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You’ve probably heard about influencer marketing campaigns and even tried out creating some on your social.
But you’re still not sure you’re taking the right steps for success.
Well, ‘experience', they say, is the best teacher.
And, here’s the good thing:
You can learn from previous successful influencer marketing campaigns—you don’t necessarily need to have personal experience.
That’s why, in this blog, we will:
- Showcase great influencer marketing campaigns.
- Give you key tips to help you make the most of your influencer collaborations.
- Explore different types of influencer marketing campaigns.
Let’s get right in there.
What is an Influencer Marketing Campaign?
An influencer marketing campaign is a form of digital marketing that leverages the reach and influence of social media influencers to promote products or services.
At one point or another during your use of social media channels, you may have stumbled upon an influencer endorsing or promoting a product or service.
Very often, these promotions are so organically integrated that you may not even realize you’re watching a promotion.
Why running campaigns with influencers is a good idea
Influencers and brand ambassadors have established relevance and real-life connections with their audience through social media.
As such, they have the power to influence the purchasing decisions of both millennials and Gen-Zs.
Some of the benefits of forming influencer partnerships include:
- Increased brand awareness
Influencers are mainly categorized by 1 of 4 types.
Below is a list of these types of influencers and their follower counts.
- Nano Influencers: 1k to 10k followers
- Micro-influencers: 10K to 100K followers
- Macro-influencers: 100K to 1M followers
- Mega-Influencers: large following of over 1M
Depending on the type of influencer you’re working with, your brand automatically receives exposure to those followers across various social media accounts.
Imagine exposing your startup to over 20,000 people, all of whom are loyal followers of your brand influencer.
This means that the awareness of your brand would inevitably increase among the influencer’s followers, and your brand would generate leads (potential customers), who’d eventually turn into new customers.
- Receiving brand feedback
One of the surest ways to create a product or service that sells, is to create one that appeals to the customer.
How can you do this?
By accepting feedback.
Because relevant influencers engage with specific audiences, you can leverage their insights, and source buyer feedback on your products, collections, or features.
- Gaining credibility and trust
Traditional advertising can help you with mere advertising, but brand positivity is more likely to be achieved when you work with reputable influencers.
Here’s why.
Remember that people perceive their favorite influencers to be credible and trustworthy.
This trust factor is extended to your brand when influencers recommend and use your product or service. And your conversion rates are likely to increase when people trust your brand.
Plus, the longer you maintain a relationship with an influencer, the more exposure your brand will receive, with people having a better perception of your brand as a result.
However, it’s important to remember that despite the benefits, there are certain challenges that come with running an influencer marketing campaign.
These challenges include: pricing and incentives, target market identification, influencer discovery, and even choosing the most suitable marketing campaign for your brand.
But there’s a simple solution to these challenges: influencer marketing platforms.
An example of such a platform is Insense.
With Insense, you can:
- Discover relevant influencers
- Negotiate prices and handle payments and copyrights
- Identify your target audience with competitor analysis
- Manage all influencer marketing campaigns
- Collaborate with your team in real time
With these platforms, you can improve your campaign, and measure your ROI all in one place.
To identify the best type of influencer marketing campaign for your business, keep reading.
5 Types of Influencer Marketing Campaigns to Explore
There are different types of influencer marketing campaigns from sponsored content to product reviews.
For more clarity, let’s explore each type below.
- Giveaways
This type of influencer marketing strategy is among one of the commonest and most effective strategies used in influencer marketing.
In fact, according to research, an Instagram contest or giveaway can grow your followers 70% faster in 3 months than by not having a contest.
You can begin your giveaway campaign by simply supplying influencers with products or services that they can “give away” to their followers.
All that the audience needs to do is follow some basic steps to be part of the giveaway. Some of these steps might include:
- Following or subscribing to the account
- Sharing with or tagging friends
- Liking the post
- Affiliate marketing
Suppose you had an ecommerce fitness and wellness store, selling gym clothes and shoes.
By creating a unique promo code and giving it to 5 influencers to share with their followers, these influencers would become your affiliate marketers.
This is a mutually beneficial type of influencer marketing program.
For each purchase made on your online store with the unique promo code, the influencer would get a commission.
So you’d get a sale, and the affiliate influencer would receive a commission.
- Sponsored blogs and Influencer posts
Paid sponsorships are very common forms of social media marketing.
These are mostly Instagram posts and they can either be influencer partnerships or celebrity endorsements.
For instance, if you are a food vendor, you can partner with an influential food blogger or critic, to publish positive blog post reviews of your recipes.
Similarly, fashion bloggers can form partnerships with clothing brands to endorse and promote their products on an Instagram account, or other social media platforms.
For this type of campaign, it is essential for brands to provide a detailed brief of their expectations, budget, themes, and guidelines.
- Unboxing and reviews
This is mostly carried out with Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok influencers.
It involves giving Instagram influencers, or any social media influencer, free products as gifts.
In return for a free gift, the influencer will promote your brand either by recording a video of themselves unboxing the gift, or by simply giving a review.
This type of influencer outreach campaign is cost-effective.
So rather than paying micro-influencers to promote your business, you give them a free gift in exchange for their services.
- Pre-release campaigns
If you want to release a new product to the market, then a pre-release campaign might be the best option for your brand.
Working with influencers for this type of campaign is simple because the sense of exclusivity it provides makes them feel excited and proud.
This marketing tactic can be combined with other campaigns such as promo and discount codes to expand your reach.
Now let’s take a look at some examples of successful influencer marketing campaigns.
Top Influencer Marketing Campaigns to Inspire You
Running any of the types of influencer marketing campaigns discussed previously is no small challenge.
However, you can learn from the experiences of brands who created successful campaigns.
Below is a list of successful influencer marketing campaigns from various industries and niches.
1. Old Navy: Boys & Girls Club of America
Influencer campaigns for brand awareness are great. But how about influencer campaigns for charity?
In 2018, Old Navy, an American clothing and accessories retailing company, launched its campaign to raise money for the Boys & Girls Club of America (BGCA).
On November 20th 2018, the brand collaborated with Alex Rodriguez, a former American professional baseball shortstop and third baseman, businessman and philanthropist.
Some takeaways from this campaign include:
- Timing: The campaign was strategically launched on Black Friday to boost sales using discounted rates.
- Objective: To raise money for charity through product sales.
- Result: Alex’s involvement in the campaign helped Old Navy raise an incredible $1 million just from the sales made on Black Friday.
2. Adidas Neo Ft Selena Gomez
In 2023, Selena Gomez is currently the most followed woman on Instagram.
This was not the case 11 years ago, but she was still extremely influential amongst teens and young adults.
The singer and actress was the brand ambassador behind a campaign launched by Adidas Neo.
Key takeaways from this campaign include:
- Objective: To boost sales using various strategies such as contests, photoshoots, influencer content, and UGC (user-generated content).
- Campaign format: It was a long-term campaign (lasted for 3 years) which focused on elevating the lifestyle of teenagers and sport enthusiasts.
- Result: The campaign was so impactful, at the end Adidas had increased their Instagram followers by over 41,000, generated 71,000 mentions of their branded hashtags, and increased sales by 24.2%.
3. Dunkin’ Donuts on National Donut Day
On June 1st, 2023, Dunkin Donut, the largest donut and coffee brand in America, released an interesting blog post about their marketing campaign.
To launch the campaign, the brand partnered with content creators and influencers on Snapchat.
The key takeaways from this were the:
- Timing: The campaign began on June 1st (a day before national donut day), with 8 content creators informing their supporters of the free promo.
- Selling point: a free donut with any beverage purchase at any Dunkin’s store.
- Result: The campaign was so impressive that it reached 3 million people across all platforms, with a total engagement rate of 40K.
4. HelloFresh Ft Mindy Kaling
3 years ago, HelloFresh, the largest meal-kit provider in the United States, partnered with Mindy Kaling, an actress and comedian.
The aim of this paid influencer partnership was to increase awareness and reach through branded content.
It involved a 4-episode series titled “Meals with Mindy”.
The campaign was targeted towards working and stay-at-home mothers.
Some key takeaways from this include the:
- Focus of the campaign: On promoting how convenient and easy home cooking can be with HelloFresh.
- Promotion: Working moms were encouraged to effortlessly improve their mealtime schedules, with HelloFresh’s recipe cards, personalized grocery shopping, meal prepping, and much more.
- Result: The campaign was well-received by mothers all over the world. So much so, that each episode had over 200k views.
5. Fiji Water: Bodyworewhat
Between 2017–2018, Fiji, a popular brand of bottled water, partnered with Danielle Bernstein for an influencer marketing campaign.
Danielle is an American fashion designer and the founder of the fashion brand and blog WeWoreWhat.
Key takeaways from this campaign include:
- Objective: The campaign was created to showcase Fiji’s commitment to hydrating followers who wanted to look and feel just as fit as Danielle.
- Content: workout videos of Bernstein and her personal trainer Eric Johnson, and photoshoots.
- Result: The campaign received a total of over 280,000 likes on all posts made with the hashtag #bodyworewhat.
6. Kaikatsu Club: NETCafe VR
Have you ever seen an influencer marketing campaign for a VR video game?
This is exactly what Kaikatsu Club, the No. 1 comic and internet cafe in Japan, set to achieve with its campaign.
Enaka, a Japanese professional cosplayer, video game lover, voice actress, and singer, partnered with Kaikatsu Club, to launch their virtual reality feature.
Some key takeaways to consider are:
- Objective: the campaign was to raise awareness around the new feature.
- Tagline: Customers were told that they could play various VR video games while enjoying a drink or a meal.
- Result: Since Japan has the third-largest number of gamers in the world, this campaign was pleasantly received in the country. The YouTube video, uploaded by TimeLine Japan, gained 18,000 views.
7. American Express Ft Shaquille O’Neal
Popularly known as “Shaq”, the former professional basketball player partnered with American Express in a non-conventional marketing strategy.
The objective of this marketing campaign was to help support black-owned businesses for the space of four years.
To do this, Shaquille O’Neal was selected, due to his dedicated and committed passion towards helping small business owners succeed in the community through grants and sponsorships.
The result of this campaign? It generated over 9Ok likes, 440 comments, and earned American Express a large following across all their social media platforms.
8. UberEats, Chipotle, Hinge Ft Rebel Wilson
At a time when people were looking for a fun escape from boredom, 3 huge brands (UberEats, Chipotle, Hinge) teamed up and collaborated with Rebel Wilson.
Key takeaways to note:
- Campaign format: Hinge users were treated to a fantastic deal of $20 off every three orders made on Chipotle, and delivered via Uber Eats.
- Result: The campaign not only boosted sales, but also significantly increased brand awareness. As seen in the image above, Rebel Wilson’s paid partnership campaign video successfully garnered over 1.2 million views.
- Added bonus: Uber Eats selected 10 lucky customers to receive dating advice from none other than Rebel Wilson.
9. H&M: Fall Studio Collection
H&M has always had a reputation for forming partnerships with women whose style reflects the brand’s voice.
And in 2017, fall never looked better than with successful influencer Julie Sariñana rocking one of H&M’s perfect Fall collections.
Julie is a lifestyle and fashion blogger, with currently 7.7M followers on her Instagram personal blog account.
In the image above, we can see that her post had over 64,000 likes, excluding comments and shares.
These examples show that with the right campaign objectives and strategies, launching a successful influencer marketing campaign is highly achievable.
It’s Your Turn to Build Successful Campaigns
You can run a successful marketing campaign just like in all the examples we’ve seen.
Remember that the benefits far outway the challenges you might encounter.
Begin by defining your brand values, choose your metrics, and find the right influencers for your campaign.
Are you ready to start your journey?
Boost your marketing efforts by signing up with Insense today.
Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)
Do you have questions?
We've got answers!
Below are answers to your frequently asked questions around influencer marketing.
Q1. What are the 4 Ps of influencer marketing?
The 4 Ps of influencer marketing are:
- Product
- Price
- Place
- Promotion
Q2. What are the 3 Rs of influencer marketing?
The 3 Rs of influencer marketing are:
- Relevance
- Reach
- Resonance
Q3. How does influencer marketing differ from traditional marketing?
The main difference between influencer marketing and traditional marketing is that influencer marketing focuses more on using social media channels as a tool for advertising.
Q4. How much do influencer marketing campaigns cost?
The cost of influencer marketing campaigns differ according to various factors, such as the type of influencer and the type of campaign.
Read this comprehensive guide on influencer marketing pricing to learn more.
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