Influencer marketing: strategies, tips, and tools for success

Influencer marketing is one of the best marketing methods theses days. If Kyle Jenner mentioned her new skincare product on her Instagram account, about 99% of her followers would be aware of it within the first few days.

If Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson promoted a new workout supplement on Twitter, his millions of followers would be more likely to try it out.

This is the power of influencer marketing: leveraging the influence and reach of popular individuals to promote and endorse products or services.

Influencer marketing is neither new or magical, though. It’s just a modernized version of a phenomenon we’ve been acquainted with since…forever: humans trust their peers more than they trust forms of “authority” or businesses.

How to make it work for your business, though? Keep reading and find out more.

Understanding Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing has become a bit of a buzzword, but let’s take a closer look at what it actually involves, where the idea comes from, and why it’s so effective.

The rise of influencer marketing

According to The State of Influencer Marketing 2024, using influencers as a marketing tactic is a market that will reach no less than 24 billion by the end of 2024. 

This level of growth makes a lot of sense: 69% of consumers are likely to trust influencer recommendations. It’s a natural outcome of an even more natural tendency people have: to trust their peers, rather than businesses.

Despite its recent traction, influencer marketing has early beginnings

Here are a few examples:

• Wedding gowns weren’t white before Queen Victoria wore a white dress on her wedding day.
• The popularity of the bicycle surged in the late 19th century, largely influenced by figures such as Thomas Stevens, who became the first person to cycle around the world.
• In the 18th century, blue-and-white china gained immense popularity in Europe, largely due to the influence of the British aristocracy.
• Tea was elevated to a status symbol in the 17th and 18th century, thanks to the efforts of influential figures such as Queen Catherine of Braganza.

People have always looked up to those who were admired, respected, and influential.

Yet, the advent of social media and digital technologies changed the paradigm. Back in the day, being admired, respected, and influential meant you had to move through “gatekeepers” (editors, TV producers, radio hosts, etc.), who curated the content people consumed.

Social media changed this. To be “influential” today, one only needs:

• An internet connection,
• Charisma,
• And the ability to create content people are interested in.

Impact of social media influencer marketing

social media campaigns have been making quite an impact on the sales of small businesses. Here are some quick stats showing just how powerful influencer campaigns are in increasing leads and brand awareness.

• The average marketing budget invests $25,000-$50,000 on social influencer campaigns annually.
  
  
• For every dollar that businesses spend on social influencer marketing, $7.65 in value is returned.
  
  
• Instagram has the highest number of influencer marketing posts, clocking in at around 13 million posts. Instagram influencer marketing alone is worth close to $2 billion.
  

Social Influencer marketing has become so popular that intermediaries have popped up to act as matchmakers for businesses and digital influencers. This type of marketing isn’t going away anytime

Benefits of influencer marketing

Influencer marketing presents various advantages for brands looking to enhance their visibility, engagement, and revenue using the digital space.

Increased brand awareness

Collaborating with influencers helps amplify a brand’s reach by tapping into their established audience. This increased visibility can lead to a broader recognition of the brand among potential customers.

Enhanced credibility and trust

Influencers often have loyal followers who trust their recommendations. By associating with respected influencers, brands can benefit from their credibility, fostering trust among new customers. This is especially useful for new brands, but can also help established brands expand their customer base.

Access to niche markets

Collaborating with niche influencers allows brands to target specific demographics or interests that align with their products or services. For example, a fitness apparel brand may partner with a popular fitness influencer to reach an audience interested in health and wellness.

Improved engagement

Influencers create content that resonates with their audience, leading to higher levels of engagement compared to traditional advertising. This interaction can drive meaningful conversations around the brand and its offerings.

Cost-effective marketing

Influencer campaigns can be more cost-effective than traditional advertising channels. It’s not a universal rule, but depending on what type of influencer you go with, it can be more affordable than, say, running an ad campaign on television or radio.

Access to innovative content

Influencers possess creative skills that can generate unique content tailored to their audience. This fresh content can be beneficial for brands seeking to revitalize their marketing strategies and engage with consumers in new ways.

Types of influencers

Not all influencers are created alike. Aside from niche-based categorization, influencers are regularly grouped into four main audience size-based categories as well:

Mega-influencers

A mega-influencer is defined by  a large number of followers ranging from 1 million to 10 million. These influencers often have a broad reach, but their audience may not be as engaged or niche-specific. Examples include Mr. Beast, Kylie Jenner, and Cristiano Ronaldo.

Macro-influencers

Macro-influencers are typically defined as individuals with a follower count ranging from 100,000 to 1 million. They strike a balance between reach and engagement, maintaining a significant influence over their audience while still being perceived as relatable compared to mega-influencers.

Micro-influencers

Micro-influencers are individuals with a follower count ranging from 1,000 to 100,000, often possessing a highly engaged and niche audience. They tend to have a more personal rapport with their followers, such that their recommendations can generate significant trust and authenticity in the eyes of potential customers.

For instance, a micro-influencer might speak about a very specific type of fitness for a very specific type of body (e.g., yoga for plus size people or CrossFit for busy moms). People will be more inclined to try their recommendations because they feel like the influencer “gets” them.

Nano-influencers

Nano-influencers are individuals with a follower count ranging from 1,000 or less. They have small but highly engaged audiences who value their opinions and trust their recommendations. While nano-influencers may not have a large reach, they often possess an intimate connection with their followers, making them ideal for hyper-local marketing campaigns.

Types of digital influencer campaigns

When it comes to developing an influencer marketing strategy. You have plenty of options for what types of marketing activities you could use.

We’re going to give you a list of some of the most effective types of influencer marketing campaigns used today by small businesses.

1. Affiliate marketing

This is the darling of influencer campaigns. Affiliate marketing has proven to be incredibly lucrative for both businesses selling products or services, and the affiliate influencers promoting those products.

With affiliate marketing, an influencer gets a commission for promoting a business’ product or service. With each sale made, a kickback is received by the influencer.

Let’s say you sold a course on how to take professional photos. You could reach out to an influencer in the photography niche and offer them 10% of the revenue for each course sold.

2. Giveaways

Everyone loves getting something for free. When you run a giveaway influencer campaign, you stand to gain a lot.

These bring in a diverse crowd that interacts with an influencer when they are giving away something.

It brings in a tremendous amount of value for businesses and brands involved with a giveaway done by an influencer.

The most popular social media platforms for giveaways are Instagram, YouTube, Facebook, and Twitter.

If you’re an artist, you can find an influencer in your specific art niche and come to an agreement with them about the terms of the giveaway. You could tell them that you want to give away prints of your artwork. In exchange, they will receive money from you for their services.

You giving something away will bring you more social media likes, followers, and engagement. Plus, you’ll be gaining more leads as well that can turn into sales.

3. Social media partnership:

Refers to collaborations, or collabs, social media partnerships are one of the most popular types of influencer marketing. There are actually five different forms a social media partnership can come in.

1. Partnerships: you have an agreement with an influencer to share in revenues or leads with them.
2. Collaborations: you link up with an influencer on a single project or campaign and share the rewards of it.
3. Cross-promotion: you and an influencer promote one another’s products and services.
4. Content placement: is when businesses and digital nfluencers agree to occasionally share one another’s content with their audiences.
5. A value-add is when you make a deal with an influencer to access their audience based on some sort of agreement you made with them.

In general, social media partnerships can be made on any of the major social media platforms, but those made on Instagram are wildly popular.

4. Paid influencer marketing

Paid influencer marketing is sponsored posts that digital influencers make about a product or service for an X amount of money. These are paid promotional posts. It’s a comfortable transactional relationship to have with an influencer that can be lucrative. However, you need to pick the right influencer. Otherwise, you will be wasting your money.

Entrepreneurs like photographers, fashion designers, realtors, and others can benefit from sponsored social media posts.

5. Guest blogging

Guest blogging involves identifying digital influencers in your niche who stand to gain something from promoting your products or services. This usually involves paying a fee for them to write up a blog article on something you are selling. Your brand will become exposed to a large audience, and you can gain a lot of leads and sales.

6. Brand awareness programs

Brand awareness is vital for every business because it increases awareness of your brand. It’s as simple as that. Some of the benefits include increase peoples’ trust in your business, having an easier time marketing your products and services, and growing brand equity.

Your social influencer marketing strategy should include a brand awareness program where you team up with digital influencers to get the word out about your brand. This is especially crucial for small businesses and solo entrepreneurs who don’t have large audiences.

Developing an influencer marketing strategy

Like every other marketing channel, influencer marketing needs a solid strategy to work. Without a clear plan, it’s easy to get lost in the sea of options and end up with a campaign that does not align with your goals.

Here are some key steps to developing an effective influencer marketing strategy:

Setting goals and objectives

You wouldn’t start pouring money into Google Ads if you didn’t know what you wanted to achieve. The same goes for influencer marketing. It’s essential to define your goals and objectives before jumping into a campaign.

Do you want to increase brand awareness, drive sales, or improve engagement? Having clear objectives will help guide your choice of influencers and measure the success of your campaign.

Identifying your target audience

To know which influencers to partner with, you need to know who your audience is. This will help you narrow down an intimidating list of influencer options, create the right messaging, and collaborate on the kind of content your audience will engage with.

Finding the right influencers

Once you have your goals and your target audience, it’s time to start researching influencers to work with. Consider the type of influencer that aligns with your objectives, audience, and budget. Also, take a look at their content to ensure it aligns with your brand values.

Building relationships with influencers

Building relationships with influencers is crucial because it fosters trust and collaboration, ensuring that the influencer genuinely resonates with your brand’s values and message. Strong relationships also encourage influencers to create authentic content, leading to more effective engagement with their audience and enhanced campaign success.

Creating compelling content

Good influencer marketing content isn’t born on just your side or theirs. It’s a collaboration and a fine-tuning process where you and the influencer work together to produce something meaningful to their audience and your brand. The content should align with your brand’s values, but still feel authentic to the influencer’s style and tone.

Measuring campaign success

You can’t just invest time and resources into influencer marketing without tracking your results. Measuring campaign success is crucial for understanding what worked and what didn’t, making adjustments for future campaigns.

Some metrics you can use to measure campaign success include:

• Reach (impressions)
• Engagement rates (likes, comments, shares)
• Website traffic or conversions (when the campaign links to your site/ assets)
• Brand sentiment analysis (which you can measure using surveys and social listening tools)

Influencer marketing tools and platforms

Fortunately, you don’t have to feel alone in the influencer marketing world. Several tools and platforms can help you connect with influencers, manage campaigns, and measure success.

Influencer discovery tools

Simply looking through Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn, or any other platform won’t cut it. It’s time-consuming, and you might miss out on potential influencers. Influencer discovery tools can help you spot the right ones for your brand and campaigns, saving time and resources.

Some of the most popular tools for influencer discovery include:

Sparktoro

Sparktoro is a tool that helps marketers identify their audience’s interests, behaviors, and online habits. By gaining insights into where audiences spend their time and what they care about, users can tailor their marketing strategies more effectively.

Buzzsumo

Buzzsumo allows users to discover the most shared content across social media platforms. It helps marketers analyze content performance and identify influencers in their industry to enhance outreach efforts.

Upfluence

Upfluence is an influencer marketing platform that connects brands with content creators. It offers tools for finding, managing, and analyzing influencer relationships to drive effective marketing campaigns.

Grin

Grin is designed for e-commerce brands to manage their influencer marketing efforts in one place. It streamlines the process of finding influencers, tracking campaigns, and measuring ROI.

Traackr

Traackr is an influencer marketing platform that focuses on relationship management. It helps brands discover, manage, and analyze influencer partnerships to optimize their marketing strategies.

Klear

Klear is an influencer marketing software that provides tools for discovering and analyzing influencers. It allows brands to assess influencer reach and engagement, facilitating better collaboration and campaign planning.

Relationship management tools

Managing relationships with influencers is crucial for successful campaigns. Relationship management tools can help you keep track of communications, deadlines, payments, and other important details.

Some popular relationship management tools include:

MailChimp 

MailChimp is an email marketing platform that helps businesses design and send marketing emails to their audience. It offers automation features, audience segmentation, and analytics to improve email campaign effectiveness. 

Asana 

Asana is a project management tool that enables teams to organize, track, and manage their work. It helps users coordinate tasks, set deadlines, and monitor progress to ensure projects are completed efficiently. 

HubSpot 

HubSpot is an all-in-one marketing, sales, and service software that provides tools for inbound marketing, lead management, and customer relationship management. It helps businesses attract, engage, and delight customers through a comprehensive platform. 

ActiveCampaign 

ActiveCampaign is a marketing automation platform designed to enhance customer experience through email marketing and CRM. It offers features like email segmentation, automation workflows, and customer tracking to help businesses connect with their audience effectively.

Content creation tools

There are a lot of content creation tools out there, especially with the rise of AI. Some of the most commonly used ones include:

• Canva
• Visme
• ChatGPT
• LeonardoAI
• MidJourney
• Adobe Creative Cloud

Campaign management platforms

Campaign management platforms can help streamline the influencer marketing process, from finding influencers to measuring campaign success. Some popular platforms include:

• Aspire 
• CrewFire 
• Influencity 
• Klear, a Meltwater Offering 
• Promoty 
• Afluencer   

Additionally, if you’re just looking for tools to help you manage the processes associated with influencer marketing, you can use Trello, Monday.com, ClickUp, Notion, or any other project management tool.

Analytics and reporting tools

Measuring and reporting campaign success is crucial for understanding the impact of your influencer marketing efforts. Depending on which channels your influencers are on, you might want to consider:

• Social media analytics tools (like Sprout Social, Hootsuite, Buffer, or Taplio)
• Google Analytics (for website traffic and conversions)
• Brandwatch or Mention (for brand sentiment analysis)
• Email marketing tools (for influencers with newsletters, for example)

Case studies and examples

Influencer marketing is quite literally everywhere. Every time you open your TikTok, Instagram, or Facebook, you’re likely to see sponsored content from an influencer. And every now and then, an influencer marketing campaign gets so viral it’s literally impossible to ignore it.

Here are some of the most popular examples from recent years:

Barbie movie influencer marketing campaign 

This movie was everywhere. From LinkedIn to your local store, from your favorite influencer to mainstream media, Barbie managed to create a massive buzz with their movie. The marketing strategy for the Barbie movie leveraged a massive influencer campaign that began well before the film’s release.

The campaign featured various influencers, including celebrities like Dua Lipa, who participated by posting photos using the hashtag #BarbieTheMovie. 

The results: over millions of posts on Instagram and encouraged fans globally to share their own versions of Barbie recreations. The campaign’s success was attributed to its early launch, user-generated content, and a blend of social media and traditional marketing tactics, creating significant pre-release buzz for the movie. 

Barbie campaign video

Video by TLDRbusiness

Gymshark’s ambassador program 

Gymshark, a fitness apparel brand, has effectively utilized long-term partnerships with fitness influencers and athletes. By selecting brand ambassadors who resonate with their target audience, Gymshark created pre-release campaigns that generate excitement and engagement.

One of the results: their collaboration with bodybuilder David Laid on Instagram featured fashion-forward content that garnered over 320,000 likes. This strategy not only attracts new customers but also keeps existing ones engaged by leveraging the credibility of well-known fitness figures. 

Häagen-Dazs TikTok campaign 

Häagen-Dazs partnered with a diverse range of influencers, including actors and makeup artists, to promote their brand on TikTok. 

One of the results: their campaign featured a live event activation with singer Leslie Grace, who shared her experience on TikTok, resulting in tens of millions of views.

This strategy highlighted the fun and family-friendly image of the brand by tapping into influencer reach to create engaging content that resonated with a wide audience.

Häagen-Dazs TikTok campaign video

Nike’s “Dream Crazier” influencer marketing campaign exmple

Nike launched the “Dream Crazier” campaign in 2019, and it featured a powerful video narrated by Serena Williams that highlighted female athletes breaking barriers. The campaign included both global and local influencers who shared personal stories of overcoming challenges in their sports.

Nike focused their campaign on empowerment and resilience to connect with their female audience. 

One of the results: the success of this campaign stemmed from the authenticity of the storytelling (and that of the narrator herself). All of this emphasized the message and built a strong emotional connection with the consumers.

Dream Crazier” campaign in 2019 video

Additional tips for effective influencer marketing

Running successful influencer marketing campaigns is part art, part science. Here are some tips on how to improve your odds of success with influencer campaigns:

Get creative

On the one hand, you need to get creative (and your influencers need to get creative too), to get people’s attention. The (in)famous theory that humans have the attention span of a fish might be a myth – but even so, we do live in the attention economy. If you want people to pay attention to what you say, do, or offer, you need to get creative.

Look at influencer marketing as the guerilla marketing version for digital channels, rather than just another “product placement” in a movie.

Stay authentic

Authenticity is key when it comes to influencer marketing. Audiences are becoming increasingly savvy, and they can quickly tell if an influencer’s endorsement is genuine or just a paid promotion.

That’s why it’s essential to choose influencers who genuinely align with your brand’s values and allow them creative freedom in their sponsored content. This approach not only makes the partnership more authentic but also helps build trust with the audience.

Don’t be afraid to experiment 

Influencer marketing is still a relatively new form of advertising, and there are no set rules for how to do it “right.” Don’t be afraid to experiment with different types of influencers, platforms, and content formats until you find the one that works for you.

Work on long-term relationships

In influencer marketing, as in any type of relationship, trust and familiarity take time to build. Consider working with influencers on a long-term basis rather than one-off campaigns. This allows for deeper connections with influencers and their audiences, resulting in more authentic and effective brand partnerships.

Monitor and measure results

Measuring the success of influencer marketing is crucial to understanding your ROI and optimizing future campaigns. Make sure to track key metrics such as engagement rates, website traffic, conversions, and sentiment analysis to gauge the impact of your influencer partnerships accurately.

Do make sure the results you see are real and legit, rather than inflated versions of engagement. You want to work with influencers who have an engaged and genuine following, not those who buy fake followers or engagement.

Stay compliant with regulations

Influencer marketing also comes with legal and ethical considerations that must be followed. For instance, the FTC (Federal Trade Commission) in the United States requires influencers to disclose any sponsored content explicitly. Make sure to familiarize yourself with these regulations and ensure your influencer partnerships comply with them.

Stay consistent

Like pretty much any other form of marketing, working with influencers is neither a magical band-aid, nor a one-hit wonder. Consistency is key to building brand awareness and driving results with influencer marketing. Make sure to have a long-term strategy in place, rather than relying on sporadic campaigns.

Final words

Tell me which influencers you hang out with and I’ll tell you who you are.

In a world of perpetual social scrolls and digital noise, influencer marketing offers a powerful way to cut through the clutter and connect with consumers in an authentic and engaging way. By leveraging the reach and credibility of influencers, brands can effectively build brand awareness, trust, and drive conversions.

But success in influencer marketing requires more than just finding popular individuals to promote your products or services. It takes creativity, experimentation, a bit of dare, and a lot of “knowing your audience”  to truly make an impact. So, go ahead and embrace the power of influencer marketing.

Just remember to do it with style, purpose, and authenticity.