17 min read
| June 5, 2024
Product seeding, also known as influencer seeding or gifting, can be a highly effective marketing strategy for brands looking to generate awareness, build loyalty, and drive sales and conversions, provided you have the right strategy in place.
But what is it exactly, and how can it help you boost your sales?
In today’s article, we will explore the concept of product seeding within the context of influencer marketing for businesses. We will explain what product seeding is, what its purpose is, and how you can effectively use this approach to generate buzz and drive sales.
What Is Product Seeding?
Product seeding, or influencer seeding, is an influencer marketing strategy where a company provides its products or services to individuals or influential figures for free or at a reduced cost. The aim of doing so is to generate buzz, create awareness, and encourage positive word-of-mouth for the product.
During a product seeding campaign, companies strategically select individuals who have a strong influence over their target audience, such as social media influencers, industry experts, or key opinion leaders. These individuals are given the product in the hopes that they will use it, talk about it, and potentially recommend it to their followers, fans, or peers, amplifying the reach and impact of the brand's messaging.
For example, Apple always launches a product seeding campaign when it releases a new iPhone. Ahead of the official product launch, Apple will send the new model to influential tech reviewers like Marques Brownlee (MKBHD). These influencers then create an unboxing and first impressions video, which they share with their subscribers on YouTube. In these videos, the influencer will explore the phone's features, discuss improvements over previous models, and give their initial thoughts. Viewers, in turn, get a close, personal look at the new device. This generates excitement among potential buyers and spreads awareness about the product's capabilities and enhancements. Check out this product seeding post by Marques Brownlee to get an idea of how impactful these reviews can be.
Brands succeed in product seeding by selecting influential partners who genuinely use and enjoy their products.The goal is to collaborate with influencers whose followers are not only interested in your product but also trust their recommendations. These influencers can then share authentic experiences across different platforms, creating content that genuinely connects with their audience. This is why conducting a comprehensive analysis of potential influencers, focusing on audience demographics, engagement rates, content style, and their alignment with your brand's values and image is key.
Is Product Seeding Right for Your Brand?
Product seeding can be a powerful tactic in influencer marketing, but it’s essential to evaluate if it's suitable for your brand.
Consider product seeding if:
- You sell products
- You have a limited budget but time to build connections
- Your brand message resonates with a niche audience
- You’re open to genuine (even negative) feedback
- You’re focused on a long-term strategy
- You value organic growth and authentic content
- You aim to build lasting relationships with influencers
- You’re willing to be patient for results
One real-life example of successful product seeding is the collaboration between fitness brand Gymshark and various fitness influencers. Gymshark strategically sends its workout apparel to fitness influencers and athletes, allowing them to wear the clothing during their workouts and share their experiences with their followers on social media.
This approach increased brand visibility while leveraging the influencers' credibility and authority in the fitness community to endorse Gymshark products. As a result, Gymshark has built a strong community of loyal customers and seen significant growth in its sales and brand recognition.
Benefits of Product Seeding
The biggest benefits of collaborating with an influencer on a product seeding campaign include:
- Increase brand awareness: By putting your products in the hands of influential individuals, you can increase your brand visibility and reach a wider audience. Influencers often have large, engaged followings that can help spread the word about a brand quickly and effectively.
- Generate positive word-of-mouth: When influential people endorse or recommend a product, it can create a positive buzz around it. This can influence others to try the product and potentially become customers themselves. The trust that followers place in influencers can significantly amplify the impact of these endorsements.
- Leveraging social proof: When people see their favorite celebrities or influencers using a particular product, they may perceive it as desirable or high-quality. This can enhance the product's perceived value and credibility. The association with well-known figures can also lend an air of prestige to the brand.
- Increased sales and customer acquisition: Product seeding can lead to increased sales and customer acquisition as a result of the exposure and positive recommendations generated by influencers. The authentic and relatable content created by influencers can persuade potential customers to make a purchase, thereby driving revenue growth.
- Building authentic relationships: Collaborating with influencers allows brands to build authentic relationships with key figures in their industry. These relationships can lead to long-term partnerships and ongoing support from influencers, further strengthening the brand’s presence and reputation.
- Targeted marketing: Influencers often have a specific niche or demographic they cater to, allowing brands to target their marketing efforts more precisely. This ensures that the product reaches an audience that is more likely to be interested in and purchase it.
- Enhanced content creation: Influencers are skilled content creators who can produce high-quality, engaging content featuring the product. This content can be repurposed by the brand for their own marketing channels, providing additional value beyond the initial campaign.
How Can Product Seeding Help You Drive Sales?
Product seeding fosters trust with influencers and customers and is an economical way to launch an influencer campaign. Expenses are limited to shipping and the product itself, and the long-term advantages often surpass these costs.
So, how exactly can product seeding help you generate buzz and drive sales? Which product seeding strategies work well for incorporating influencers in your marketing strategy?
Let’s explore some of the specific ways that product seeding can enhance your influencer marketing efforts.
Influencer Endorsements
When influencers or celebrities receive and use a product, they have the potential to create a buzz around it by sharing their positive experiences with their followers. Their endorsement can attract attention, generate excitement, and pique the curiosity of their audience, leading to increased awareness and interest in the product.
Social Media Exposure
Many product seedings involve influencers or key opinion leaders who have a significant following on social media platforms. When they showcase the product on their social media channels, it reaches a large audience and can potentially go viral. This exposure can result in increased engagement, shares, and comments, which contribute to creating buzz and driving sales.
It’s not just influencers with large audiences who can leverage the power of product seeding, either. In fact, micro-influencers can also have a big impact on your sales as their smaller following allows for increased engagement and authenticity. As a result, a well-designed product seeding campaign can help you tap into their loyal and engaged followers and expose your brand to the right audience.
Reviews and Testimonials
Product seeding often involves influencers or early adopters sharing reviews and testimonials about a product. Positive reviews and testimonials can be influential in persuading potential customers to try the product themselves. This is because people often trust the opinions of others, especially those they perceive as credible or authoritative.
User-Generated Content
When individuals receive a product through influencer gifting seeding, they often create visual content around it, such as unboxing videos, tutorials, or product reviews. This user-generated content can be shared on social media platforms, further amplifying the reach and exposure of the product.This approach creates excitement while also offering potential customers genuine and relatable experiences, ultimately boosting sales. Increased Brand Visibility
Finally, product seeding can introduce a brand to new audiences who may not have been aware of it previously. The exposure generated through a product seeding campaign can increase brand visibility, helping to establish brand recognition and recall. This heightened visibility can contribute to increased sales as more people become familiar with the brand and its products.
The essence of product seeding is nurturing connections rather than focusing on transactions. You allow influencers to naturally decide if they appreciate your brand by them gifting products without mandating content creation. Applying this strategy your ultimate aim is to cultivate enduring, authentic relationships that resonate with customers.
How Does Product Seeding Work?
Here is a step-by-step guide on how product seeding works:
- Identify objectives: Determine the goals of your product seeding campaign, such as increasing brand awareness, generating positive word-of-mouth, or boosting sales.
- Establish a budget: Set a budget for the campaign, including costs for product samples, shipping, and potential influencer fees.
- Find & Select the right influencers: Identify influencers whose audience aligns with your target market. Analyze their engagement rates, content style, and overall fit with your brand.
- Reach out to influencers: Contact selected influencers with a personalized pitch explaining the product, the campaign goals, and what’s in it for them. Negotiate terms and ensure mutual understanding of expectations.
- Send them your product: Ship the product to the influencers, ensuring timely and professional delivery. Include a personalized note or additional information to make the package more engaging.
- Provide guidelines: Offer guidelines on how the product should be featured, including preferred hashtags, mentions, and key points to highlight. Above all, make sure the influencers understand the campaign’s tone and messaging.
- Monitor and engage: Track the influencers’ posts and engagements related to the campaign. Engage with their content by liking, commenting, and sharing to amplify its reach.
- Analyze results: Measure the campaign’s success by tracking metrics such as engagement rates, reach, and conversion rates. Collect feedback from influencers and their audiences to understand the impact and areas for improvement.
- Follow up: Thank the influencers for their participation. Maintain a relationship for potential future collaborations.
Product Seeding Examples
We are going to finish today’s post by sharing a few real-life e-commerce marketing strategies to showcase how well-known brands have harnessed the power of product seeding to break a new product into the market. That way, you can hopefully pick up some tips and launch your own product seeding campaign.
Glossier
Glossier's product seeding strategy focused on leveraging micro-influencers and everyday beauty enthusiasts to build a strong, grassroots brand presence. Instead of targeting high-profile celebrities, Glossier identified influencers with smaller but highly engaged followings. They sent these influencers their new products, encouraging them to share their honest opinions and beauty routines with their audiences. This approach fostered a sense of authenticity and trust, as followers saw real people with relatable lifestyles using and endorsing the products.
The outcome of Glossier’s product seeding campaign was a rapid increase in brand visibility and loyalty, as these genuine testimonials resonated deeply with the target audience. Glossier's strategy was successful because it built a community around the brand, fostering organic growth and engagement. By focusing on authenticity and relatability, Glossier effectively tapped into the power of word-of-mouth marketing, driving significant traffic and sales through trusted peer recommendations.
FabFitFun
FabFitFun, a subscription box service, embraced product seeding by partnering with influencers to unbox and review their seasonal boxes on platforms like YouTube and Instagram. These unboxing videos and detailed reviews generated excitement and curiosity among viewers, who were eager to discover the diverse range of products included in each box. Influencers highlighted the value and variety of the items, which ranged from beauty products to wellness and lifestyle goods.
The outcome of FabFitFun’s product seeding campaign was a substantial increase in subscriptions and customer acquisition, as viewers were persuaded by the positive and engaging content created by influencers that they trusted. FabFitFun's success can be attributed to the visually appealing and informative nature of unboxing videos, which provided potential customers with a clear understanding of what they could expect from the subscription service. The strategic use of influencers to showcase the product offerings in an authentic and entertaining manner significantly boosted brand awareness and subscriber growth.
Warby Parker
Warby Parker's product seeding strategy involved sending free samples of their eyewear to bloggers and social media influencers, asking them to share their honest opinions and photos wearing the glasses. This approach helped generate a lot of positive word-of-mouth and social proof, as influencers' followers saw relatable and trusted figures endorsing the brand. The content created by these influencers, often featuring stylish and everyday settings, resonated well with Warby Parker's target audience.
The outcome of Warby Parker’s product seeding campaign was a significant boost in brand awareness and customer base, as potential buyers were influenced by the genuine and positive reviews. Warby Parker's strategy was successful because it combined authenticity with effective targeting, ensuring that the influencers' audiences aligned with the brand's demographic. The blend of visual appeal and honest endorsements helped Warby Parker build a strong online presence and attract a loyal customer base.
Revolve
Revolve, a fashion retailer, employed an innovative product seeding strategy by gifting clothing items to influencers and organizing influencer trips where the brand's products were prominently featured. Influencers shared their experiences and outfits on social media, creating visually appealing and aspirational content that showcased Revolve's latest collections. These posts often included exotic locations and high-fashion aesthetics, aligning with Revolve's brand image.
The outcome of Revolve’s product seeding campaign was a significant increase in brand visibility and engagement, as followers were captivated by the glamorous and curated lifestyle portrayed by their favorite influencers. By leveraging influencers' reach and creativity, Revolve was able to maintain a trendy and influential presence in the fashion industry, driving both online and in-store traffic.
