Product seeding is the act of sending products to relevant recipients to:
An underrated benefit of product seeding campaigns for brands is flexibility. You can nail any combination of the goals above by sending products to influencers.
Skip to Section 👇1. Product Seeding to Gather Feedback 2. Product Seeding for User-Generated Content |
The growing link between influencers and product discovery speaks for itself. Getting products into creators’ hands helps brands break through the noise and overcome fickle social algorithms.
This is especially true if you can seed influencers at scale and get 100s of people posting about you.
That said, seeding campaigns can involve a variety of strategies based on your goals and bandwidth. There’s no one-size-fits-all approach to the process.
This post breaks down four popular types of product seeding programs. We’ll also dig into the best practices and goals of each.
Authentic reviews are invaluable in the era of social commerce.
Brands today thrive on recommendations, particularly on TikTok and Instagram. Sending products to influencers in exchange for unfiltered feedback via video content can build some much-needed word-of-mouth.
Product seeding campaigns for reviews can be especially powerful for brands that:
Sure, seeding with no strings attached doesn’t guarantee content for brands.
But consider how this approach relieves pressure for creators and can result in higher quality content for recipients who do post.
That’s because creators aren’t tied to strict requirements or otherwise risk making their content seem “salesy.”
Food for thought: 83% of influencers are more than happy to post about brands in exchange for free products on one of two conditions.
As a result, making this type of product seeding program work means:
In our experience, it’s often the most off-the-cuff content that performs best. This is why it’s also fair game to seed influencers beyond your past customers.
Doing so means you’ll gather truly authentic content and feedback. Even if some so-so reviews come through, you can treat them as product research. That said, you can absolutely source stellar feedback from creators (granted you get your products into the hands of the right ones).
Spend five seconds on your TikTok and Instagram and chances are you’ll see creators promoting products. Unboxings and influencer gifting hauls can result in authentic content that drives serious organic engagement.
Many brands kick off their seeding campaigns in pursuit of user-generated content. With a bit of legwork, UGC can be repurposed into:
However, there are some specific challenges of product seeding for UGC:
If you want to use UGC as the basis for ads or promotional content, product seeding can be a risk if you’re putting all of your eggs in one basket.
This last point drives home the value of a product seeding platform like Statusphere. We offer the flexibility for brands to send products to creators via traditional seeding or tap into our network of vetted creators for guaranteed, rights-ready content. This means you get the best of both worlds!
PR seeding involves sending product kits in coordination with a product launch.
The goal here is to build word-of-mouth for specific promotions either before or as they go live. This type of seeding program is particularly popular among beauty brands and CPG brands in major retailers.
Much like the other types of product seeding campaigns on our list, PR seeding isn’t as simple as shipping out packages and hoping for the best. The stakes are arguably highest when sending PR packages to influencers because launches are so time-sensitive and positive posts are critical.
Here are some additional considerations and best practices for PR seeding:
This is yet again where Statusphere’s influencer marketing platform can save the day. Our platform allows brands to send products to influencers based on 250+ unique, first-party creator data points.
Translation? Your PR seeding becomes hyper-targeted and you only get your products into the hands of people who actively want to hype you up.
Coupled with features like Instant Spark Ads and influencer whitelisting, you can turn your best posts into ads on TikTok in no time flat. This helps you squeeze even more ROI out of product seeding.
More and more brands are adopting an always-on influencer marketing strategy.
And for many brands, that means ongoing product seeding campaigns.
By continuously sending products to creators, you can maintain a strong share of voice across social media. This is especially important for the sake of social SEO as brand and product searches dominate platforms like TikTok.
Continuous influencer product seeding campaigns keep your brand top-of-mind. When done with vetted content creators at scale, you can build a content engine for ads and organic visibility at the same time. The longer a creator collabs with your brand, the better they understand your products and how to make them shine.
The idea of always-on product seeding can be daunting, especially if you’re already struggling with influencer marketing. Making this sort of strategy work means:
For brands that need ongoing word-of-mouth, product seeding programs make perfect sense.
But like anything related to influencer marketing, campaigns require a serious investment of time.
And without a streamlined process, seeding influencers can quickly dominate your schedule.
Given that seeding is difficult to measure manually and doesn’t result in guaranteed content, brands need to do everything they can to increase posting rates and partner with relevant creators.
And that’s exactly where Statusphere can help.
Our micro-influencer marketing platform can optimize and scale your product seeding campaigns from A to Z. Statusphere handles everything from matchmaking and influencer management to fulfillment and beyond.
Want to learn more about how our platform works? Get in touch with one of our experts to learn how our software can help you scale product seeding in a fraction of the time.
This article was first published in May 2019. It was last updated January 25, 2024.