Product seeding 101: What it is and how it works

Product seeding can amplify a brand’s product line by boosting audience exposure, awareness, and sales. With the right product seeding strategy, you can streamline campaigns, optimize returns, and reinforce your brand’s reputation. 

Of course, product seeding is more than just gifting products to interested parties. Below, we explain how product seeding works, why this cost-effective tactic is so versatile, and how to run a successful campaign.

What is product seeding?

Product seeding, also known as influencer gifting or influencer seeding, is when a brand sends products or gifts to a relevant influencer. The most universal type of product seeding is unboxing videos. (Most social media feeds feature mystery boxes or packages and the enthusiastic influencers who open them.)

Once the influencer receives the products, whether concert tickets or a cinnamon roll package, they’ll ideally use them and post their positive experiences on social media. This popular tactic works because the brand shares one or a few products in exchange for substantial impact. Whether in-store or via e-commerce, you introduce products to new audiences and create buzz around your newest initiatives. 

For example, a clothing company might send three new V-neck shirts to a fashion influencer so the influencer can accessorize them with items from her closet. The influencer can express her style, and the brand can show off its versatility to the influencer’s followers. 

TikTok and Instagram thrive off eye-catching package designs and exciting content. When Senreve marketers promoted the brand’s fashion accessories as perfect gifts for the holiday season, they sent a box to influencer Jen Andrews-Cater. 

She then posted an unboxing video with Fred Astaire’s “Cheek to Cheek” to her 170,000 followers. The fancy card, designer handbag, stylish belt, and gorgeous necklace inspired feedback like “Love this!” and “Wow! This is perfect.” This video perfectly captured the luxury elements of the brand and inspired lust for its fabulous contents. 

Product seeding vs. content seeding 

You may have also heard the term “content seeding.” These terms are related but different. Content seeding refers to your larger content distribution strategy, whether online or offline. Product seeding is a type of content seeding, because it reinforces your larger marketing strategies. 

Ideally, you should tailor product seeding for different audience demographics while still maintaining the brand’s core values during each campaign. Let’s say you’re marketing to a budget-minded audience on Instagram and an environmentally conscious audience on TikTok. You might send your products to a cost-conscious Instagram influencer who promotes the price first and the sustainability aspects afterward, whereas a TikTok influencer might reverse topics. 

3 benefits of product seeding campaigns 

Product seeding campaigns usually check multiple boxes for marketers. Below, we’ll look at why product seeding campaigns are flexible enough to apply to nearly any brand.  

1. Budget-friendly marketing tactic 

Product seeding costs a fraction of many other types of marketing campaigns, such as paid ads or more traditional partnerships. So instead of an influencer demanding $5,000 per post before even speaking with you, seeding gives them a chance to genuinely connect with your products. When they post about their experience, their unique perspective turns followers onto your brand. 

In terms of direct costs, the product spend and shipping are typically negligible. The downside is often investing the time to find and guide influencers through product seeding. It’s easy to get lost in a platform's millions of influencers and wind up with more guesswork than a concrete strategy. (Luckily, we cover a few ways to streamline the process and improve your returns below.)

2. Wider audience reach 

Product seeding inspires connections across the spectrum. Brands, influencers, and followers are often pleasantly surprised at how much crossover there is on different social media platforms. 

Local influencers often tap into strong feelings of hometown pride. When introducing local talent, they spark loyalty for the brand and connect with the truly amazing businesses in their community.

Influencers also tend to personally identify with their audience's pain points. After building followers, reading comments, and watching engagement rates over the years, they can share insights about their audiences that you may not have considered.

This can help you understand how brand partnerships resonate with audiences and how to make them more effective. One way an influencer might do this is by sharing how to best position product value if a national brand wants to appeal to local audiences.

3. Authentic content creation 

Reputable influencers rely on authentic and trustworthy content to stay relevant to followers. If they compromise their values, they can quickly experience lower engagement rates, comments from upset followers, or downright viral backlash. 

This is why smaller influencers and user-generated content (UGC) are often more credible than macro-, mega-, or celebrity influencers. Let’s say that an Instagram botanist endorses a potting soil that makes for brighter blooms. If the soil is mostly filler, the botanist will eventually see a drop in follower counts. 

The best seeding campaigns choose influencers with a vested interest in recommending high-quality products. 

Why brands send product gifts to influencers 

Brands often send free products to influencers for different reasons. A luxury brand might product seed to generate brand awareness, while a CPG brand might use it to introduce a new product. We’ll examine two common reasons brands send product gifts and how they play out to real-world audiences. 

Generate excitement for new product launches 

New product launches are exciting for brands and often equally exciting for influencers. These initiatives simultaneously give them the chance to try something new and challenge their creative muscles, resulting in genuine appreciation and enthusiasm for your brand. 

When Huda Beauty introduced its #FAUXFILTER Color Corrector in peach and pink, the brand sent both versions to Instagrammer Sarahjeangirl. In turn, she modeled the application of peach on one side of her face and pink on the other side and invited followers to weigh in on which looked better. 

The side-by-side comparison was instantly noticeable to followers, which inspired strong opinions about how the new products looked on her. The emphasis was on her transformation, with only brief callouts to the brand name and its associated hashtags. 

Connect with local audiences for market expansions 

Local audiences often respond well to product seeding campaigns because they’re often looking for answers to everyday challenges. The underlying motivators, whether it’s providing a better life for their family or treating themselves once in a while, are key to conversions. 

The influencers they follow not only understand their concerns but speak directly to the problems they face. That’s because local influencers are authentic, regular people who they might even run into at the supermarket!

If you’re product seeding in local markets, it’s important to use targeted strategies based on the priorities and values of the people who live there. Often, the only way to expand into a new market is to go through an insider. 

When Santa Cruz-based Goodles Mac and Cheese expanded into Midwest Costcos, they partnered with influencers to point out packages on shelves and incorporate its nutritious products into their everyday lives. The delectable content immediately hooked parents and health-conscious eaters alike. 

One Indianapolis influencer made her scrumptious air-fried mac and cheese balls and shared the recipe with her nearly 2,700 followers. This type of influencer content inspires prospective customers to sample new products and evaluate the benefits for themselves. 

How to run a product seeding campaign 

If you’re ready to run your own product seeding campaign, you need to evaluate how your products relate to different audiences. Below, we examine how everything from objectives to seed kits to partners impacts your final results. 

Set SMART campaign goals 

SMART stands for specific, measurable, achievable, relevant, and time-bound. Your goals should clearly define what you want, which steps you take, and how to measure success. 

As you set goals, ensure they’re relevant to your audience and realistic. For example, you might decide that a 10% sales bump within three months of the campaign launch is reasonable based on current demand and influencer partnership opportunities. 

Your campaign goals should shape the strategy rather than dictate it. You may need to adjust your expectations as the campaign continues, so it’s important to build some flexibility into this step. As you track campaign metrics and KPIs, it gets easier to determine future campaign goals. 

Identify potential partners 

You can find influencers in your sector by searching key terms and hashtags, researching competitor content, reviewing viral posts, or even combing through your follower lists. 

As you search for influencers, consider what type of content they post, how they interact with their audience, who engages with the posts, and how the influencer presents their persona. This research helps you narrow down your campaign's best people based on your target audiences. 

DIY searches can lead to organic relationships that yield some of the best content. However, because this process is undoubtedly time-consuming, most brands turn to influencer platforms or agencies that help them find available partners within their industry. These services drastically reduce the manual search process, so you can feel confident in your final selection.  

Take a look at our guide to finding influencers for more guidance on how to identify partners who will resonate with your audience!

Conduct influencer outreach 

When it comes to influencer outreach, your first impression matters! Most successful influencer templates stress the campaign's mutually beneficial aspects. You may want to highlight the product’s core value, whether that’s saving people money or helping them lead a healthier lifestyle. 

Whether you’re looking for a quick product shoutout or a longer product demo, it’s important to establish the right tone with the influencer. So, if their posts are largely about their travel escapades, you might mention how the influencer can easily slip the product into a suitcase. 

Looking for a message template you can use for outreach? We have one for you here — plus tips on how to create a winning outreach strategy.

Send a seed kit 

Seed kits refer to the package, messaging, and products you send to influencers. As we discussed, cleverly constructed kits are excellent for unboxing content. 

If you send non-toxic school supplies to an influencer parent, you might pack them inside a child’s backpack and include a short note about how your brand sources its raw products from ethical organizations. 

Your seed kit doesn’t have to follow specific rules. You might send a single flagship product, several samples of a product line, or a small gift card so the influencer can choose. No matter what you do, the seed kit should be valuable enough to inspire valuable content.

Build a genuine relationship

Most influencers have a real relationship with the products and brands they promote. In fact, local influencers often convert to lifelong customers because they genuinely love their community, and support for local businesses comes naturally to them. 

When you build genuine relationships, influencers are more likely to promote your products without being prompted. 

To cultivate this two-way street, you’ll need to invest the time and, more importantly, respect the influencer’s expertise. This may mean checking in on the influencer, asking for their opinions, and making adjustments based on their product feedback or insight into audience preferences. 

If the influencer tells you that their followers don’t appreciate salesy content, you may have to adjust how many brand mentions your seeding campaign calls for. With product seeding, you give influencers what they need to create compelling content and then let them take over. 

Drive the biggest impact by partnering with smaller influencers 

Smaller influencers may not have the highest follower counts, but they are often more influential with their followers. Macro-influencers and celebrities undoubtedly drive brand awareness and create aspirational content, but their followers are also more immune to their promises and claims. 

If you want your audience to sample your brand's new product or switch one of their household mainstays, the right influencer marketing platform can help you identify which influencers can do it. A successful product seeding campaign doesn’t have to broadcast to millions of people to make a big splash. 

Ready to explore local creators for your next campaign? Book a call with our team today.