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Influencer gifting, sending products or PR packages to creators, has become one of the most effective ways for brands to generate awareness and build trust. In this guide, we’ll show you how to send PR packages to influencers step by step and share tips for planning a successful gifting campaign.
Table of Contents:
- What’s an Influencer Marketing Strategy?
- Why Should You Do an Influencer Marketing Campaign?
- Types of Influencer Marketing Strategies
- How to Send PR Packages to Influencers: A Step-by-Step Guide
- Tips for Setting Up an Influencer Gifting Campaign
What’s an Influencer Marketing Strategy?
We can define influencer marketing as the part of social media marketing that revolves around the partnership between a brand and an influencer to introduce and promote the brand’s products or services to the influencer’s audience.
The objective is to give the brand more direct contact with an already trusting and engaged audience by communicating through the influencer's social media channels to expand your brand’s outreach and generate quality leads.
The competition to stand out and reach new customers is fierce, which means that your marketing efforts should focus on leveraging your social media presence more effectively.
Granted, building a strong internet presence goes beyond making periodic social media posts; it takes time and effort to get the desired results. That’s why it’s key to use different approaches to deliver your message to your existing and potential customers.
This is where influencers can be helpful. As figures who have reached a certain status or position inside a specific demographic group, they can change or influence how their followers think about their interests, including products and services.
They can be seen as “bridges” that can connect businesses with their target audience, especially if you work with the right influencers. Let’s see some reasons why you should consider working with them.
Why Should You Do an Influencer Marketing Campaign?
Whereas traditional marketing keeps losing its effectiveness in the crowded space of the Internet, an influencer marketing strategy allows you to filter a lot of the noise and establish a clear line of communication with the audience you’re looking for.
Here are some ways this strategy can be beneficial for your brand:
Authentic Messaging
A well-defined influencer strategy can help your communication feel more genuine and approachable, making a difference when people feel less inclined to pay attention to ads. Attaching your brand to an influencer’s name can help you cut through the skepticism many people feel toward advertising and make it more palatable and friendly.
Builds Trustworthiness
When it comes to buying, we all want to be sure that we’ll get value and quality from our purchases. Seeing influencer-generated content from trusted figures endorsing a particular product or service on social media platforms can make potential customers more willing to believe that what’s being advertised is high-quality and worth the expense.
Raises Brand Awareness among Your Target Audience
An effective marketing strategy with successful influencers can extend your brand’s reach in specific niches and industries. Given that one of their main jobs is to foster and create a sense of community around their shared interest with their followers, influencers already have experience in creating authentic content that caters to their audience.
Cost-effective
In a world where marketing expenses keep ballooning, influencer marketing can help you offset some of the costs by putting part of your content creation pipeline, and its subsequent distribution, in the hands of influencers.
Compare the possible costs of producing a video ad with what some of the viral UGC seen on TikTok and you will see the potential cost-saving benefits.
Remember influencers are effectively brands themselves, so they should be more than capable of promoting your brand at a comparatively low cost through a “collab” or partnership that offers them exposure.
Types of Influencer Marketing Strategies
Not all influencer marketing strategies are made the same. Depending on how the interaction between the brand and the influencer develops, there can be various ways to develop influencer marketing campaigns:
Paid Campaigns
Brands reach out to an influencer or content creator and pay them a pre-agreed fee to create authentic content featuring or promoting their products or services. This is also known as sponsored content and guarantees a certain amount of exposure on the influencer’s media channels.
Product Seeding
This modality involves sending new products to influencers to allow them to try and test the items (or services) firsthand. The intention is to have them share their genuine first impressions and experiences with their followers afterward, but there’s no obligation on their part to do so.
Ideally, product seeding allows the brand to gain valuable insight into what works (or doesn’t) in a product straight from the top influencers of a particular niche. If done correctly, it can lead to an uptick of user-generated content (UGC) around the brand in the form of blog posts or even product reviews that can lead to new sales.
Product Gifting
Brands send products or access to their services to influencers, brand ambassadors, or relevant followers who have demonstrated loyalty to the brand for a certain amount of time. Gifting products is a good way to keep their engagement rate high and could lead to shout-outs and influencer posts that can turn into quality leads and sales.
Affiliate Marketing Campaigns
Brands provide influencers with affiliate links or codes so they can promote the products to their audience with the added incentive of earning a commission for every successful sale. Combined with influencer gifting, this can be a powerful tool to drive sales and collect important metrics to evaluate the effectiveness of your marketing campaign.
Contests and Giveaways
This is an active collaboration between the brand and influencers, where the latter hosts contests and giveaways with their audience. The goal of this type of campaign is to raise brand awareness and generate engagement around the products.
Creativity and clarity are desirable when it comes to defining the entry requirements, which should at least include liking the contest’s posts while using specific hashtags and following the brand’s social media channels.
It’s advisable to combine this strategy with other types of content as it will only generate traffic and attention during a short period.
Now that you know what influencer marketing is all about, and how it can benefit your brand, let’s see how we at Airpals can help you easily set your influencer gifting strategy in motion!
How to Send PR Packages to Influencers: A Step-by-Step Guide
Sending gifts and PR packages to influencers requires a process that is both professional and secure. With Airpals, you can simplify every step. Our unique tracking page anonymizes critical data like the influencer’s name and contact information, keeping everyone updated while protecting sensitive details. You’ll also have access to multiple shipping options, making the process seamless and secure.
Here’s how it works:
- Step 1. Get registered: Start by creating an Airpals account.
- Step 2. Add your shipping information: Enter addresses and package details (size, weight, height, value). Accuracy is important if the order requires special treatment.
- Step 3. Choose a shipper: Select from USPS, UPS, or FedEx. Each order is different, so you’ll see options from fastest to most budget-friendly, with the ability to add insurance.
- Step 4. Add your payment information: You’ll need to add a payment method for us to start processing your order with the service provider. If you have a promo code this is where you should use it!
- Step 5. Print your shipping label: After paying, print your label from the Airpals platform. Verify the details before attaching it.
- Step 6. Drop off your package: Take it to the nearest carrier drop-off point to start shipping.
Airpals’ platform lets you manage campaigns and clients with dedicated accounts, handle multiple recipients with bulk shipping, and invite team members with role-based access.
We love transparency and clarity, so we’ll provide you with a detailed transaction history page: this way you can always be up to date with the development of your campaign. However, do keep in mind that tracking the status of each delivery should be done through the carrier’s website or app.
We also value privacy and trust: Airpals helps you keep the personal information of your collaborators private. We will make sure those gifts, alongside those lovely gifting notes, reach their destination without disclosing important information, for their comfort and safety.
Tips for Setting Up an Influencer Gifting Campaign
After mentioning the most important aspects of an influencer campaign, we want to share a few influencer gifting tips that can make the process easier.
Launching a successful influencer gifting campaign can be complex, you may work with different creators or agencies. A clear strategy helps you save time, keep collaborations organized, and achieve better results. Here are some practical tips to help you succeed!
Tip #1: Choose the Right Influencers and Content Creators
You should go beyond the influencer’s follower count, and pay more attention to how representative they are of your target audience and their channel’s engagement metrics. Some tools you can use for this are influencer databases and analytics tools.
Sometimes a nano or micro-influencer can have a higher engagement rate than their bigger counterparts, so it’s important to compare different creators through their previous collabs and against other influencer content to see if their work matches your needs.
Tip #2: Prepare a Customized Pitch
Not all influencers will be initially keen to collaborate with your brand right away. They, like all people, have limited time and will choose who and what they work with according to their interests. This means you should make a compelling pitch to invite and persuade influencers to participate in your campaign.
These pitches should include an introduction to the brand and its products, the offer for a possible partnership, and the expectations. Show them why they should be excited to work with you and what they can get from the business relationship.
Tip #3: Pick the Right Products
Only give free products or samples that you know are relevant to the influencer in question. While everybody loves a gift, not all gifts are equally useful for all people. Influencer gifting should generate buzz and excitement, which will not happen if the product or service doesn’t align with the influencer’s tastes.
You should also think about the relevance for the target audience, as well as the value and the appeal of the product. It’s always a good idea to include a personal touch to each package, such as a personalized note.
Tip #4: Reach an Agreement with the Content Creators
You should set clear terms and conditions for your collaboration with the influencers from the start. This includes defining deliverables, timelines, and compensation before sending the products.
Be transparent, respectful, and supportive when contacting the influencers about these details. Also remember to have templates of contracts and agreements for when the opportunity comes.
Tip #5: Craft an Amazing Unboxing Experience
First impressions matter. Consider the unboxing of your products as a huge part of the experience; take the time to make it feel unique to every content creator, especially if they’re going to post a product review video. This is a great way to create a conversation around your product and brand and to promote the creation of user-generated content.
Don’t underestimate the power a well-built packaging can have.
Tip #6: Ship Your Product
The final step is making sure your package is shipped safely and on time. Compare different carrier options to find the best balance between cost and speed, and always double-check that the shipping label is correct before sending. Sharing tracking information is also important so influencers know when to expect the delivery, while keeping their personal details protected.
As we told you earlier, Airpals is your ideal partner for managing shipments across the US. Our platform gives you access to top carriers, lets you create multi-user accounts for team collaboration, and provides shareable tracking pages that protect influencer privacy.
We hope this information helps you take your brand, agency, or influencer campaigns to the next level with the help of new voices and creators!
And of course, we can do more than aid you in your marketing campaigns. Airpals is a business-to-business shipping app for offices, projects, and events that can save you hundreds of hours in shipping tasks. Get started today and find the best shipping quotes!
