Influencer Gifting in 2022: Best Practices on How to Gift Products to Influencers
Influencer gifting has evolved over the years, and it’s important for brands to understand how influencer gifting has taken form. Whereas in the early days of influencer marketing, gifting was a solid approach to get featured in organic content, influencers are now inundated with free products and offers from a multitude of brands with the same goal as before. Given the competitive nature of gifting, brand marketers must ensure that their product is as authentic of a fit as possible for the influencer. The goal has changed from gifting free products to influencers to providing true value through influencer gifting. Here are some best practices on how to gift products to influencers:
Get to Know the Influencer
It is crucial for brands to understand what matters to the influencers, what fuels them, rather than taking a shotgun approach. What values are important to them? Ensure your product can tap into a core nuance that they feel strongly about. This will give your product its best chance to stand out and be featured amongst organic content in the future.
Personalize Your Gifts
In order to give your product the best chance at gaining some organic traction, consider personalizing your gifts. Sending product with a simple but thoughtful touch such as a hand-crafted note, or detail that is specific to the influencer is always a great way to stand out amongst the pack.
PR Gifting Experience
First impressions count more than ever. For brands, this means standing out in the most polished fashion. Creating an influencer gifting PR package is more than simply sending products in a standard promotion. The nature of social media is to share an experience with others, and one way that brands can do this is through building a beautiful package that influencers are excited to unbox with their followers.
Give Enough Product to Share
Following suit with strumming up excitement, influencers love to host giveaways to engage with their followers and strengthen relationships. Giveaways are a fantastic way for influencers to give back to their dedicated community and thank them for supporting. Giving the influencer enough product to give away is a great way to ensure that they will promote your product through organic content.
The “No Pressure” Approach
Influencers are flooded with promotional products by brands, one way to ensure coming across as authentic is to include a message stating that while your brand wants the influencer to enjoy their gift if they don’t find it to be an authentic product to their core routines, that they should not feel obligated to share.
Discount Code & Affiliate
On the flip side, a brand that wants to jump-start its relationship with an influencer through gifting should consider incentivizing the influencer off the bat by way of including a coupon code that an influencer might want to share with their followers. If a creator is already a client of yours who loves your product, they will likely be more inclined to share it with their audience. Find out how to identify if an influencer is already an existing client of yours!
Conclusion
In conclusion, the practice of influencer gifting has become heavily saturated as creators are receiving free products and offers from a multitude of brands with the same goal in mind of generating organic content. Consider the following best practices in order to stand out amongst the pack with gifting products; get to know the influencer, personalize your gifts, provide PR packages, give enough product to share, and provide discount codes. Additionally, find out how you can identify authentic influencers who already love your brand!
