What are Barter Campaigns?
In barter collaborations, there is no monetary exchange involved. Brands can ask influencers for a social media post, story, or video in exchange for free product samples. Barter campaigns are gaining immense popularity lately — especially among nano and micro-influencers.
Nowadays, brands are often seen partnering with small-scale influencers because of their authentic content. Moreover, their connection with the followers is more personal as compared to mega and celebrity influencers. All in all, barter collaborations can help brands win over the audiences’ trust and loyalty, especially due to honest opinions of the influencers about a specific product or service.
3 Steps to Follow When Getting Started With Barter Campaigns
Here are the 3 steps to consider before beginning your barter collaboration journey:
- Be clear about your goals
No marketing campaign can be implemented well without a clear set of objectives. The same rule applies to barter campaigns too. It can be anything from boosting present sales to increasing brand awareness. Clarity in objectives give a clear idea to influencers about your campaign as well.
When they are aware of your brand objectives, they will help you craft content accordingly. For example, you cannot create content to drive brand awareness if your end goal is to generate leads and increase your product sales. It can confuse the audience and drive them away from you.
Therefore, make sure you are clear about your goals before creating a campaign brief.
- Match your target audience with the selected influencers
Can you achieve your desired goals if your target audience is different from the influencers’ followers? No!
It simply means that their followers will not be interested in your content because of the lack of relevancy. For example, the audience of a sports influencer cannot directly relate with a makeup influencer. If he suddenly starts endorsing beauty products, it may again look like a paid promotion. Paid promotions garner less engagement & visibility than unpaid collaborations. The prime reason for it is trust and loyalty.
Moreover, if your target audience does not match the influencers, you may lose the value and effectiveness of your barter campaign.
Therefore, it is better to collaborate with influencers who resonate with your brand vision and can help you reach your potential audience. Make sure you approach the right influencers and build a long-term relationship with them.
- Be clear about your campaign guidelines
Do you know one of the prime reasons behind influencer campaign failures? It’s unclear campaign briefs, creative guidelines, and influencer deliverables.
Sometimes brands let influencers create content without any guidelines. Don’t fall into this trap. It can have a negative effect on both brands and influencers. How?
While influencers will have to redo the entire thing again, as a brand, it may lead to delay in timelines. Therefore, it is important to be on the same page as influencers. You can create a contract where you can specify all the guidelines.
For example, imagine you are a fashion & lifestyle brand. In the contract or brand guidelines document, you can prepare a dos and don’ts list. Here, you can mention about the type of lightning, camera angle, background, and more. Remember, the more specific the guidelines, the easier it will be for the influencers to create effective content.
Can Brands Directly Connect With Influencers?
Influencer marketing has been seen as a tiring and daunting process for many brands. The reason is simple — They cannot directly connect with influencers. There has always been an involvement of intermediaries; however, things are continuously evolving.
Take the Sehaye platform as an example. It allows you to execute barter campaigns seamlessly by bridging the gap the gap between brands and influencers, and eliminating the need for intermediaries.
You can sign up on the Sehaye dashboard if you have a brand, agency, or any business that is interested in doing barter campaigns.
The process is very simple. Once you have registered on the dashboard, you can start creating campaigns. Here’s what you have to do — Go to the filters and select the most appropriate option. For example, campaign type, influencer follower count, engagement rate, gender, location, and more. This way your campaign brief will be only shown to the selected influencers, making the process seamless for you.
Furthermore, you can even keep the application start and end date. After the influencers start applying for the campaign, you can view their profile details and choose the ones that are a perfect fit for your brand.
Wrapping It Up
Off late, barter campaigns have gained immense popularity. Today, every brand is leveraging these campaigns, irrespective of the size of business. Well, you already know the reasons.
Barter collaborations are highly beneficial for both brands and influencers, especially for the ones who are starting out. How? Small brands usually don’t have the required budget to collaborate with multiple influencers. But, in barter campaigns, all they need to do is provide free samples to the influencers for their product promotion.
In the end, barter campaigns require extensive research, planning, execution, and a right way to reach out to influencers. If your approach is appropriate, you can significantly improve your ROI and see your campaign being successful.
Now that you are aware of barter campaign benefits, steps to begin a barter collaboration, and most importantly, the Sehaye Dashboard — Start creating your brand’s barter campaign soon to drive sales and increase brand awareness.
