When is a gift truly a gift? Everything You Need To Know About Influencer Gifting vs Paid Partnerships 

When defining your influencer strategy, one of the big questions is whether you want to gift products to influencers or pay for their collaboration (or both). Gifting can work really well, as can paid partnerships, but there are different reasons to use each of them. Let’s get down into the detail so you can decide which is the right option for you:

Influencer Gifting

Influencer gifting is the process of sending out products to influencers for them to try and review. There’s usually no contract in place and no agreement that the influencer will definitely feature your products. 

It can allow you to work with a larger pool of influencers for less investment, but it’s unlikely that every influencer will share your product, so be prepared for that. In general, it makes the most sense for smaller or lower value products that you can afford to “give away”. The upfront costs tend to be cheaper, but it can make a return on investment (ROI) lower as there isn’t a connection there.

However, with gifting, there are still ASA rules to adhere to: 

“Ultimately, brands have the responsibility when it comes to ensuring that partnerships with influencers are declared properly as much as the influencer. Even if it’s a short-term partnership or gifting, you have to make sure that the influencer declares it properly – it’s worth doing your due diligence upfront to ensure that you’re partnering with an influencer that understands their responsibilities.” Rupa Shah

One of the challenges of gifting is that you’re often competing with other brands doing the same with no guarantees. Ever seen an influencer doing a PR unboxing video? Have you seen how many parcels they get sent? Exactly.

In addition to this, you can’t control the narrative of the content; though you can provide talking points or key features, you can’t guarantee someone is going to like your product or understand what’s unique about it.

It’s also harder to keep track of what’s happening with content with gifting, as well as trickier to measure ROI. One way to track the sales generated by gifting is to give influencers a discount code to share with their followers that you can then measure against sales.

Paid Partnerships

A paid partnership is just what it sounds like – an agreement that an influencer will promote your product in exchange for a financial incentive. Also called sponsorships or collabs, paid partnerships can be much easier to secure and control from a brand perspective as you have contracts, obligations and relationships propping up the activity.

Paid partnerships can, however, be more expensive than gifting as you usually send out products along with payment, plus you’re more likely to be working with influencers where content is their business. It does come with more guarantees that content will be posted and shared as planned.

As you have more control in a paid partnership, you can be more prescriptive with what you want the influencer to do and when, but it’s important not to stifle the influencer’s creativity. That’s what you’re paying them to do, and they know the content that works for their audience.

Gifting or Paid – What’s Right For Your Business?

There’s no right or wrong answer as to whether you should gift or pay for influencer partnerships – it depends on your goals, business and budget. Here are a few things to think about to help you to decide which is right for your business:

• What are your brand goals?
• What do you want to gain from the partnership?
• Are you looking to partner for the long-term?
• Do you have a budget in place for working with influencers?
• Does someone have the dedicated time to manage these influencer partnerships?
• Are you clear on how the influencer needs to disclose paid partnerships or gifts?
• Do you understand everything you need to do to work with influencers effectively?

It’s also important to remember that with gifting and paid adverts, there are rules and regulations to adhere to.  To ensure that you are up to date with how to label your content correctly, check out this crib sheet from the ASA.

Need some answers for your next influencer campaign or some experts on board to help you navigate? We can help – get in touch today to discuss your influencer mar