The Ultimate Influencer Marketing Strategy Guide for Brands

What once worked a decade ago in influencer marketing may no longer be as relevant today. Nano and micro-influencers are taking the spotlight, with 43% of marketers reporting increased use of these influencers and 24.9% shifting budgets from macro/mega influencers to micro/nano influencers, as per Influencer Marketing Hub's recent survey. This makes it crucial to stay on top of your game and discover the latest tips on building a successful influencer marketing strategy.

In this post, we provide you with a comprehensive influencer marketing strategy guide so you can instantly get started. We even explore the common mistakes you should avoid and the upcoming trends you should look out for in the coming years. Let’s get started.

Understanding Influencer Marketing

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is a form of marketing that involves partnering with influencers to promote your brand and products or services. Influencers are people with a significant online following, typically on social media platforms. This gives them the ability to reach hundreds of thousands of people, helping to raise awareness for the product or brand they’re promoting.

Learn more about it in our comprehensive influencer marketing guide.

Targeting Audiences with Precision: Audience-Focused Influencer Partnerships

In influencer marketing, brands form an official partnership with influential individuals who have the ability to help them reach their target audience. This typically involves influencers who create content related to their industry. But it may be further narrowed down by niche and interest. 

For instance, a food brand would normally work with an influencer who creates food-related content. However, a food brand that wants to promote its new organic selection to parents would partner with parenting influencers whose content majorly focuses on healthy living and organic food. 

Alternatively, an organic grocery chain like Sprouts may work with mommy influencers like Shelly Kowatch to promote the variety of ready-made ingredients that make food prep easier for busy parents.

The most common type of influencer partnership involves the influencer creating content for the brand and sharing it with their social media followers. The content typically features the brand’s products or services through product placements, reviews, demos, how-to guides, tours, and more. 

In return for this, the influencer receives compensation. Depending on the agreement, this compensation may be in the form of free products, exclusive perks, flat rate payments, or commissions.

As a result of the influencers featuring the brand in their content, they help drive publicity and awareness. This may result in new followers, increased traffic and engagement, or even purchases that eventually add to the brand’s bottom line. However, the results aren’t always predictable, especially if you’re not strategic with your influencer partnerships.

According to Tachat Igityan, Founder and CFO at destream,

“First and foremost, you need to ask the question: Can this marketing task be done without influencers?” 

He advises that influencers always come with risks and require a lot of work, with results that are far from guaranteed.

“Sometimes it is easier to use standard marketing methods, such as SEO or PPC ads, rather than chasing trends and trying to launch an influencer campaign.”

“However, there are times when it is important to take a risk and venture into influencer marketing. This is especially true if there are expert influencers in your niche who can showcase your product and attract a relevant audience,”

Tachat concludes.

Current Trends and the Future of Influencer Marketing

As an industry that’s highly dependent on what’s happening in the digital landscape, influencer marketing is constantly evolving. Below are some of the latest trends shaping the influencer marketing industry and what we can expect to see in the near future. You can also check out our full list of influencer marketing trends to learn more.

Full-Stack Influencer Marketing

When brands previously used to work with agencies to find and recruit influencers, a common practice today is to hire full-stack influencer marketing agencies. This involves entrusting an agency to handle the entire influencer marketing process — from strategy and influencer discovery to contracts and negotiations and campaign measurement.

A full-stack influencer marketing agency can take care of every aspect of your campaign, manage your influencer relationships, and make necessary adjustments to optimize performance. They can:

• Develop an influencer marketing strategy
• Find ideal influencers
• Vet influencers for authenticity and brand alignment
• Perform influencer outreach
• Manage contracts and negotiations
• Create campaign and content briefs
• Manage influencer communications
• Review deliverables and request necessary edits
• Track campaign and influencer performance
• Optimize campaigns for improved performance
• Handle influencer payments

With experts handling your entire influencer marketing efforts, you can save time and experience better results. For more information, check out our guides on the full benefits of using an influencer marketing agency and how to choose the right influencer agency.

The Power of Omnichannel Presence

As the rise of new social media platforms leads to changes in consumer behavior, it’s more important than ever for brands to maintain an omnichannel presence. When consumers adopt new platforms, the way they consume content and interact with it also changes. As a result, they also shift their focus to new influencers.

The explosive popularity of platforms like TikTok, and consequently, TikTok influencers, gives testament to this. Extending your influencer partnerships across different online channels ensures that you reach more people, which strengthens the impact of your campaign.

With an omnichannel strategy, you can get your brand in front of people who use one platform but don’t use another. For example, building a campaign on Instagram and TikTok will ensure that you’re also reaching people in parts of the world where TikTok isn’t accessible. Having an established presence on those target platforms, and influencers can give you a much-needed visibility boost to build your omnichannel presence.

Learn more about how to get started with omnichannel digital marketing in our guide. 

The Rise of Micro and Nano-Influencers

Another major trend in influencer marketing is the popularity of smaller influencers like micro and nano-influencers. Our Influencer Marketing Report May 2024 found that 53.8% of brands primarily engaged with nano-influencers while 21.6% primarily worked with micro-influencers.

Driven by the growing preference for authenticity and transparency, trends like micro-influencer marketing also help brands combat declining engagement rates on social media. These smaller influencers have the ability to drive higher engagement rates and build an authentic connection with their audience through relatable content.

If you’re looking to partner with these smaller influencers for your campaign, check out our micro-influencer marketing guide to get started. We’ve also put together examples of brands that worked with micro-influencers to give you some inspiration.

If you’re wondering whether micro or nano-influencers are right for you, check out our nano vs. micro-influencer marketing comparison to understand the key differences. Once you find that nano-influencers may be the better choice for you, you can look at our updated list of top nano-influencer marketing agencies to find the best influencers for your campaign.

Nail the Basics in Your Influencer Marketing Strategy

An influencer marketing strategy is an established framework that lays out the details of your influencer partnerships. This framework serves as a guideline for your influencer marketing efforts so you can take an organized approach to working with influencers. While every influencer marketing strategy is unique to the brand, it should include the following essential details:

• Goals
• Target audience
• Budget
• Ideal influencers
• Channels
• Campaign type
• Campaign duration
• Influencer deliverables
• Key performance indicators (KPIs)

Types of Influencers

An influencer marketing strategy needs to be specific about the types of influencers that will be involved in the campaign. These influencers are selected based on their alignment with the brand and strategy goals. 

Influencers can be categorized into various types depending on factors like their niche, channel, content type, and follower size. Influencers are most commonly categorized based on the size of their following. Based on this, there are four main types of influencers:

• Nano-influencers – Influencers with 1k to 10k followers
• Micro-influencers – Influencers with 10k to 100k followers
• Macro-influencers – Influencers with 100k to 1 million followers
• Mega/celebrity influencers – Influencers with over 1 million followers

Check out our full guide on the different types of influencers to learn more about other categories.

Various Forms of Influencer Marketing Campaigns

The type of campaign you want to run heavily impacts the rest of your influencer marketing strategy. Here’s a quick rundown of the most common types of influencer marketing campaigns:

1. Sponsored Content – A type of paid ad campaign where the brand pays a fee to sponsor the influencer’s content.

2. Brand Ambassadorship Programs – Influencers are recruited as official ambassadors to represent the brand.

3. Affiliate Marketing Programs – Influencers are recruited as affiliates who promote the brand’s products and services and earn a commission for every sale they help to generate.

4. Event Activations – This type of campaign involves brands inviting influencers to their events or creating events specifically for influencers.

5. Product Reviews – Influencers give in-depth reviews to share their authentic opinion about the product and their experience using it.

@raylenechanel team fragrance or team fragrance-free? ?? @hudabeautyshop @Huda Beauty ♬ original sound - ♡ ??????? ??????

6. Influencer Takeovers – This is when an influencer takes over the brand’s social media account for a pre-determined time period and creates content on behalf of the brand.

7. Influencer Gifting/Product Seeding – Influencers receive free gifts from the brand in exchange for posting about it. Typically used alongside other campaign approaches such as product reviews or giveaways.

@allunah7 @Rare Beauty ? lipliner shade gifted lipstick shade fearless liquid blush shade believe * gifted products #makeup #rarebeauty #lipcombo #mattelipstick #makeuptutorial ♬ teachers pet - let

8. Giveaways and Contests – This is when a brand puts together a giveaway contest that influencers help to promote. Other approaches may involve brands providing free products for the influencer to use in their giveaway contest.

@skincare.with.laur ?✨ TIRTIR Giveaway Sponsored by @YesStyle Giveaway Rules: 1. Follow me 2. Follow @YesStyleInfluencers on IG / @YesStyleInfluencers and save this post ? 4. Comment below which product you are most excited to try? ?‍♀️ 5. Tag a friend ?‍♀️ (one tag = one entry) ✨ Gift Set Includes: ? TIRTIR Milk Skin Toner Light – Lightweight hydration, perfect for refreshing your skin ? TIRTIR Collagen Lifting Eye Cream – Brighten and tighten with a metal massage tip applicator ? TIRTIR Mask Fit Red Cushion 6 Shade Trial Kit – Find your perfect shade for flawless coverage ? TIRTIR Waterism Glow Tint #08 Summer Pumpkin – A beautiful, hydrating pop of color ? TIRTIR Mask Fit Makeup Fixer – Lightweight, fine mist to set makeup for all-day wear 2 winners will be selected—1 from Instagram and 1 from TikTok—by Sep 30th, 2024! ? Restricted Countries: Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Chile, Georgia, Indonesia, Japan, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Macedonia, The Former Yugoslav Republic Of, Moldova, Republic Of, Oman, Pakistan, Russian Federation, South Korea, Tajikistan, Thailand, Turkey, Turkmenistan, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Vietnam, and other countries YesStyle does not deliver to. Disclaimer: This giveaway is not affiliated with Instagram or TikTok. #YesStyleInfluencers #YesStyleTIRTIR #KBeautyGiveaway #TIRTIR #Giveaway #SkincareRoutine #KoreanSkincare ♬ Sugar Bomb speed up - じぇるたん??

9. Content Co-Creation – Influencers may also create content in collaboration with their partner brand. Typically delivered as Collab posts on Instagram, where the content is displayed to followers of both accounts.

10. Co-Branding Opportunities – This is when a brand recruits an influencer to help them put together ideas for new co-branded products and collections.

Check out our list of influencer marketing examples to learn more about the different types of campaigns you can run. You can also check out other influencer marketing campaign examples for more ideas on how to get creative with your campaign approach.

How to Create an Influencer Marketing Strategy

Now let’s get to the practical steps of creating your influencer marketing strategy. Follow the steps below to build your strategy.

1. Setting Clear Goals

Before you can create an influencer marketing strategy, you first need to determine what you are trying to achieve. Your aim may be something small like gaining a set number of extra visitors to your website, with them signing up for a newsletter. Alternatively, you might choose to engage in influencer marketing with the aim of increasing sales of a particular product by a certain percentage.

According to Kristen Taggert, Vice President, Integrated Marketing Communications at Brunner,

“When creating an influencer marketing strategy, it is crucial to have defined objectives for what you aim to achieve through these partnerships. This could include increasing awareness, driving sales, or creating lifestyle assets around a product or service. Knowing your objectives will help clearly outline your KPIs.”

Why Defining Goals is Crucial

Having a clear goal helps you build a structured strategy according to that goal. It helps shape your whole approach to influencer marketing and the types of campaigns you want to run. For example, if your goal is to drive more sales, you may get influencers to promote a discount code or a limited-time offer. On the other hand, giveaway contests may be ideal for creating brand awareness.

Moreover, your goals are also essential for measuring your campaign impact. It is impossible for you to measure whether a campaign is successful or not if you haven’t set any objectives. The measurement of your ROI at the end of the campaign depends on how you have performed in relation to your initial objective.

For instance, if your goal is to drive brand awareness, KPIs like reach and impressions, brand mentions, follower growth, etc. will help you measure success. Meanwhile, KPIs like purchases and signups will help you see if you’re meeting your goal of driving more conversions.

Common Objectives for Influencer Campaigns

If you’re not yet sure about the goal you want to achieve with your influencer campaigns, here are a few common objectives to give you an idea.

• Boost Sales and Conversions – Many brands work with influencers with the goal of driving direct sales. Our May 2024 Influencer Marketing report found that this is the most common objective, with 54.9% of brands focusing their influencer marketing efforts on it.
• Increase Brand Awareness – With the massive reach that influencers have, brands also work with them to grow awareness. This is the second most common objective, with 27.2% of brands building their efforts around it.
• Drive Website Traffic – Some brands also want influencers to help drive traffic to their website. Depending on the campaign, they may want to send visitors to a specific campaign landing page, a new piece of content, a product page, or a product category page where they can continue engaging with the brand. 
• Enhance Social Media Presence – A common objective for brands that are just starting out or entering into a new social media platform is to boost their social media presence. Influencers can help them attract new followers and engagements to grow their visibility on the target platform.
• Build Brand Credibility and Trust – Similarly, brands may want to leverage an influencer’s credibility to win the trust of a new audience. This is a common objective when you’re entering into a new market or just starting to build your brand.

2. Determining Your Budget

Once you have your goals determined, you can start building a budget for your campaign. This will help you further organize your efforts and allocate your resources strategically to improve your return on investment.

“Determining the budget should be your next step when creating an influencer marketing strategy,”

says Delaney Trail, social media and influencer expert at Next PR.

“Understanding how much your team can allocate to pay influencers, both monetarily and with products, sets necessary parameters for the campaign.”

According to our State of Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report, most brands spend over $10,000 on influencer marketing. About 60% of respondents also planned to increase their influencer marketing budgets. So you can use these insights to get an idea of how much you should allocate to your influencer marketing strategy as a whole.

Importance of Budgeting in Influencer Marketing

When you have a proper budget in place, you can ensure that you’re not overspending on your influencer marketing efforts. This step allows you to account for all the vital expenses that are involved in working with influencers. So you can plan ahead and strategically distribute your budget between different aspects of the campaign.

For example, you can set aside x amount of money on influencer fees while x amount is reserved for platform fees. When all this is properly organized, you can ensure that every dollar you spend on influencer marketing contributes to your goal. 

Factors Influencing Your Budget

When setting your influencer marketing budget, it’s important to realize that your expenses won’t be limited to influencer fees. Here are some of the main factors to consider in your budget.

• Influencer Fees: Micro vs. Macro – The fees you pay influencers will make up a large chunk of your budget. If you choose to work with smaller influencers like micro-influencers, you can expect to pay anywhere between $25 and $1,000 per post depending on the platform. Macro-influencers will charge more, with rates varying between $1,000 and $25,000 per post.
  Check out our full guide on influencer rates to get a complete picture of how much you should allocate to influencer fees.
• Content Creation Costs – Unless your partnership involves influencers taking care of the entire content creation process, you’ll also need to consider the cost of creating content. For instance, if you’re shooting a promo video featuring influencers, you’ll want to set aside a budget to cover the cost of video production. 
• Platform-Specific Expenses – You may also incur additional expenses depending on the platform you use and the methods you use to distribute the content. For example, there will be fees involved in amplifying influencer content through paid ads or getting influencers to list your products from the TikTok Shop marketplace. 
• Tools and Resources – Finally, there’s the cost involved with the tools and resources you use for executing your campaign. This will mostly be the cost of using an influencer marketing platform for finding and managing influencers, tracking your campaigns, and more. You may also use other types of marketing platforms to improve efficiency in other aspects of your campaign.
• Agency Fees – If you choose to outsource some aspects of your influencer marketing, you’ll also want to consider agency fees. The agency may charge you on an hourly basis, per package, per project, or even based on performance. Check out our comprehensive guide on social media marketing agency pricing models to get an idea of how much it would cost to hire an influencer agency. 

Tips for Setting a Realistic Budget

Your budget needs to realistically align with how much you can afford to spend on influencer marketing. Here are a few tips on how to set a realistic budget:

• Research Fair Influencer Market Value – Get a clear idea of the typical influencer fees and how much other brands are paying them. This will allow you to allocate a budget based on their fair market value and negotiate payments accordingly. 
• Consider Partnerships with Smaller Influencers – Smaller influencers charge less for sponsorships, which may make them a more cost-effective option for your campaign. Make sure to consider the value that micro- and nano-influencers can bring, and assess whether to focus your efforts on them.
• Leverage AI and Automation Wherever Possible – With AI helping to boost efficiency, leveraging it in your campaigns can sometimes keep costs low. For instance, generative AI tools can help you cut your content creation costs in the long run.
• Consider Outsourcing Your Entire Influencer Marketing – Shop around to see how much you might end up spending on influencer marketing with an agency. Then compare this to the cost of managing everything in-house. In most cases, working with an agency means that you won’t have to allocate additional budget on influencer marketing tools as you can leverage the agency’s resources. This might help you save more money and work with a realistic budget.
• Consider Commission-Based Payments – Flat-rate payments don’t necessarily guarantee that influencers will deliver the kind of impact you expect. Consider commission-based payments so you’re paying them based on the value they can generate.
• Consider Influencer Gifting Programs – Non-monetary compensations such as free products and experiences are also a great way to keep your budget realistic. However, this may only work with smaller influencers or if the compensation is extremely appealing.

3. Knowing Your Target Audience

For any influencer campaign to be successful you first need to know who you are trying to influence. It helps to be specific. The tighter you can define your target audience, the easier it is to find influencers who are relevant.

“Your target audience for the campaign should determine the influencers you choose to partner with,”

says Next PR’s Delaney Trail.

“An organic snack brand isn’t going to see the same engagement from a collaboration with a high-end lifestyle influencer as they will with a ‘mommy vlogger,’ as their audiences have different interests and purchasing habits.”

“Consider creating audience personas, researching who your target audience follows and engages with to better understand what content resonates most with them,”

Delaney advises.

If you don’t know who your target audience is, check out our detailed guide on how to find your social media target audience.

Analyzing Your Audience Demographics

Start with a thorough analysis of your audience demographics. This will give you an idea of the types of people to target with your campaign and the influencers who can reach these demographics. 

You can collect audience insights from across your social media profiles to understand the demographics of people who follow your accounts. Additionally, you can use audience research software to analyze the audience demographics of your competitors. This will help you understand which demographics to target for your campaigns.

Source: similarweb.com

Understanding Audience Interests and Behaviors

Next, it’s time to take a closer look into these audience demographics to understand their interests and behaviors. Which social media platforms are they using? What influences their purchase decisions? Where do they consume content?

These are important questions to help you build a target audience profile that will inform your influencer marketing strategy. Make use of audience insights tools to access more in-depth insights into your audience's interests, preferences, and behavior. Look for commonalities between these audiences so you can understand how to best connect with them.

You can even separate them into different segments based on shared interests and behaviors. For example, consider creating a separate segment of the audience that primarily uses TikTok and one that primarily uses Instagram.

Besides the above methods, you can also take a direct approach to your audience research by asking them about their interests and preferences.

“A recommended approach is to take a few customers, and speak with them directly, figure out who they interact with on social and who else they follow, and what they like about your brand,”

suggests Eric Dahan, CEO & Founder of Mighty Joy.

Aligning Influencer Selection with Audience Insights

It’s crucial to ensure that your influencer selection aligns with your audience's insights. Understand what your audience is interested in so you can identify key influencers related to those interests. This is the most effective way to ensure that the campaign resonates with the audience you want to reach.

For example, if you want to reach an audience that’s mostly interested in clean beauty, simply partnering with just any beauty influencer won’t do. Instead, you need to make sure that the influencers have values that are in alignment with your target audience. In this case, you’ll want to partner with influencers who mostly create content related to clean beauty.

4. Selecting the Right Influencers

The most important step involves influencer selection, which is also the area where brands struggle the most. Our State of Influencer Marketing Benchmark report notes that finding influencers to participate in their campaigns is the biggest challenge for respondents. 

Your choice of influencers will make or break your campaign, so it’s crucial to strategically identify the best ones for the purpose. 

Once you’ve identified your target audience and defined your goals, this should be pretty straightforward. It’s only a matter of finding who influences your target audience and how you want to influence them. Based on this, you’ll be able to identify key influencers who can create the types of content you need to achieve your campaign objectives.

Criteria for Choosing Influencers

During the initial stages of influencer marketing, many brands chose to work with influencers who had a massive following in their given industry. However, with growing concerns about influencer fraud and declining organic engagement, the influencer selection process is no longer this simple. Now brands make their influencer selection based on a variety of criteria, mainly:

Reach, Engagement, and Relevance 

Follower size is still a vital factor as it determines the level of reach that an influencer has. You’ll want to carefully consider how many followers an influencer has to make sure that they have the kind of reach to help you achieve your goals.

At the same time, the influencer should be able to engage a real audience. Looking at their engagement rates can give you an idea of the influencer’s audience quality and impact. A high engagement rate is an indicator that the influencer can reach real people and that they’re creating content that resonates with this audience. 

Besides these two factors, it’s also crucial that the influencer is relevant to the target audience. This means they should be creating content that aligns with the interests of your target audience. If you partner with influencers who have massive reach and engagement in the wrong industry, you have a much lower chance of reaching the right people. 

“At Brunner, we evaluate influencers using a comprehensive approach that considers reach, relevance, and resonance. This means we not only examine their follower size and platform presence but also their authority in specific industries or topics and the audience's reception of their messages,”

explains Kristen Taggert, Vice President of integrated Marketing Communications at Brunner.

“Brunner's evaluation process includes analyzing reach, engagement rate, and sentiment, and we score our findings against a defined set of criteria tailored for each client.”

Authenticity and Brand Alignment

Besides the above key criteria, it’s important to ensure that the influencers you work with share the same values of your brand so they can authentically represent you. When you work with influencers that are in alignment with your brand, your partnership comes across as more authentic. This is because the influencer can genuinely vouch for your brand without coming across as promotional.

For instance, an influencer who has always been outspoken about sustainable living has a greater chance of authentically representing a sustainable brand. 

In the same vein, it’s important to look for influencers who are always authentic in their brand partnerships. They should be transparent about their partnerships while being honest with their opinions and reviews. This is essential to boost credibility and win the audience’s trust, which will then be passed down to your brand when you partner with them.

Micro vs. Macro Influencers: Pros and Cons

Besides the above influencer selection criteria, brands are faced with the tough challenge of choosing whether to work with smaller influencers or bigger ones. Macro-influencers have usually been the default option for their ability to reach a massive audience. Working with them will enable you to instantly get your brand in front of hundreds of thousands of people.

While smaller micro-influencers don’t offer the same benefits, their ability to authentically engage their audience makes them more appealing to many brands. When an influencer authentically connects with their audience, they can also drive higher levels of engagement. This gives brands a good reason to consider partnerships with micro-influencers, who also happen to charge lower rates than macro-influencers.

At the same time, their limited reach may only make them suitable for campaigns where you’re targeting a very specific niche or location. Macro-influencers will make a better choice if your campaign is focused on engaging the general public.

“Generally, micro-influencers have greater engagement and followings that are more precisely niche in nature and loyal, so they work well for campaigns focused on targeting specific locations,”

explains Lucas Botzen, HR Expert & CEO at Rivermate.

“A recent campaign on an eco-friendly product line showed that micro-influencers outperformed macro-influencers,”

he adds.

“Indeed, they truly had a passion for sustainability that seeped through their bones, offering higher engagement and conversion rates in comparison to macro-influencers who lacked this level of authenticity.”

“Micro-influencers are passionate about their specific niches, often sharing personal stories and experiences that resonate with their audience,”

agrees Delaney Trail of Next PR.

“Followers trust their opinions. Collaborating with a micro-influencer whose niche aligns with your product or mission fosters a stronger connection with potential buyers and improves your campaign’s effectiveness.”

To better understand the pros and cons of micro vs. macro-influencers, here’s a quick overview:

Micro-influencers

Check out our detailed guide on the pros and cons of working with micro-influencers to weigh your options.

Macro-influencers

Successful Influencer Collaborations: Case Studies

To get a better understanding of how strategic influencer selection impacts the success of a campaign, let’s explore a few examples of successful influencer collaborations.

Gymshark’s Omnipresence Strategy

Gymshark has become a leading brand for workout clothes largely due to its omnichannel influencer marketing strategy. The brand partners with influencers across major social networks, resulting in greater visibility and a large brand community.

It activates leading influencers as Gymshark athletes, who post content featuring the brand’s workout clothes in their Instagram posts.

On TikTok, the brand works with prominent fitness influencers who create sponsored content featuring the brand’s products in their videos.

@ms.dumplingg Or is it @Gymshark leggings ? dc: ANNALY ? @RYSE Supplements #gym #gymshark #gymtok #ad ♬ Nasty - Tinashe

Similarly, on X (formerly Twitter), Gymshark forms strategic partnerships with popular internet personalities to bring more visibility to the brand. Below, you can see Love Island’s Indyah and Dami promoting their Gymshark collection.

Indiyah and Dami Gymshark collection? pic.twitter.com/XahQbjw4V3

— ?. (@Gemsxles) August 19, 2024

On Facebook, the brand features prominent influencers in their content. This includes influencers like David Laid, who has over 400k followers on Facebook and 5 million on Instagram.

Source: facebook.com

Gymshark’s YouTube strategy involves featuring prominent YouTubers in their long-form videos. One video features a prank with fitness YouTubers like Marcus Filly (280k subscribers), Behzinga (4.95 million subscribers), and MattDoesFitness (2.29 million subscribers).

Obvi, Graza, and Javy Coffee’s Holistic Approach

Brands like Obvi, Graza, and Javy Coffee became viral sensations largely due to their influencer marketing efforts. These brands took a holistic approach to influencer marketing, with strategies that involve product seeding, affiliate marketing, and content repurposing.

Obvi’s product seeding efforts involve strategic influencer selection, where they make a list of potential influencers that are aligned with the brand and its values. They then vet the influencers based on engagement rate and expected likes to begin their outreach. Obvi also follows a tiered reward system to motivate ambassadors to promote the brand. As influencers help to drive more sales, they can earn higher commissions.

Further, they repurpose influencer content to create whitelisted ads. These ads retain the influencer’s authentic voice as they’re delivered from the influencer’s account, helping to boost credibility and trust.

Moreover, Obvi also repurposes influencer-generated content to fill up their TikTok Feed with engaging videos. Creator video thumbnails are also featured as social proof on their product pages. Most importantly, they also build long-term relationships with these influencers to build a genuine connection and improve the authenticity of their partnerships.

Even for Graza, an unpaid creator gifting program was central to the success of their influencer marketing efforts. The brand started to build momentum three weeks before launch by sending out products to influential creators related to food. They took a tiered approach, starting with smaller creators and then gradually making their way up.

One of the key influencers involved in the gifting program was Molly Baz, former recipe developer for Bon Appetit who has almost 800k Instagram followers and over 138k subscribers on YouTube. The brand received a response three days before launch and immediately sent her a few bottles of their product. The influencer’s shoutout brought huge publicity to the brand, helping them sell out soon after launch.

Javy Coffee’s approach to influencer marketing involved inviting influencers into their affiliate program. Influencers receive a unique discount code and link that they can share with their followers. In addition to a 15% commission from every purchase made using these links and codes, influencers will also be able to earn bonuses if they hit a certain number of sales quickly.

This reward system played a crucial role in motivating influencers to promote the brand’s products. Javy Coffee also uses influencer-generated content and repurposes it as marketing creative. The brand reshares these posts across various social networks with proper credit to the original creator.

Video reviews from influencers are also featured on the brand’s website to serve as social proof. This gives potential customers more assurance to buy the brand’s products as they can see real-life endorsements.

5. Building Long-Term Relationships

Once you find influencers that deliver value for your campaigns, it’s crucial that you turn your partnerships into long-term relationships. That way, you can always reactivate them again for future campaigns even if you’re not taking an always-on approach to influencer marketing.

The Importance of Genuine Partnerships

When you foster a long-term relationship with an influencer, your partnership comes across as more authentic. It indicates to the audience that the influencer truly loves your brand because why else would they keep promoting you?

“Long-term partnerships can be more valuable than one-off collaborations for your brand. When an influencer promotes a product or service repeatedly, followers are more apt to view the recommendation as genuine,”

explains Delaney Trail, social media and influencer expert at Next PR. 

“One-off collaborations, when poorly planned, can show an audience the influencer hasn’t done a thorough review of your product and doesn’t use it in their everyday life,”

she adds.

“Developing an influencer relationship over time can establish long-term clout and drive consumer purchases beyond the initial partnership.”

“Overall, Brunner has found that long-term partnerships with influencers are crucial for developing trust and credibility with consumers,”

agrees Kristen Taggert, Vice President, Integrated Marketing Communications at Brunner.

“Consistent collaboration with the same influencer ensures a uniform message, enhancing the brand's authenticity. This ongoing relationship allows the influencer to become more familiar with the brand, resulting in content that is more genuine and better aligned with the brand's values,”

she explains.

Moreover, this familiarity also means that the influencer will have understood your brand’s expectations, helping them develop campaign deliverables without the need for constant reviews.

“Additionally, long-term partnerships create cost efficiencies, as the influencer's deeper understanding of the brand enables them to focus on evolving the brand's narrative without the need for frequent briefings,”

Kristen adds.

She gives an example of a campaign they ran for one of their clients to further clarify her point.

“In one of our most successful campaigns, Brunner facilitated a partnership between Rinnai and Matt Risinger, a nationally recognized expert in building science and high-performance construction,”

she explains. 

“Initially, this collaboration aimed to address common misconceptions about tankless water heaters. However, it evolved into a multi-year partnership, with Matt playing a key role in launching several products through his video content and representing the brand at the NAHB International Builders’ Show.”

Strategies for Fostering Authentic Connections

Here are some practical tips to foster an authentic connection with your influencers:

• Make sure your values are closely aligned.
• Maintain transparency and clearly communicate with them about expectations and deliverables.
• Regularly check in with them to discuss performance and provide feedback.
• Show a genuine interest in their work and engage with them beyond your sponsored content.
• Get them involved in the creative process and give them the freedom to infuse your campaign with their unique style and voice.
• Set up loyalty programs to reward them for their performance and commitment to your brand.
• Show appreciation for their work and recognize their contributions.

Treating Influencers as Partners; Not Just Marketing Channels

One of the most vital steps in ensuring a long-term authentic collaboration is treating your influencers as partners instead of simply using them as a marketing channel. Remember to acknowledge the person behind the personality and build a connection with them.

Work closely with them when building your campaign briefs and content. Tap into their creativity and listen to their opinions so you’re working with them as partners.

Make sure to communicate with them about campaign performance and provide necessary feedback to ensure better brand alignment. Don’t forget to maintain transparency and share campaign-related information that would make them feel like a part of the brand.  

6. Creating Authentic and Engaging Content

The authenticity of your influencer content plays a vital role in the success of your campaign. Successful influencer marketing campaigns rely heavily on engaging content that authentically presents the brand and its solutions.

“Unsuccessful collaborations typically involve influencers creating generic or inauthentic content, which fails to resonate with audiences or just simply comes across as ‘blah,’”

says Eric Dahan, CEO & Founder of Mighty Joy.

Collaborating with Influencers on Content Creation

The best way to ensure the success of your influencer marketing content is by getting influencers involved in the content creation process. Their creativity and unique voice are what has helped them build an influence in the first place. So entrust them to come up with a unique and creative take that effectively showcases your product’s benefits in a way that resonates with their respective audiences.

Mighty Joy’s Eric Dahan gives an example of a campaign where they took a bold approach and leveraged the creativity of influencers.

“We worked with an at-home air purifier brand and collaborated with artists to create unique artwork to be featured on the product itself,”

he says.

“This worked since the product was hailed by designers as being aesthetically pleasing, and adding the right artwork to the product resonated well with their core audience.”

Ensuring Content Authenticity and Relatability

When you closely collaborate with influencers throughout the content creation process, you can also maintain content authenticity. Give them the creative freedom to infuse their unique voice and style so that the content continues to resonate with the audience. Provide them with a basic outline of what you expect along with compliance requirements, and let them do the rest.

“While influencers need to adhere to these expectations outlined in the brief provided to them, it’s also important to ensure they have creative freedom to maintain authenticity, as they know what resonates most with their community,”

explains Brunner’s Kristen Taggert.

Leveraging User-Generated Content (UGC) for Maximum Impact

Sometimes, your customers can also be the best influencers for your brand. Seeing your customers vouching for your brand can help you earn the trust of other consumers. This is why user-generated content can be an excellent way to maximize the impact of your influencer marketing strategy.

Encourage your customers to share their authentic reviews and experiences using your products. Then use this UGC alongside your influencer-generated content. This will show the audience that it’s not just influencers vouching for your products but also everyday consumers just like them.

7. Managing Legal and Contractual Aspects

Having a legal agreement is crucial for your influencer partnerships as it ensures that both parties are liable to holding up their end of the bargain. So brands need to effectively manage the legal and contractual aspects of their influencer marketing strategies. 

Key Elements of Influencer Contracts

Every influencer contract is different, depending on the brand and the agreement you have in place. However, the following key elements should be included in your contract:

• Standard agreement terms
• Campaign timeline
• Deliverables
• Cancellation clauses
• Regulatory guidelines
• Content approval processes
• Confidentiality clauses
• Compensation
• Payment terms
• FTC responsibility

Check out our influencer contract template for more details. 

In-House vs. Agency Management of Legal Agreements

For brands that manage their influencer campaigns in-house, managing contracts is one of the biggest challenges according to our State of Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report. This makes sense since there are a lot of details and legal complexities to consider, especially if you don’t have an in-house legal time.

So it’s often a good idea to leave it up to the experts and have an agency manage your influencer contracts. These agencies have an expertise in handling legal agreements between brands and influencers, which gives them the essential insights and skills to effectively manage the complexities. 

Ensuring Transparency and Mutual Benefit in Agreements

One crucial rule to follow in striking up an official agreement with influencers is ensuring that it’s mutually beneficial. Your agreement should be favorable to both parties so that each party delivers value to the other. This is why it’s also important to maintain transparency regarding everything that’s expected of the influencer and what they can expect from your brand in return.

In addition to the influencer’s obligations regarding deliverables and compliance regulations, it should include details like compensation and payment terms that are favorable to the influencer. 

Moreover, be specific about your cancelation clause so that you’re not stuck with an influencer who doesn’t provide value to your campaign. Breaking brand guidelines, poor performance, and non-performance are some common reasons you may be able to cancel your contract. At the same time, the influencer should have the option to end the partnership for justifiable reasons. 

8. Leveraging Tools and Platforms

With all the complexities involved in creating and managing an influencer marketing strategy, it’s important to make use of advanced tools and platforms that can streamline the process. Beyond dedicated influencer marketing tools, you can also look to other types of marketing platforms to handle your tasks efficiently.

Overview of Top Influencer Marketing Tools

Let’s take a quick look at some of the top influencer marketing platforms to understand their capabilities:

• Sprout Social – Sprout Social’s influencer marketing platform comes with comprehensive features for end-to-end campaign management. You can use it to find authentic and verified creators, manage your influencer communications, review and approve content, track performance, monitor your budget, and pay creators using a single platform.

• Brandwatch Influencer Marketing – This platform lets you browse an expansive influencer network to find your ideal influencers across a variety of platforms. It also lets you manage your campaign and track your performance in one place.
  

• Modash – Modash is a leading influencer marketing platform that offers multiple advanced filters to narrow your search. It analyzes influencer profiles according to the types of audiences they can reach and their audience reachability, which allows you to find influencers who can genuinely connect with the right audience. You can also use the platform to manage your influencer marketing campaigns.

• Upfluence – Upfluence’s massive influencer database is made up of different types of influencers to power your campaigns. You can even integrate it with eCommerce tools to find influencers from within your own customer database, making it easier to leverage brand advocates for your campaigns. It also comes with comprehensive features to run and manage different types of campaigns like product seeding and affiliate programs.

• Creator.co – Creator.co provides extensive features for end-to-end campaign management. You can easily get an overview of your campaigns, extract deep insights into an influencer’s profile, and track all your content in one place.

Streamlining Processes and Improving Efficiency with Tools

With the right tools to aid your influencer marketing efforts, you can significantly streamline the process and improve efficiency. For starters, some influencer search tools can automatically match you with ideal influencers that are well-aligned with your brand. AI technology is particularly useful for this influencer-brand matching process, with agencies like HypeFactory using them to speed up the influencer discovery process.

“We choose a geographic area that aligns with the client’s business goals and search for influencers using our AI tool. This tool evaluates influencers based on 55 metrics, including demographic characteristics, fraud detection, Audience Quality Score, and Channel Quality Score,”

explains the agency’s Marketing & PR Director, Daria Belova. 

“Beyond these quantitative metrics, we also assess the quality of the content and its alignment with the brand that will advertise with the selected influencer,”

she says.

Even if these automation capabilities aren’t available, most of them will help you speed up the search process using advanced filters. They may even be able to automatically analyze the influencer’s profile to assess their audience quality. This streamlines your vetting process and helps you narrow down influencers who can engage real people.

Then you have influencer outreach tools that can help you speed up the process of connecting with potential influencers. Many of them come with built-in invitation features and message templates that you can customize for your influencer outreach.

Once influencers are recruited, you can use an influencer relationship management tool to track and manage your connections. These tools allow you to easily message influencers, add them to your campaigns, negotiate with them, review content, provide feedback, send payments, and more.

If the platform you use doesn’t let you manage contracts, you can also use separate influencer contract management software to simplify this aspect of your campaign. These will let you upload, send, sign, and store contracts in one place, making them easier to manage. Some tools may even offer templates that you can easily customize and use for your influencer agreements.

Once your campaign goes live, you can use influencer analytics tools to track and measure performance. This will help you see which creators are adding value to your campaign and how to optimize your strategy to focus on them.

9. Implementing Omnichannel Strategies

With the rise of new and popular social media platforms, it’s more important than ever for brands to extend their strategies across these channels. As highlighted in the earlier Gymshark example, omnichannel influencer marketing strategies can significantly strengthen your brand presence and maximize your campaign impact.

Benefits of an Omnichannel Presence

Brands should consider implementing an omnichannel strategy for influencer marketing because of the following key benefits:

• Expand your reach across different platforms.
• Reach people through their preferred channels.
• Ensure a consistent brand image and presence across multiple channels.
• Stay top-of-mind when customers are ready to purchase.

Integrating Influencer Marketing Across Multiple Platforms

Here are a few actionable tips to integrate influencer marketing across different platforms:

• Activate influencers with significant presence across various social media platforms.
• Encourage influencers to cross-post content on different platforms.
• Have influencers take over your brand’s social profiles across various platforms.
• Host live broadcasts and stream them through various channels to drive real-time interactions.
• Set up pop-up shops with key influencers to drive foot traffic.
• Invite influencers to brand events and encourage them to post about it on their socials.

Platform-Specific Tactics and Insights

To get a better understanding of how you can leverage different platforms for omnichannel influencer marketing, let’s give you a breakdown of some platform-specific insights and tactics to inform your strategy:

• TikTok – TikTok is the most common channel that brands use for influencer marketing. With the platform being heavily focused on engaging short-form videos, fill up your feed with creative and informative influencer-generated content. Have influencers promote your products and drive direct sales through live shopping events and effective TikTok Shop strategies.
• Instagram – Make use of Instagram Collab posts to simultaneously reach your brand’s followers and your influencers’ audiences with engaging content. Repost influencer-generated content in your feed, and have influencers take over your Stories for a day or even an entire week. Host a livestream session featuring key influencers and drive real-time engagement. 
• Facebook – Fill up your Facebook feed with creative influencer-generated content and drive organic engagement. Repurpose influencer content to create impactful paid ads and reach more people. Or run whitelisted ads from influencer accounts to maximize reach.
• YouTube – Create long-form videos featuring key influencers to entertain your audience. Have influencers create in-depth videos that feature your products and provide detailed reviews, instructions, or demos. 

An omnichannel strategy has contributed to the success of many influencer campaigns for Mighty Joy.

“One standout campaign was for a leading travel app where we leveraged creators across TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram to drive consideration and direct downloads/signups,”

explains the agency’s CEO and Founder, Eric Dahan as he shares one example that involved omnichannel influencer activations. 

“The core strategy was rooted in understanding the customer journey, recognizing that most users would download the app within days of their planned travel. We created longer-form YouTube content to educate customers and drive consideration, using creator links with clear CTAs to facilitate direct downloads during peak travel times, and comment-to-DM automation tools to convert comments into app downloads.”

“Additionally, on Instagram we optimized for saves and bookmarks as our north-star on-platform metric, which was a clear indicator that users were serious about downloading the app for their next trip,”

he adds.

10. Measuring and Analyzing ROI

Finally, once your campaign goes live, analytics and campaign measurement will play a vital role in its overall success. You need to ensure that you’re making adjustments to optimize your strategy according to the insights from your analytics.

Essential KPIs to Track for Success

Although the actual metrics will vary for every campaign depending on the objectives, below are some of the essential KPIs that will help you track campaign success:

• Reach
• Impressions
• Follower growth
• Brand mentions/share of voice
• Engagement rate
• Click-through rate
• Website traffic
• Sales/downloads
• Conversion rate
• Average order value
• Earned media value

Effective Methods for Measuring ROI

Measuring the ROI of your campaign isn’t just about tracking KPIs. You need to take a strategic approach to effectively understand whether your investment is paying off. Here are a few tips:

• Focus on Relevant KPIs – Not all of the metrics listed above will be able to tell whether your campaign is paying off. You only need to focus on the ones that are actually relevant to your campaign objectives. If your goal is to raise brand awareness, focus on metrics like reach, impressions, follower growth, and share of voice instead of on sales and conversions.
• Leverage an Influencer Analytics Tool – While native social media analytics tools can give you some idea of your performance, the view can be a bit limited. Instead, make use of dedicated influencer analytics tools that give you a comprehensive look at all the metrics that matter to you. The best part is that these metrics can be measured against your spending, so it’s easy to calculate your ROI.
• Use Custom Links and Discount Codes – You may also need to custom URLs and unique discount codes in case of campaigns that involve driving sales or signups. These links and codes will be unique to each influencer, making it easier to track the conversions that each influencer has helped to generate vs. the sales that happened organically or through other marketing efforts.
• Use Marketing Attribution Tools – You can also leverage marketing attribution tools to track multi-touch customer journeys. This allows you to analyze how influencer’s are indirectly contributing to your bottom line, giving you a more comprehensive picture of your campaign performance.

Adapting Strategies Based on Performance Data

Once you have the insights you need, it’s important to use them to inform your strategy. You may need to adapt your existing strategy according to those insights. For instance, if a certain influencer is seeing high levels of engagement for a certain post, you may consider amplifying the content through paid ads. Or if one influencer isn’t driving much engagement, you could consider eliminating them from your campaign.

When you constantly adapt and improve your strategies according to your analytics, you can gradually optimize your performance. That way, your expenses and efforts are optimized to reduce costs and maximize returns.

“The key to leveraging data mid-campaign is breaking down the variables, such as the creator (messenger), the message (including the script, hook, and CTA), and the creator’s audience,”

advises Mighty Joy’s Eric Dahan.

“Once you’ve done that, you have to constantly measure and identify which variables are correlated with the desired outcome.”

“It is important to constantly test new things as non-obvious successful combinations may emerge,”

he explains.

“For example, we initially worked with a brand that focused on dermatologists to promote their products, which was effective in building trust. However, data analysis revealed that collaborating with LGBTQ creators who shared personal stories was far more effective and had better economics.”

“By adjusting our strategy mid-campaign to emphasize these authentic, personal narratives, we significantly improved engagement and overall campaign performance. This agile approach, driven by data, ensured we optimized results even when the initial strategy needed adjustment,”

he adds.

But even as you keep adjusting your strategy to optimize performance, you may not know what to expect from your campaigns. How effective is influencer marketing, really? And what kind of results can you realistically achieve?

According to our State of Influencer Marketing Benchmark Report, influencer marketing has grown into a $24 billion industry. So the industry itself is massive. This is only possible because brands are seeing the value of influencers for their business. In fact, over 83% of respondents in the report believe that influencer marketing campaigns generate higher-quality customers compared to other types of marketing.

That’s not all – influencer marketing helps you drive better brand awareness and reach a highly relevant audience. As a result, you can enjoy benefits such as higher engagements and conversions. To better understand the value and ROI of influencer marketing, let’s take a look at some case studies with impressive results.

NVIDIA

NVIDIA used influencer marketing to promote their GeForce RTX 30 Series laptops. Their goal was to reach STEM students and target them with a back-to-school promotion. With the help of NeoReach, the brand activated influencers whose audiences were made up of American students in STEM, engineering, tech, and data science.

These influencers created unique content using prompts like “build something awesome” and “benefits of the laptop.” They used humor and relatability to appeal to the target demographic of young students. As a result of this, NVIDIA was able to achieve the following results:

• 3.3 million impressions
• 5.7k link in bio clicks
• 46.7k total engagements
• $266,330 influencer media value

ODEON

ODEON needed to grow their TikTok presence and use it as a channel to engage users with the feeling of going to the movies. They worked with The Goat Agency to deliver this sensory experience through creator-led content. The agency enlisted popular creators such as Max Balegde, who took over ODEON’s TikTok account for a hilarious interview with cinema-goers. 

Other activations involved family and parenting creators who created content around “Family Film Closet” where they dressed up as movie characters. Over the course of 12 months, several pieces of exciting and entertaining creator-generated content helped the channel to grow from 4,000 followers to 10,000 followers. Additionally, ODEON saw the following results:

• 20 million impressions
• 1 million engagements
• 10.5% average engagement rate
• 10.3% average view-through rate
• £14.70 return on ad spend (ROAS)

Common Pitfalls and How to Avoid Them

With the information you have so far, you’re pretty much all set to start your own influencer marketing campaign. Before that, make sure to look out for the following common influencer marketing mistakes and prepare to avoid them.

Focusing Only on Follower Count

Followers can be bought, which has led to the prevalence of influencer fraud. If you’re only focusing on follower count when choosing influencers, don’t be surprised if you don’t see the results you expected. Moreover, even genuine influencers won’t always be a good fit for your brand based on the audience you want to engage and how you want to engage them.

To avoid this, make use of influencer fraud detection tools and fake follower checkers to analyze each influencer. You can put them through an additional vetting process where you assess them for brand fit based on factors like their content quality and their follower demographics. 

Taking Away Creative Freedom

Many brands are unable to experience the value of influencer marketing because they miss the whole point of working with influencers. This often means they’re too restrictive with how they want influencers to create content that the campaign ends up losing its authenticity. In some cases, influencers may be forced to be overly promotional and sales-y, thus losing the interest of their audience.

To avoid this, make sure to respect the essence of content creators and give them the freedom to create. This will help them create content for your brand in an authentic voice that engages their audience. You could provide them with prompts and a few basic guidelines to ensure brand alignment but leave the creating and the ideas to them.  

Choosing the Wrong Payment Model 

How you pay your influencers will play a role in your campaign’s profitability. While rates may vary depending on influencer type, you should look into a payment model that works for you and for the campaign. Product seeding campaigns may not require payments as they involve gifting products to micro and nano-influencers. For other types of campaigns that require some type of monetary payment, decide between options like flat rate payments, percentage of sales, and payments based on product level.

While flat-rate payments were very common in 2022 (49%), brands are now choosing to pay influencers based on a percentage of sales (49.6%). This may be because of a need for evidence that the influencer is delivering results. So you may want to consider this option.

Measuring Results Only at the End

If you’re waiting until the end of your campaign to start measuring its impact, you could end up overspending on influencers who aren’t even delivering results. What if one of your influencers isn’t even getting engagements on their post? What if they’re not driving any link clicks? 

Make sure to prioritize ongoing campaign tracking to make sure that your influencer activations are paying off. This will help you keep track of individual influencer performance and identify low-performing creators. You can use these insights to pivot and get more out of your influencer marketing budget.

Emerging Trends and Future Predictions

Finally, as mentioned earlier, the influencer marketing landscape is constantly evolving. Staying on top of these changing trends can help you adapt to stay ahead of the curve. Here are some of the emerging trends and future predictions in influencer marketing.

AI Will Cause Some Disruptions  

The rise of AI is impacting almost every industry, and influencer marketing is no different. We’re starting to witness a significant shift in the landscape thanks to AI tools that assist with influencer marketing and content creation. This will continue in the coming years as the tools become more developed to address pressing needs.

In fact, our State of Influencer Marketing report found that 63% of respondents were planning to use AI and machine learning for executing their campaigns. The main use case is for influencer identification, with 55.8% planning to use it for this purpose. Interestingly, only 5.7% were planning to use it for identifying fake influencers and engagements, despite the continued concern for influencer fraud.

The Age of AI-Generated Influencers Isn’t Here…Just Yet

“The emergence of AI-driven influencers, like those created using the Butterflies app, is a notable trend,”

suggests Alexander Kuznetsov, Digital Reputation Expert at RCheckUP.

“These AI bloggers can manage their social media profiles, respond to comments, and even message real users, indicating a shift towards an era where even influencers could be replaced by AI.”

That said, these AI influencers won’t completely replace real, human influencers just yet. As interesting as these influencers may be, they’re missing that vital element of authentic human connections.

According to social media consulting expert Lia Haberman,

“being conventionally attractive can’t make up for lack of authenticity.”

Following our earlier prediction, Lia predicts that other AI solutions such as generative AI, on the other hand, will have a significant impact on content creation. 

So AI-generated influencers are more of a novelty than a viable alternative to human influencers. That’s not to say there are some concerns (particularly among parents) about these AI-generated influencers setting unrealistic beauty standards. 

A Greater Focus on Long-Term Influencer Relationships 

Another major shift is in the types of relationships brands are cultivating with influencers. Our State of Influencer Marketing report found a significant increase in preference for “repetitive” influencer partnerships. The percentage of brands preferring to work with the same influencers over other influencers grew from 61% in 2023 to 63.2% in 2024.

This is largely due to the overwhelming benefits of long-term influencer relationships. As highlighted previously, long-term partnerships can come across as more authentic, which helps to win the trust of prospective customers.

Moreover, repeated partnerships with the same influencers save you the trouble of having to debrief them over and over again. This saves you a significant amount of time and money while making it easier to produce high-quality content with minimal back-and-forth. This means that long-term influencer relationships can help you enjoy a greater level of efficiency in executing your campaigns. 

Build a Winning Influencer Marketing Strategy

Building a successful influencer marketing strategy takes time and effort. From finding influencers and developing campaigns to managing contracts and influencer communications — there’s a lot involved in the process. We’ve outlined the key steps that you need to follow to get started. Make the most of them to build a winning influencer marketing strategy for your brand.

About the Author

Influencer Marketing Hub

Writer

The Influencer Marketing Hub Team brings together a diverse group of experts with a passion for influencer marketing, digital trends, and social media strategies. Each piece of content crafted by this team is researched and written to provide valuable insights, tips, and updates for our readers. Our authors are dedicated to delivering high-quality, informative, and engaging articles that help businesses and influencers thrive in this rapidly changing digital world.