It’s a daily challenge for marketers like you to find better ways to put a brand name in front of the right people. 

Should you start sending out free gifts as soon as you’ve got some influencer names or should you play the long game and focus on forging a few close relationships instead? 

The answer could well be ‘both’ because it depends on your objectives as a brand at any one time. Whether you’re starting out or going big, it’s often tough to know where to start with influencer marketing.

To help you get started, here’s your guide to the differences and similarities between two common approaches to the discipline: product seeding and influencer gifting.

 

What Is Product Seeding?

Product seeding is a marketing tactic that involves the strategic distribution of a brand’s products to a chosen number of influencers. It’s often carried out with the intention of gaining genuine organic coverage as a result, but it’s not necessarily an expectation per se—influencers can choose not to post if they prefer or if they don’t particularly like the product.

It’s an increasingly common approach that can have a big impact on brand awareness for the company in question, but only if the influencers are chosen carefully.

 

When Should You Choose Product Seeding? 

Some of the most common scenarios for success in product seeding include something new, whether it’s a new product launch or an entirely new market strategy. 

A brand might even have identified a new niche to target through competitor analysis and could turn to product seeding to make a bit of a dent in it.

If this sounds like something you could pursue, tread carefully because your competitors might already have established relationships with certain portions of that potential customer base—sending free products out isn’t a surefire way to win new business. In fact, it could be an easy way to get onto page one of people’s bad books.

If it’s approached with due diligence and care, though, including approaching influencer outreach in the right ways, you could be on the precipice of some long-term loyalty from some influencers.

 

What Is Influencer Gifting?

Influencer gifting is similar to product seeding as a marketing tactic, but it puts less onus on influencers to publish content on the back of receiving the gift. There are no explicit expectations of promotional posts or stories on the recipient’s social feeds.

Of course, influencer gifting is still marketing, so organic responses from product recipients aren’t uncommon—they are always warmly welcomed by the brand, but they’re never requested outright as part of the outreach.

The social media personalities in question might choose to naturally include any given product in their everyday content—think trail runners with new shoes, make-up artists with new serum or home cooks with new ingredients.

When Should You Choose Influencer Gifting?

Brands might tap into influencer gifting over product seeding if they’re keen to focus on building genuine, personal relationships with their chosen partners, rather than having their minds set on content from the beginning.

Generally speaking, more time and resources should go into the research phase for this tactic because you’ll want to be sure you’re picking the influencers with the most potential to stay in your orbit.

Influencers who are gifted products from a brand that’s evidently aligned with their vision and mission are more likely to respond with authentic, unbiased reviews, so it’s a great approach if you see influencer gifting as part of your long-term strategy.

 

How To Choose a Direction Based on Your Brand’s Goals

As with any new marketing tactic or overall strategy, you’ll want to base your decision on your ultimate objectives as a brand.

Are you a new player that needs to cast its net wider? Are you an established brand launching a new product under the weight of hefty sales targets?

Know what your ultimate goal is before picking a direction with influencer marketing—that way, you can stay focused as your strategy develops.

 

Brand Awareness vs Conversions

The two core outcomes of influencer marketing will be brand awareness and conversions—whether you go for product seeding or influencer gifting will depend on which one is most important to you (or your bosses). 

 

Influencer gifting will help you slowly but surely build your brand awareness as you focus on developing deeper and longer-lasting relationships with your chosen influencers. This might not involve freebies early on, but could instead focus on following and engaging with their content so you can narrow down your list of ideal partners for gifting.

 

Product seeding will give you a greater chance of driving conversions because it is more overtly product-focused by nature. It’s subtly different to influencer gifting and you might approach the initial outreach in a similar way, but you’d be more inclined to expect promotional content on the back of the free product. This is why it can work a little better, under the right circumstances, if you’re under pressure to drive sales.

 

Both tactics can lead to healthy, long-term relationships if you get your timing and your outreach right, so try not to rush into it just because influencer marketing seems like the way forward—you need to know it’s the way forward for your brand before committing your resources to it.

 

Aligning Your Tactics with Your Target Audience(s)

The direction you take will also depend heavily on the nature of your target audience. Understanding what they want and when can be crucial to picking the right moment to engage an influencer in your field.

If you have a seasonal product on the horizon, for example, you might line up a few influencers to gift it to in advance to help with the launch at the right time of year (AKA product gifting).

If your target audience hangs on every word of a handful of micro-influencers within your space, you might look to start developing a relationship with them while your next big product is still in development. This way, you can know for sure who you want to send it to once it’s released (you guessed it: this is influencer gifting).

Knowing your audience and its behaviours is the foundation of any successful influencer marketing campaign, so be sure to do your homework before you get any balls rolling.

 

What About Costs and ROI?

Of course, budget implications have a big role to play here, too. The last thing you want to do is launch into an influencer campaign and run out of the means to keep it running halfway through.

Consider the costs of the products you want to gift now and in 6-12 months’ time and weigh them up against the resources you’ll spend building genuine relationships throughout the campaign (it’s different in every industry, so it might take longer than you think).

It would be tempting to think that working with influencers is just about sending out a few spare products from the warehouse, but there’s so much more that goes into a successful campaign.

 

At Gifta, influencer marketing is our forte, so we know all the ins and outs of the pennies and pounds that go into killer campaigns—here are a few of the reasons why we’re at the top of our game as an influencer marketing platform.