Though influencer gifting campaigns have been a staple of influencer advertising for ages, it’s nonetheless one of many hardest methods to get proper. 

There are three key parts that influence the success and effectivity of gifting campaigns:

1. Discovering influencers: can you discover the proper influencers to succeed in out to?
2. Content material quantity: can you get influencers who obtained merchandise to submit content material?
3. Content material high quality: can you get influencers to submit good content material that’s aligned with model and marketing campaign messaging?

The stakes for getting these parts proper are excessive. They may make the distinction between a mediocre vs environment friendly marketing campaign, or a low vs excessive return on funding (ROI).

Within the article beneath, Eva Dunn, affiliate advertising supervisor at Chunk Toothpaste Bits, shares how the sustainable private care model has cracked the code on influencer gifting campaigns. Extra particularly, she shares three methods that her staff utilized throughout their latest Odor Good Summer deodorant marketing campaign.  

Discover and vet influencers with knowledge

“At Chunk, a key concern with influencer seeding campaigns is the excessive potential for waste. If we ship out to a big record of influencers with out correctly vetting their pursuits, affinities, and viewers demographics, we would ship merchandise that can by no means get used or seen. As an organization that basically cares about sustainability, we felt it was necessary to reduce this danger as a lot as doable.” —  Eva Dunn, affiliate advertising supervisor at Chunk Toothpaste Bits

Narrowing down a listing of doable influencer companions isn’t any simple feat. Actually, 81% of entrepreneurs say that discovering the proper influencers is a key problem for producing profitable influencer advertising packages.

The staff at Chunk Toothpaste Bits answered this problem with knowledge. Throughout their Odor Good Summer season gifting marketing campaign, they used Traackr to guage:

• Efficiency metrics. The staff checked out every influencer’s engagement charge and video view charge throughout related social platforms.
• Viewers measurement. The staff centered on discovering influencers with smaller viewers sizes (nano, micro, and mid-tier) as a result of they’ve discovered that they usually produce extra compelling and genuine content material.
• Model affinity. The staff set the purpose of solely reaching out to of us who’ve labored with or talked about sustainable athleisure manufacturers like Mate the Label and Girlfriend Collective. This ensured that influencers shared of their mission of sustainability, however didn’t have present partnerships with competing manufacturers.

Ultimately the staff narrowed its record to roughly 60 influencers! Whereas that is no small roster for an indie model, the thorough discovery and vetting course of ensured that each influencer on the record was an awesome match for the model. 

Enhance influencer outreach with clear briefs

“Much like different indie manufacturers, we’re working with smaller budgets, groups, and general assets. For this reason it was crucial that we enhance the effectivity of our influencer seeding campaigns at each step of the best way. This consists of all the things from minimizing the quantity of “wasted” product, to shortening the period of time our staff spends messaging forwards and backwards with potential companions.” —  Eva Dunn, affiliate advertising supervisor at Chunk Toothpaste Bits

Even when your staff does thorough analysis on each influencer, there could be different components that disqualify them from being companions on your marketing campaign. They could be inundated with requests and unable to fulfill deliverables on time, or they might choose sponsored partnerships over gifting campaigns.

No matter the reason being, it’s necessary to get on the identical web page from the get-go. What are they getting, and what do you count on in return?

Chunk Toothpaste Bits approached these conversations with transparency. Throughout its Odor Good Summer season marketing campaign, outreach messages clearly labeled the marketing campaign as gifted (non sponsored), laid out the specified deliverables, and requested influencers to “opt-in” or affirm they have been pleased with the phrases earlier than continuing. It sounds easy, however at Traackr we’re consistently stunned by what number of tales we hear about manufacturers sending imprecise outreach messages!

Tip: Traackr has a function referred to as “Studios”, that enables entrepreneurs to create branded touchdown pages for his or her campaigns. Influencers who obtain this touchdown web page can decide in to campaigns, learn inventive briefs, and share their product preferences.

Encourage influencers to submit with branded toolkits

“Within the influencer advertising group there’s loads of discuss stability inventive freedom with model messaging in marketing campaign briefs. We wish influencers to do their factor and be genuine! However we additionally wish to be certain our merchandise are introduced in a means that aligns with our model. Our answer to this was an influencer toolkit.” —  Eva Dunn, affiliate advertising supervisor at Chunk Toothpaste Bits

As a substitute of sending a typical inventive temporary, the Chunk Toothpaste Bits staff determined to take a extra inventive strategy. They created their first “influencer toolkit”, or, a extremely branded, fantastically designed, info packed pdf to assist influencers visualize what they might create. 

This influencer toolkit contained:

• Temper board-esque slides for every deodorant scent. This included emotive photographs and language that helped describe the scent and feeling of every deodorant. (e.g. contemporary, shiny, floral, delicate, horny, mossy, and many others.)
• Free content material guides. One web page was very logistical, outlining the popular content material sorts (Instagram Tales, Instagram Feed, and TikTok) together with Chunk’s social handles and the related marketing campaign hashtags and hyperlinks. The second web page gave influencers some common suggestions for his or her content material creation, together with speaking factors (vegan components, comfort, stylish, and many others) and most well-liked environments for the merchandise to be featured in (not within the lavatory however on-the-go, someplace with shiny and pure lighting, and many others).
• Product info. On condition that the product is reusable, the staff determined to incorporate a brief visible information that illustrated use and refill every deodorant.

If you wish to see Chunk Toothpaste Bits’ precise toolkit, you’ll be able to see the complete factor right here. If you happen to use this as inspiration give them a shoutout (@Chunk) — they have been very beneficiant to share this useful resource with our group!

Chunk Toothpaste Bits’ influencer gifting marketing campaign outcomes

By incorporating these three methods into their influencer discovery, vetting, outreach, and briefing processes, Chunk Toothpaste Bits’ Odor Good Summer season marketing campaign was a serious success!

Extra particularly, this marketing campaign resulted in: 

• A 67% enhance in influencer responses
• A rise in influencer loyalty, with a number of influencer posting greater than as soon as
• 50,000 complete impressions, incomes the indie model nice consciousness

And a few prime performing posts got here from influencers like @camilleroseglows, @aimfortheglow, and @hillaryhelennn.

This marketing campaign additionally served as an effective way for Chunk Toothpaste Bits to determine some new long-term companions. The staff plans to incorporate the influencers who had excessive loyalty (posted concerning the model continuously) or nice content material in future campaigns, and a few have even been moved into the model’s associates program. And, because the influencer discovery, outreach, and collaboration course of was so successful, the staff additionally plans to make use of it for its future gifting campaigns. 

If you wish to keep updated on the unimaginable work that the Chunk Toothpaste Bits staff is doing, comply with them on Instagram or TikTok at @Chunk! If you happen to’re curious to be taught extra about influencer advertising greatest practices from different business consultants, subscribe to our publication.