Influential people swaying consumer trends is a phenomenon that far predates social media, but the modern interpretation of the word “influencer” didn’t fully emerge until the 21st century. When the social media of today began to take shape in the early 2000s, it provided a new outlet for individuals to create a personal brand and garner a following through things like blogging, YouTube channels, Instagram and more.
The global influencer marketing market size was just $1.7 billion a decade ago in 2015, and when the COVID-19 pandemic hit five years ago in 2020, it had grown to $9.7 billion. Today’s lofty $32 billion market size (2025) now dwarfs these figures from just a few years ago.
Businesses of all sizes and industries are realizing the benefits that influencer marketing has to offer, and many have incorporated extensive influencer campaigns into their marketing flows. As effortless as these collaborations may appear on a social media feed, there’s a lot of work that goes on behind the scenes. Let’s break down what influencer marketing is and how it works so you can decide if collaborating with influencers is right for your business.
In this post:
What is influencer marketing?
Influencers are people with a significant social media following and who typically have some level of prestige or sway within a particular industry. Though celebrities themselves are considered a kind of macro influencer, the term “influencer” typically refers to less famous people with fewer social media followers. In fact, it’s the more “normal,” and like-minded nature of many influencers that can make their influence seem more trustworthy to other users.
Influencer marketing refers to the collaboration between brands and influencers to achieve specific marketing goals. This could include selling a specific product or service, increasing engagement, expanding customer reach and more. By leveraging the influencers’ following and clout, businesses can market themselves to specific audiences and increase their chances of obtaining conversions.
A business that sells all-natural, eco-friendly cleaning products might partner with an influencer who specializes in cleaning tips, or a parenting influencer who values child-safe household products. A luxury kitchen equipment brand may wish to partner with foodie influencers, celebrity chefs or established recipe bloggers. These are just a few examples of hypothetical collaborations between businesses and influencers that might be successful.
Partnerships between well-matched brands and influencers can be mutually beneficial. The influencer gives their audience the kind of content and recommendations they are looking for, and the business gets to expand their customer base and, hopefully, sell more products.
Though it may not be necessary for smaller businesses, many businesses utilize influencer management platforms to find influencers, manage their campaigns and track campaign outcomes across social media channels, including Instagram, YouTube, TikTok and more.
Examples of influencer marketing
The beauty of influencers is that they can help create a wide range of content—from long-form articles to pithy Instagram reels—that directs followers to your brand in the hopes of converting.
Here are just a few examples of how influencers could help boost your brand:
- Post a review of your product on their social media account(s)—such as a blog article, video review, Instagram post or something else—which may contain affiliate links
- Participate as a subject matter expert in a blog post or evergreen content on your website, which they can then repost and share on their website and social media accounts
- Host a webinar or video interview with someone from your business to discuss your business and brand
- Conduct a giveaway for a limited number of your business’s product(s)
- Provide followers with a promo code to receive a discount on your products or services
These collaborations can be one-time events or part of a longer-term marketing campaign. It all depends on what you’re looking for and the terms that you come up with for your partnerships.
Why should I collaborate with influencers?
Partnering with influencers can reap a myriad of benefits for just about any business:
- Target specific audiences with tailored brand messaging: Influencers typically have a specific audience that shares certain demographics, interests and behaviors. When you collaborate with influencers, you get the chance to target these groups and tailor your brand messaging accordingly, increasing your potential for conversions.
- Increase conversions: An influencer promoting your business can sway customers to engage with your brand and ultimately convert, whether that means buying your product or something else. Some common yet effective techniques that can drive conversions include having influencer giveaways, promo codes, live-streamed events and more.
- Build brand awareness and trust: The more influencers you can collaborate with, the more visible your brand is online. Regardless of whether potential customers convert right away, seeing influencers sponsor your brand builds trust in your business.
- Grow your social media presence: When you collaborate with influencers that tag your brand’s social media account(s) in their content, you increase the chance of gaining more social media followers of your own.
How to find influencers for collaboration
Influencer management tools can help you find influencers and identify potential matches for your brand, but they aren’t an absolute necessity.
Search for influencers that align with your brand
Whether or not you use a tool to assist you, it’s important to search for influencers with careful consideration. Reaching out to just anyone isn’t going to result in the best collaborations. Your first step is to find influencers that align with your brand.
As you begin to identify potential influencers to work with, consider some of the following questions to help discern whether they might be a good match:
- What is this influencer’s target audience? Does their target audience and your intended customers overlap?
- Does your brand or product make sense for this influencer to have on their page?
- How engaged are this influencer’s followers?
- What is this influencer’s tone and style? Does this complement or conflict with your brand’s tone?
- Has this influencer promoted similar products and services to the ones you’re proposing?
Locate their contact information and pitch your proposal
Most influencers have contact information readily available on their social media pages. They might, for example, state in an Instagram bio that you should direct message them if you’re hoping to work together. Others may display an email address or link to a contact form. If you’re unable to figure out how they want to be contacted, you can always try direct messaging their social accounts.
From there, you should send them a message that pitches your brand, product, marketing goals and why you think the influencer would be a good fit for collaboration. In addition, a pitch should generally include:
- Description of what product or service you’re trying to promote, and how you want it promoted (e.g. a product review, a live-streamed webinar, blog article, etc.)
- Why you think your product will be useful and relevant to their audience
- Anticipated launch date and timeline
- Budget
- Tone and style guidelines, if applicable
Once a proposal has been accepted, you should probably send them a more formal brief that expands on the above information in more detail and provides some creative suggestions to help them get started.
Establish a reporting and follow-up plan
Once an influencer has accepted a project, it’s important to establish a clear roadmap for how the results of the campaign will be monitored and reported. Will they provide reporting metrics directly to you? Or will you collect this data yourself? Some influencers may not have the time or resources to report on the results of their campaign, while others do. Getting on the same page as early as possible will help mitigate confusion and missed expectations.
You should also establish a clear plan for the more immediate next steps. Are there certain deliverables you need to provide to the influencer so they can get started? How can they reach you if they have questions throughout the process? When should they send you the content drafts for approval? Keeping the lines of communication open can help influencer campagins run as smoothly as possible.
Tips for managing influencer relationships
Consider some of the following strategies for maintaining positive and fruitful relationships with the influencers you choose to collaborate with:
- Conduct conscientious audience research: Just because an influencer may have a large following, that doesn’t automatically translate into conversions. Making sure that their audience aligns with your brand’s audience is just as, if not more, important. When finding influencers to collaborate with, pay more attention to their audience characteristics and level of engagement. A small but engaged following can be much more effective than a huge yet unengaged one.
- Communicate clear expectations: Unclear communication is often to blame when something doesn’t quite turn out the way we wanted. Be sure to set clear expectations with your influencers around content format, length, tone, style, budget, target audience, dos and don’ts, reporting requirements, deadlines and more.
- Provide thoughtful feedback: If a campaign didn’t convert the way you were hoping but you felt that the influencer followed through on your instructions, be open to providing thoughtful, constructive feedback for any future collaborations. Consider things like the content tone or format and work together to figure out if a different approach may be needed next time.
Final thoughts
For those who may not think of themselves as a social media whiz, the world of influencers and collaborations can seem daunting. But as influencer marketing continues to explode, businesses should at least consider whether teaming up with influencers could create some new value for their brand.
Luckily, initiating collaborations with influencers might be easier than you think. By keeping in mind some of these essential tips for influencer marketing success—finding influencers that align with your brand, establishing clear expectations for a campaign and more—you’ll be well on your way to success. And if you’re curious about how All Star Digital can boost your content marketing and social media marketing efforts, schedule a free consultation with us today.
