, particularly if you’re targeting a slightly older demographic. The best format here is hybrid content, where you pair stories from creators with a structured ad approach.

Here’s how it works best: 

• Dynamic Product Ads (DPAs) with creator intros. Start with a quick creator hook and then drop into the product feed so people can go directly to the SKU they want. 
• Partnership Ads for warm lookalikes. For these, creators basically act as a “bridge” for the traffic you’ve warmed up on other channels. Once Meta can see who’s engaging with them, you can build warm lookalikes and run ads that feel a little bit more personal. 

Quick Campaign Ideas by Vertical

Different product categories call for different storytelling styles, so here are quick plug-and-play holiday marketing ideas tailored to each vertical.

Beauty and Skincare

• Routine gifting bundles. Think content that helps shoppers build their winter skin reset shares the 3-step gift they’ll actually stick to. 
• Before/after holiday prep. Share tutorials and glow-ups for holiday events. 
• Stocking stuffers or minis. Promote travel sizes and small-size sets that let shoppers try out several of your collection at once (or use them as gifts for their friends). 
• ASMR and first application POVs. Ask creators to share their first time trying your products with their honest feedback. 

Glossier drops a new holiday collection every year. 

Home and Kitchen

• Holiday hosting hacks. Give advice at the same as showing off your kitchen tools, baking bundles, tableware, and crockery. 
• Cozy home resets. Home in on candles, throws, and small seasonal luxuries to give that warm winter feeling. 
• POV table setting. Get creators to share how they’d lay the table for a big family-filled Christmas dinner. 
• Before/after content. Encourage creators to show how they made their space feel festive using some of your bestsellers. 

Casper collaborated with another relevant brand to run a festive giveaway. 

Fashion and Accessories

• Giftable accessories. Shine a spotlight on products like scarves, bags, jewellery, and winter staples. 
• Outfit builders. Create content that shows different ways to wear the same item or how to put items together in an outfit. 
• Holiday party dressing ideas. Offer tips for shoppers looking for their holiday party outfits or showcase some day to night transitions. 
• What I’m wearing Reels. Get creators to style outfits for different holiday occasions using your product range. 

Wellness and Fitness

• Cozy self-care gifting. Promote products like candles, rituals, and anything rest-themed. 
• Survive the holiday wellness kits. Bundle self-care items together and sell them as a wellness kit for shoppers struggling to get through the season. 
• New Year soft-prep. Encourage shoppers to ease slowly into the habit-building era of Jan before the rush kicks in. 

Tech and Gadgets

• Small but genius stocking fillers. Highlight some of your small, useful gadgets that would make the perfect stocking filler.
• Upgrade gifting. Encourage shoppers to replace something old with a newer, sleeker solution. 
• Quality of life gadgets. Promote smart home products, desk upgrades, or anything that’ll make shoppers’ lives a little bit better or easier. 
• Quick demos. Get creators to share product demos or honest reviews.

Oura Ring partnered with influencers who shared why it was the perfect gift.

How Insense Helps

There’s a lot to juggle during the busy holiday shopping season. At any given time, you’re finding creators, collecting content, managing contracts, tracking usage, and scaling the winners before momentum dies out. It’s… a lot. 

Luckily, Insense brings all those moving parts together in one place so you can source, contract, brief, and track creator content quickly, easily, and accurately. 

It helps you: 

• Find the right creators. Browse vetted creators or build custom shortlists for your niche, budget, and campaign needs. 
• Seed products. Insense collects creator details, automates outreach, and brings everything together so you’re not losing addresses in the mayhem. 
• Source modular UGC. Instead of one-off “pretty” posts, brief creators for hooks, B-roll, stills, and cutdowns, so you have multiple variations to work with. 
• Run Partnership Ads and Spark Ads in one place. Connect licensed creator content directly to Meta and TikTok so you can launch ads quickly.
• Create a performance loop. When a creator performs well, you can quickly rehire them, white-list, and amplify their content. 

If you’re ready to go all in on your Q4 (and Q5) campaigns, there are two things you can do right now. Either book a demo to see how Insense fits with your current stack or try it for free and start sourcing creators right away. 

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