If you’re curious about influencer product seeding and want to learn more about how to leverage it using paid media, check out this episode of The Influencer Marketing Blueprint.

We’re joined by Matt Bertulli (@mbertulli), founder of Lomi and Pela Case, to explore how seeding can increase your brand awareness and supplement your paid media efforts. We delve into the impact of scaling up seeding on ad campaigns, why product seeding with “no strings attached” works, and why quality is so important when it comes to leveraging repurposed content in the context of paid advertising.

Raising Brand Awareness Through Influencer Seeding

Gifting free products to influencers and creators (also called “seeding”) can be a useful tool to raise brand awareness. It gets your product into the hands of influential figures with engaged audiences who trust their recommendations.

Pela Case, for example, sends out its product to up to 3,000 influencers a month as part of its marketing strategy. For the brand’s founder Matt Bertulli, getting that product into influencers’ hands is a highly successful way to build brand awareness.

“This is especially true at scale. The more people you send your product to, the higher the number of posts about your brand on social, creating an echo chamber that positively impacts the bottom line.”

One thing Bertulli notes, though, is that seeding at scale is not just about sending the product to “everybody.” You must consider each creator’s profile to maximize your chances of getting back quality content, which you can then use to ramp up your brand.

Despite gifting to thousands of creators every month, Pela Case carefully selects the profiles that most match the brand’s target audience. “We seed to specific types of people. We’re going after vegans, vegetarians, and active outdoor people, as they’re the ones who better reflect our brand values,” Bertulli said.

By seeding to influencers that best connect with your brand ethos, you increase your chances of receiving back content that feels authentic and genuine. This, in turn, creates a sense of trust around your product.

How Scaling Seeding Impacts Paid Media

Influencer seeding isn’t just for building brand awareness; it can be a great way to complement paid social media campaigns, too. Seeding creates more content that can be used for paid media, ultimately driving down your customer acquisition cost. This is particularly evident when you scale up seeding.

For Pela Case, scaling up its seeding program has led to improvements in paid media. “Our ad account is more efficient the more we do seeding,” Bertulli said. “This is partly because the more people post about our brand on social media, the more the targeted content the ad algorithm has to work with,” he explained.

“Predicting what creators can do in ad platform is very difficult. But we know that great quality ads are likely always to perform.”

Seeding also allows brands to repurpose content into paid social. This is great value, as it provides a high volume of content for a relatively low cost. For Bertulli, however, quality is key when it comes to leveraging the content made by influencers via paid media.

Focus on Authenticity

The key to getting high-quality ads from repurposed content is working with creators who are excited about the product, who produce great content, and who understand the target audience. As part of this strategy, Pela Case opts to do seeding “with no strings attached,” meaning there is no agreement or requirements associated with the product sent out for free. In doing so, the content created comes from a real, true appreciation for the product.

“When there’s no obligation, influencers who do post will be genuinely excited about the product, so the content will inevitably be more authentic,” Bertulli explained.

Key Takeaways

• Influencer seeding can be a great way to raise your brand visibility; don’t be afraid to experiment with sending product out for free.
• Seeding to influencers that connect with your brand will lead to more genuine content, helping to build trust in your product.
• Scaling-up seeding can positively impact your paid ad performance by providing more content for the algorithm to work with.

FYI: We cover more product seeding and paid media strategy in our weekly newsletter, so if you like this style of content, you can sign up here.