Have you seen a celebrity or influencer post a photo, story, or reel to advertise a brand’s product or service? If so, you have been a social media user that has been impacted by influencer marketing. A key component to organic content is through gifting free products in exchange for the brand’s publicity onto the influencer’s established community. If you want to maximize brand impact and reach, we have listed everything you need to know about gifting.
Plan an Influencer Campaign
Before reaching out to influencers, your business will need to establish objectives and KPIs that can be achieved through gifting. These objectives may be targeted towards a specific audience to bring brand awareness, increase sales, increase social media following, or to launch a product. By identifying your goals, you will need to determine how success can be measured when working with a number of influencers.
Reaching Out To Influencers Through Email
An email campaign is an effective way to reach out to influencers. It is best to work with influencers who not only have a credible following, but have similar target audiences that reflect the quality of the brand. Make sure the influencer has a range of followers and effective engagement from real users to ensure authenticity (Learn more and try out the Influencer Marketing Hub’s Fake Follower Calculator). Sometimes, influencers receive hundreds of inquiries, making it impossible for them to keep up with all of the emails. Therefore, follow ups are an important step in your email outreach to influencers. After receiving responses from potential collaborators, you will be able to send out your products or services to them.
Note: Personalize each email to the influencer you are reaching out to establish meaningful connections as well as create mutually beneficial relationships in the future.
Personalized Gifting
From a brand’s perspective, the goal of gifting is to have influencers post and bring exposure to your brand. Just as it is important to personalize pitches, it is also important to deliver gifts with a personable approach. This can look like attaching a handwritten note alongside the gift or thoughtful packaging that aligns with the brand values. Many influencers promote brands by unboxing gifts, which is another reason why presentation can become a key factor to gifting.
Relationship Building
Whether your intentions are to increase brand awareness or to increase sales, remember that influencers have their own brand values. The goal of PR gifting is to create genuine conversations with real people. Additionally, it offers memorable experiences that can cultivate into future partnerships that are authentic and credible.
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