Successful Influencer Marketing Campaigns And Why They Work

If you’ve spent any time on social media, you already know the amazing variety of content you can find on various platforms. From influencers who create deep dives on current topics to those who make short comedy videos, there’s something for just about any taste.

Because of that variety, influencer marketing campaigns can be just as varied.

Brand influencer campaigns don’t fit one specific type of content and instead, they have to be adapted to fit the brand, the influencers, and the intended target audience.

Putting all these pieces together can open up a lot of possibilities for creative marketers. But it also can create a lot of opportunities to make the wrong move and end up with a campaign that misses the mark or its intended purpose.

In this guide, we’ll take you through the most common influencer marketing campaign types and explain what situations they work best in. We’ll also cover real-world examples of highly successful influencer marketing campaigns that you can use as inspiration.

What Is An Influencer Marketing Campaign?

An influencer marketing campaign is a strategy where your brand partners with different influencers to achieve a specific business goal.

The key aspect of a brand influencer campaign is that it has a specified intention. For example, some influencer campaigns are created to drive direct sales of a product. In these campaigns, different influencers will usually offer a direct link to buy the product along with a special incentive, such as a discount.

Other campaigns may not be interested in direct sales and instead aim to build brand awareness. These campaigns need a different strategy and the marketing team behind them will measure different metrics to determine whether or not the campaign was successful.

One thing every successful influencer marketing campaign has in common is that it starts with a clearly defined goal. The rest of the campaign, from the influencers to the detailed content briefs, is designed around achieving that goal.

Understanding The Different Influencer Marketing Campaign Types

Most influencer campaigns will fall into one of the following distinct categories. There can be some overlap between these categories depending on the goals of the campaign and other factors.

Giveaways Or Contest Campaigns

Engagement is one of the key aspects of influencer marketing campaigns and it’s what makes them so successful.

One way to drive higher engagement is through a giveaway or contest of some kind. With these, the audience generally needs to engage with the influencer’s content in one way or another to receive a product.

Usually, this is through commenting on a post, following a link, or performing some other action that creates engagement.

This helps the user spend more time with the post and interacting with the campaign, but it also helps the influencer’s content perform better on the social media platform.

Most social media algorithms reward increased engagement with extra exposure and reach. So giveaways can help both audience engagement and help the post perform better across the platform.

In some cases, giveaways and content can require the audience to share the post across their own accounts, which can help extend the reach as well.

Overall, giveaways and contests work best for brand awareness, launching a new product, or introducing your product to a new market.

The key is to create these campaigns using a fun and exciting motivator to get the audience engaged. 

Sponsored Influencer Posts

Sponsored posts are generally designed to create direct sales. Sponsored posts can take on several forms, with the most popular being a brand simply sponsors a piece of content the influencer would normally create.

For example, a beauty influencer who creates make-up tutorials would have a post sponsored by a cosmetics brand. The influencer may announce the sponsorship at the beginning or during the video to drive followers to the sponsor’s channel or website.

Sponsored posts are best when you want direct sales or sign-ups from customers. The goal is to increase sales or leads for your product or service.

Sponsored posts do have some overlap with brand awareness campaigns, but this is secondary to the primary purpose.

Collaborations

Collaboration can be a powerful way to build a relationship with an influencer that extends beyond the campaign.

Collaborations generally involve the influencer creating a specific version of your product. For example, a brand that makes video game accessories may partner with a gaming influencer to create a limited-edition gaming product.

These campaigns are more complex than most other influencer campaign types. They do require a good deal of planning and cooperation to create and execute the right collaborative product.

But there are ways to be creative with this technique on a smaller scale. For example, a local food truck could partner with a local influencer to come up with a secret menu option or “menu hack” based on the influencer’s style and preferences.

This is a simple and inexpensive way to engage the influencer’s audience while creating brand awareness and brand loyalty.

There’s really no limit to collaboration campaigns and they allow for maximum creativity between the influencer and the brand.

Review Content

Review posts or unboxing videos can be longer-form videos or short TikTok videos depending on the nature of the product or service being promoted.

One positive aspect of these reviews is the longevity of the post after the campaign has ended. When potential customers search for a specific product, it’s not unusual for sponsored review posts to be among the top results.

So these campaigns can have benefits long after they end, which adds value and helps to increase the overall ROI.

This type of campaign requires detailed briefs so the influencer understands the product and how it works. A lack of communication between the brand and influencer can lead to incomplete or inaccurate reviews, which could end up harming the overall campaign performance.

Because these campaigns can last for so long and be featured in search results, special care should be taken during the campaign creation to get the best results possible.

3 Successful Influencer Marketing Campaigns

#ReadyToimPRESS

High-end press-on nail brand imPress worked with influencer marketing agency HireInfluence to create a brand awareness campaign for their line of press-on manicures and falsies.

The strategy was to partner with luxury fashion influencers who aligned with the imPress brand.

Key Metrics

• 15.4 million impressions
• 9.8 million reach
• 14.3 million video views
• 25.38% engagement rate

Key Strategies

• Careful selection of influencers to align with the core audience of female GenZ and Millennial customers

• Launched campaign during New York Fashion Week to take advantage of the increased interest, hashtags, and traffic around fashion topics.

• Content was focused on influencers applying the nails and commenting on their unique selling points, such as color, style, varieties, and ease of use.

• The goal was direct sales with a CTA (call-to-action) that drove customers to the imPress website and social media channels.

#Grammarly

HireInfluence recently partnered with Grammarly for a six-month campaign that featured some of the most prominent tech influencers as well as NCAA athletes, and lifestyle influencers.

Key Metrics

• 214 million impressions
• 23.5 million reach
• 33.1 million video views
• 133 total influencers

Key Strategies

• With such a high number of influencers, curation and management of each influencer and content brief were critical to the overall success of the campaign.

• Each influencer demonstrated the product in real-world situations that helped with school, work, or other tasks involving critical writing skills.

• The overall variety of influencers helped demonstrate how Grammarly can help in many different situations and work settings, which helped drive downloads of their free software option.

#OREOShamROCKout

McDonald’s approached HireInfluence with the goal of creating a campaign to increase awareness of their new and exclusive OREO Shamrock Shake.

HireInfluence decided that using a smaller number of total influencers would help maintain the authenticity of the campaign which features the influencer’s initial reaction to tasting the OREO Shamrock Shake for the first time.

Key Metrics

• 1.7 million impressions
• 298K engagements
• $.06 CPE
• 3 influencers

Key Strategies

• Careful curation of top foodie and lifestyle influencers to match the campaign’s messaging and promote the excitement of two beloved food brands coming together for a limited time collab.

• Strong focus on the spring season messaging allowing influencers to showcase spring fashion elements along with the Oreo Shamrock Shake’s refreshing combination of flavors.

• Authentic reactions to tasting the Oreo Shamrock Shake helped to drive customers to try the new offering for themselves.

How To Apply These Successful Strategies To Your Campaigns

While these campaigns involved many popular brands and top-tier influencers, the same strategies can be used for any successful influencer marketing campaign.

A common thread through each of these influencer marketing examples is the careful planning of the campaign to align with the brand’s goals.

Whether it was to drive direct sales or create brand awareness, the campaign revolved around these goals and was key to driving such high engagement numbers and a strong ROI.

Next was the careful curation of each influencer. This is critical to maintain positive metrics and ensures that the campaign’s messaging resonates with the influencer’s audience.

Finally, there was the execution which made sure the content and publishing schedules met all requirements. This includes making sure the partner influencers get any products or briefs well ahead of time in case there are any questions or issues that come up.

Overall, experience plays a major role in creating successful campaigns like this. But by carefully defining your campaign goals and planning the right campaign type, you can achieve amazing results for your brand.