There are many reasons why you should hire or collaborate with influencers for your marketing campaign. In this article, we’ll explore how influencer product gifting works and why it has become such a popular marketing strategy in today’s digital world.
What is Influencer Product Gifting
Influencer product gifting or product seeding is a marketing campaign where a brand sends its products to influencers. Influencer product gifting campaigns are a smart and effective way for brands to get the word out about their products. It is like when you give a gift to a friend, and they love it so much that they tell everyone they know.
These influencers try out the products you gifted and share their thoughts with their followers, which can be a powerful way to get the word out about a brand’s products and ultimately increase User Generated Content (UGC). However, gifting products to influencers is not guaranteed to generate engagements like a post or a shoutout from them. Many start-ups and small business owners also mistake influencer product gifting with paid partnerships, so be careful about that.
Influencer Marketing vs. Traditional Marketing
Influencer product gifting sets itself apart from traditional marketing strategies since it’s all about recommendation and personal experience. Instead of bombarding consumers with ads, it relies on influencers to genuinely try out and endorse products. This approach creates a sense of trust and authenticity, as it feels like a friend or a trusted source is sharing their thoughts on a product.
Influencer product gifting can also be cost-effective and budget-friendly for brands. Rather than allocating large sums to traditional advertising methods like TV commercials or billboards, brands can choose to collaborate with influencers. This shift allows them to reach a highly targeted audience through authentic, word-of-mouth recommendations.
With all that said, let us now dive into the guide!
Steps in Running a Successful Influencer Product Gifting Campaign
1. Choose a Product to Give
Whether it is an old product you want to boost or a new product you want to increase awareness of, selecting the right one is the essential first step in an influencer product gifting strategy. It’s like picking the perfect gift for a friend – you want it to be something they will love and find useful.
In this case, influencers are like messengers, and the product they receive should align with their interests and their audience’s needs. When you choose the right product, it’s more likely that the influencer will genuinely like it, making their recommendation more authentic and convincing to their followers.
2. Plan and Strategize Your Product Gifting Campaign
A well-thought-out strategy ensures that your influencer campaign aligns with your overall marketing and business objectives. Whether you aim to increase brand awareness, drive sales, or boost engagement, a clear plan helps you focus on achieving these specific goals.
Effective planning helps you in allocating your resources wisely. You can determine the number of products to give away and the overall budget needed for the campaign. This prevents unnecessary expenses and ensures that you maximize the return on your investment.
Strategizing also helps you define the key messages and themes you want to convey through the campaign. This ensures that the type of influencers you hire is aligned with your brand’s messaging and resonates with their audience, making it more authentic and compelling.
You should also set up Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
Why Is It Important to Set KPIs?
Setting up KPIs during the planning and strategizing phase of your influencer product gifting campaign provides a roadmap for success. These KPIs serve as clear performance indicators that guide your campaign’s direction. They help you define what success looks like, whether it’s a certain increase in website traffic, a specific number of conversions, or a rise in brand sentiment. Without KPIs, it’s challenging to gauge the effectiveness of your campaign and make data-driven decisions.
KPIs also ensure that your influencer campaign stays aligned with your overarching objectives. They help maintain a focus on the bigger picture, ensuring that your efforts
contribute directly to your business goals. For instance, if your primary objective is to boost sales, your KPIs may include tracking conversion rates and revenue generated from the campaign. This alignment ensures that your influencer marketing investments are purposeful and directly linked to achieving tangible outcomes, making your campaign planning more strategic and effective.
It will also be easier for you to optimize your campaign and see what works and what does not. This is a necessary step in ensuring the success of your influencer product gifting strategies.
Examples of KPIs
● Promo Codes for Influencers: Offer influencers unique codes that earn them a share of the sales whenever their audience uses the code during checkout.
● User-Generated Content: Track the number of user-generated posts or reviews featuring your product after the influencer campaign. UGC can provide valuable social proof and ongoing exposure.
● Influencer Satisfaction: Gather feedback from influencers on their experience with your product. Assess their satisfaction, which can impact future partnerships and brand advocacy.
3. Find and Collaborate with the Right Influencer
Now that you have a winning strategy and have already selected the product you want to promote through your influencer product gifting campaign, you should look for and partner with the right influencer that resonates with your brand’s values and goals.
You can save more time and money by hiring influencer marketing agencies like Armful Media and let their team of dedicated experts with years of experience to handle your influencer marketing campaigns,
It is good to remember that the product that you plan to promote should also fit well with the influencer’s overall content and style. For instance, if you are a sports and fitness wear brand, you should look for influencers that talk about fitness and health and send them your new line of workout gear or the new set of shoes they are selling in exchange for their genuine feedback.
Giving art materials to influencers who make content out of cooking food would not make sense. Unless your art products are specifically made for usage during cooking, gifting them to the wrong influencers is counter-intuitive.
But how and where can you find the right influencer for your influencer gifting campaign?
Follow These Steps in Establishing Authentic Partnerships With Influencers for Your Gift-Giving Strategy
When you find the right influencer you want to collaborate with for your campaign, It is important to build long-lasting, authentic, and mutually beneficial partnerships with them so that you can work with them in the future or they would promote your products out of love and in their own volition. You can do these by taking the following steps:
1. Engage Authentically: Start by engaging with the influencer’s content genuinely. Leave thoughtful comments, share their posts, and build rapport before approaching them with a partnership proposal. Authentic engagement shows your appreciation for their work.
2. Personalized Outreach: When reaching out, personalize your messages to demonstrate your genuine interest in collaborating. Mention specific aspects of their content that resonate with your brand and explain how a partnership can benefit both parties.
3. Co-create Content: Encourage influencers to co-create content with your brand. Allow them creative freedom while integrating your product or message naturally. This approach maintains their authenticity and resonates better with their audience.
4. Transparency and Honesty: Establish open and transparent communication from the outset. Be clear about your intention as to why you are running a product gifting campaign. Honesty builds trust and contributes to a long-lasting partnership.
5. Long-term Relationships: Aim for long-term partnerships rather than one-off collaborations. Building an ongoing relationship allows influencers to become brand advocates and fosters authenticity as they genuinely grow with your brand.
4. Optimize Your Product Gifting Campaign With KPIs
We talked about setting up your KPIs and how important it is during the initial phase of your campaign. The data you have now should provide valuable insights into what aspects of your campaign are working and what areas need improvement. By analyzing this data, you can identify which influencers, content types, messaging, or distribution channels are driving the most engagement, conversions, or other desired outcomes. This enables you to allocate your resources more effectively by investing in strategies that have proven to be successful and adjusting or eliminating those that are less effective. Optimization based on KPIs ensures that you are making data-informed decisions rather than relying on assumptions, increasing the efficiency and ROI of your campaign.
Optimizing also allows you to adapt to changing circumstances and trends in real-time. Influencer marketing is dynamic, and what worked yesterday may not work as effectively tomorrow. You have to regularly review and optimize your campaign using the data you’ve collected so that you can stay agile and responsive to shifts in your audience’s preferences, industry trends, or competitor strategies. This flexibility is essential in ensuring that your influencer product gifting campaign remains relevant and competitive, helping you maintain a strong and impactful presence in the ever-evolving digital landscape.
Before You Go
Overcoming Challenges
Product gifting campaigns are among the easiest and most cost-effective marketing strategies available out there, especially when you are partnering with Micro-Influencers. However, navigating the challenges in influencer product gifting campaigns and other marketing campaigns while staying ahead of evolving influencer marketing trends is crucial for brand success in the digital age.
One common challenge lies in ensuring influencer authenticity. To overcome this, it’s essential to carefully select influencers who genuinely resonate with your brand and share values with your target audience. That is why doing a background check on influencers you wish to collaborate with is essential in ensuring that their values align with your brand, maintain authenticity, and avoid potential reputational risks. It also helps verify the legitimacy of their audience and their credibility so you can avoid hiring fake influencers.
Adapting to Change
You and your business should be adaptable as influencer marketing trends continually evolve. Managing influencer relationships effectively requires open communication and clear terms and agreements to prevent misunderstandings. Embracing emerging trends like micro-influencer partnerships, long-term collaborations, and diversity and inclusion efforts can help your brand stay ahead in the influencer marketing landscape.
Ultimately, by navigating common challenges with transparency, communication, and adaptability, and aligning strategies with emerging trends, your influencer product gifting campaigns can thrive in an ever-changing digital world, fostering meaningful connections with your audience and achieving your marketing goals.
Wrapping Up
To wrap it up, running a successful influencer product gifting campaign is a strategic process that involves careful planning, effective collaboration with the right influencers, and ongoing optimization based on KPIs. Influencer marketing through product gifting has become a popular strategy due to its authenticity and cost-effectiveness in comparison to traditional advertising methods. By selecting the right product, finding compatible influencers, and setting clear goals and KPIs, you can build authentic partnerships that resonate with your target audience and achieve your marketing objectives.
