How to Run an Influencer Marketing Campaign

Influencer marketing has rapidly become a cornerstone of digital marketing, but not everyone agrees on its effectiveness. For some, influencers represent a new era of brand connection and social proof. For others, results can be hit-or-miss. This guide will answer common questions about influencer marketing, giving you a clear path to creating campaigns that resonate, engage, and convert.

1. Micro Versus Macro Influencers: What Type Would Best Represent My Brand?

The success of an influencer campaign starts with choosing the right influencers who genuinely reflect your brand values and appeal to your target audience. Here’s how to find a match:

Micro versus Macro Influencers

I get asked about this a lot and what I often tell my clients is that bigger does not equal better. It can actually be quite the opposite (as you’ll see from the below graph). When it comes to finding the ‘right influencers’ (ie. who have the right community, attention and messaging), it is simply about under-priced versus over-priced attention. There are influencers that may charge $1000 that are too expensive and ones that charge $100K that are a steal. It all depends on the fit, the brand and the objectives. It’s about making sure the value for money equates for the businesses main objectives. Mainly working with small and medium businesses, the general rule of thumb would be to go after many micro and nano influencers, doing these campaigns more frequently rather than going after big influencers who may or may not deliver. You do not want to put all your eggs in one influencer basket.

Influencer Audience Alignment

Look for influencers whose followers align with your customer demographic. For a hotel marketing campaign, an influencer with a following interested in travel or luxury experiences is ideal, while a gym might benefit from fitness-focused influencers. Don’t stop at the surface though—go deeper with your audience segments (ie. the specific clientele you service). Bucket them into different different avatars and get very specific. For example with a gym, you might bucket them into “Males, ages 20-24 who like body-building and personalized workouts” or “a single mother female, aged 25-35 who only has 45 min to maximize her output in a class setting”. The devil is in the details!

Engagement Over Follower Count

Engagement rates often matter more than the total number of followers. High engagement indicates an influencer’s audience is active, engaged, and more likely to take action on recommendations. Beyond just vanity numbers, you want to make sure you relate to who the influencer is and how authentic they are. If they have trust with their audience, they tend to garner more engagement and influence. Make sure you are really getting to know the influencers you work with and understand what they stand for and who they are as individuals to gain better insight on the type of people who would follow and trust them.

In the below graph, you can see a significant ROI increase as the Influencer gets “smaller”:

2. How Do I Find Influencers?

There are several methods to discover and vet influencers effectively:

Use Influencer Platforms and Tools

Platforms like Upfluence, AspireIQ, and Influencity allow you to search influencers by niche, audience demographics, and engagement rate, streamlining the discovery process. However, I tell most of my clients to keep a running list of people who you come across, are engaging with your brand already or are working with similar businesses where you tend to be drawn to their content.

Check for Authentic Engagement

Review influencers’ past posts to ensure they have authentic engagement, not just likes and comments from bots or spam accounts. Look for genuine interactions and discussions within their posts. Yes, this will take some work and effort—welcome to running a business ;)

3. Which Social Media Platforms Should I Focus On?

Choosing the right platform is essential, as each serves different purposes and audiences. Depending on your individual resources, you may want to narrow it down where ever you can be consistent. Eventually you want to be every where your audience exists, but due to limited time and resources, you may have to pick your poison. The general rule of thumb is to pick the 1 or 2 highest-yielding platforms where your type of audience engages on — ie. LinkedIn + Youtube for b2b content and IG + TikTok for b2c.

Instagram and TikTok

Instagram and TikTok are ideal for visually oriented industries like hospitality, wellness, and fitness. These platforms support high engagement through photos, short videos, and reels. Younger generations lean on these platforms over ‘search engines’ to discovering the latest hotspots or places to try out. More of an “impulse buy” scenario.

LinkedIn and YouTube

LinkedIn is great for B2B content, while YouTube allows influencers to produce longer-form videos, perfect for service-based businesses like physiotherapy or personal training. Both linkedIn and Youtube is great for In-Depth Content when you want to explain things in longer formats. YouTube is especially great for this for things like “how-tos”, “industry commentary" and anything that will allow people to get to know who you are and what your expertise is.

4. Will Influencer Marketing Work for My Product or Service?

Influencer marketing is not technically a new concept. What’s new in recent years, emerging in the last decade is that “regular people” have become the source for so many people to consume content. It’s no longer that we depend on celebrity endorsements. I think this is because we can relate to a fellow peer much more than we can relate to celebrities. All the big brands used influencer marketing—it just came in the form of celebrities and athletes — these were the only people (pre-social media) that were in the media and prominently displayed for us to look up to as “role models”.

Test with Small Campaigns

If you’re unsure, consider a pilot campaign with micro-influencers who cater to your niche. This allows you to gauge results without a large investment. Be very clear of what your objectives are and make sure to clearly define your main KPIs. It’s important to know what success looks like as well as the learnings from any sub-par “results”.

Audience Interest and Demand

When planning an influencer marketing campaign, start by observing the landscape around you. Look at what similar businesses are doing, especially those that have run successful influencer campaigns. Study these campaigns to identify patterns and extract valuable data and learnings—such as the types of influencers they partnered with, the content formats that performed best, and the overall engagement rates. This analysis can provide insights into what resonates with your target audience and what strategies are likely to yield the best results.

In addition to studying competitors, analyze your existing audience. Dive into your social media analytics or survey your followers to see if they already engage with influencers in your industry. Are they following or interacting with relevant content creators? This can be a strong indicator of whether influencer marketing will resonate with them. If you notice a significant overlap between your audience and an influencer’s followers, it’s a clear sign that collaborating with such influencers could amplify your reach and align well with your brand goals.

5. How Will I Measure the Success of an Influencer Campaign?

Setting clear KPIs (Key Performance Indicators) from the beginning will allow you to measure the effectiveness of your campaign.

Engagement Metrics

Track likes, shares, comments, and saves to measure audience engagement. These metrics can reveal the level of interest generated by the campaign on a basic surface level. Then go a step deeper to actually read the comments and feedback for how the audience responded to the messaging. Sometimes the most subtle comments can provide valuable insights.

Conversions and Sales

If the goal is to drive sales, use trackable links or unique promo codes to measure conversions. For local businesses, track increased bookings or foot traffic following a campaign. I don’t recommend doing sales campaigns right off the bat if you have never run any organic social content or influencer campaigns in the past. If you don’t already have trust or a foundation of content, this might come across as too promotional. Again, it highly depends on the time of product or service you offer.

Brand Awareness

For awareness-focused campaigns, measure reach and impressions to see how many people were exposed to your brand. Brand awareness campaigns are very hard to measure and often results do not come overnight. It can take months or years to reap the rewards of brand awareness campaigns, but this is an essential strategy to building your business online.

6. What Should the Content Strategy and Deliverables Be?

The best campaigns have well-defined deliverables and a cohesive content strategy.

Define Your Content Requirements

Be specific about the type of content you want—Instagram posts, TikTok videos, YouTube reviews, etc. Provide influencers with brand guidelines but allow full creative freedom for authentic content. It has to be natural to that influencers style and voice.

Develop a Content Calendar

Plan content frequency and scheduling to free up space for creativity. For instance, a campaign for a new hotel opening might include daily posts for the first week, followed by regular updates. It’s better to outline this in the beginning when you’re in the “strategy development” phase. You can always adjust and tweak in real-time (which you should), as you receive data and feedback from publishing. Having a clearly defined calendar allows you to be organized, consistent and opens up the freedom and space for creativity around the content itself.

7. How Much Should I Budget for Influencer Marketing?

Budgeting can vary widely depending on influencer type and campaign scope. A general rule of thumb when it comes to influencer marketing is to test with 20% of overall marketing budget and once you have tested for a sufficient period or metrics, you can decide where it fits into your overall marketing mix. This really depends on the size of your business, for example restaurants & hotels, can likely get away with spending the majority of their marketing spend on social media, PR and influencer marketing. The same goes for certain consumer and lifestyle brands. You can build your whole business on the back of social media if done correctly.

8. What is a Fair Price to Pay an Influencer?

Pricing should reflect the influencer’s reach, engagement, and content quality. In addition to a flat fee, some brands offer affiliate programs or performance bonuses for sales driven by the influencer.

Budget Ranges by Influencer Tier

Here’s a very, very general range of what you can expect to pay influencers:

• Nano-influencers (1k-10k followers): Free -$100 per post.

• Micro-influencers (10k-100k followers): Free-$500 per post.

• Macro-influencers (100k-1M followers): $500-$10,000+ per post.

• Celebrity influencers (1M+ followers): $5,000++ per post.

9. How Do I Negotiate with Influencers?

Negotiating can help secure favorable terms without compromising campaign quality. It is essential that you clearly define all terms, content licensing, deliverables and timelines with every influencer campaign you run.

Be Transparent about Your Budget

Be upfront about your budget while allowing room for negotiation. Many influencers appreciate transparency and will work within reasonable limits if they align with your brand.

Be Clear about How you Will Use the Content

Be very clear and outline the terms of how you will be using the content in your marketing and over what timeline.

Give them Creative Freedom

You hired them for a reason. Let them be as creative as they like that fits their personal brand. You never know what will hit and the audience positviely responds to. This is also a huge opportunity for you to test so many creative ideas that you wouldn’t have been able to come up with in-house. As long as they adhere to you overall brand guidelines, do not put them in a box and force the creative messaging. This almost never performs well from my experience.

Offer Additional Value

Consider offering perks beyond payment, such as free products, brand exclusivity, or long-term partnership opportunities.

10. Should I Hire an Agency to Manage My Campaign?

Hiring an agency can simplify the process, especially if you’re new to influencer marketing. If you have the budget and don’t have the time, I would recommend hiring an agency.

Benefits of Using an Agency

Agencies bring expertise, connections, vetted influencer lists (they’ve already done the legwork) and insights over many many campaigns that can help streamline campaign execution. They can also handle influencer vetting, negotiations, and performance tracking, saving you a lot of time and potential costly missteps. They can also take on the contractual risks associated with content licensing. Make sure you are very clear with expectations, KPIs and deliverables when hiring any agency.

Choosing the Right Agency

Select an agency that has experience in your industry and a strong track record in influencer campaigns. Look for a partner who understands your brand and can customize a strategy to suit your needs.

Making Influencer Marketing Work for Your Business

Influencer marketing defintely does work—but the real question is: do you know how to make it work for your business? Success requires more than just picking popular creators. It demands a creative approach, testing different content with varied audiences, and tracking results with patience and precision. Like any marketing strategy, influencer campaigns can drive incredible results, but the key is tailoring them to your unique goals, audience, and business.