Influencer marketing campaigns are fast becoming an accepted business practice. It’s typically a simple, straightforward transaction that, if done right, should get you fast results.
If you’re interested in trying out this fresh and highly effective marketing strategy for yourself, take inspiration from ten real-world examples we’ve gathered.
Check out how various brands have boosted their campaigns through influencer marketing, and how this benefited them.
1. How Sony Reached Over 17 million Users Through Their Product Marketing Campaign
- Goal: Sony wanted to create hype to market its new product: the Xperia Z5s smartphone.
- Action Plan: Get fast traction by leveraging Instagram influencers. They focused on the best feature of the phone (the camera) by showcasing its zoom potential through real photos. They then partnered with influencers to share a variety of those images. To drive shares and extend their reach, they put in a secret code in each of the photos that users can redeem to take part in a contest.
- Results: This whole influencer marketing campaign ended up reaching over 17 million users.
- Takeaway: Highlight the best feature of your product to focus the influencer marketing campaign on a strong selling point. Then add some engagement device like a contest to incentivize people to get involved.
2. What It Took for Glossier To Reach 10 Million Views A Month
- Goal: Glossier wanted to build their influencer marketing campaign by focusing on fans and influencers that have smaller followings.
- Action Plan: When most people think influencer marketing, they feel that they have to seek out influencers that have tens of thousands of followers on social media. But Glossier proves that working with the little guys can go a long way. Instead of striking a deal with big influencers, the beauty company.
- Results: This grassroots approach made it easier for them to get the momentum for their small startup. The buzz around their products started growing through word of mouth. Eventually, the brand managed to translate this buzz into 10 million views a month.
- Takeaways: The idea here is to start out on the smaller scale with your fans and customers. Don’t dismiss influencers that have small followings. Once you get momentum going, you can leverage your buzz to strike deals with more prominent influencers.
3. How A Four Minute Skit For The Walking Dead Got 13 Million Views
Goal: Many companies feel like they need to drive the entire marketing campaign when it comes to working with influencers. However, influencers often have a better idea of what kind of content to create for their followers. The successful show, The Walking Dead, decided to promote their show through a downloadable app.
Action Plan: They reached out to some of the biggest YouTubers in the game. Instead of making the decisions for these influencers, they let them take the wheel.
Results: The results? The influencers got together and created a four-minute skit that resulted in almost 13 million views.
Takeaways: The lesson here is that influencers have a better understanding of who their audience is and what kind of content is appealing to them. Collaborate with influencers in the right channel but allow the influencers freedom to create unique content for their specific audiences.
4. How Fiji Water’s Content-Driven Campaign Led To Success
Goal: To many users, influencer marketing campaigns can be off-putting because many of them are downright ads that offer little or no value. So instead of doing what most brands do, Fiji Water decided to partner with blogger Danielle Bernstein to create a content-driven campaign.
Action Plan: They created workout videos with the blogger and a personal trainer to design an influencer marketing campaign around fitness. Many in the industry call this type of campaign “branded content,” and it works well when the product aligns with relevant content.
Results: By offering a significant discount for their water delivery service, they drove direct sales as well as promoted their brand.
Takeaways: The lesson here is to come up with creative branded content that adds value to your followers.
5. How Discount Codes Converted Into 15,000 For OshKosh B’Gosh
Goal: When OshKosh B’Gosh wanted to generate more customers, buzz, and sales, they came up with a simple campaign to run during the upcoming spring break.
Action Plan: They partnered with over 70 bloggers and started to promote a discount code for 25% off.
Results: The influencer marketing campaign did very well and resulted in over 15,000 engagements, hundreds of shares, and many new sales/customers for the brand.
Takeaways: The lesson here is to work with the right influencers whose followers are also your target audience. If you can find a proper timing to run your campaign (like a holiday or special event), it will enhance the results of your influencer marketing campaign. You also need to make sure that the discount code is enticing. People will be less likely to act on a 10 to 15 percent off code than a 25 to 50 percent off promotion.
6. Dorot’s Winning Influential Marketing Campaign With Tutorial Based Promotion
Goal: When companies start to experiment with influencer marketing campaigns, they often wonder how they can promote their products and services without being pushy. A good tactic to use is to demonstrate how a product or service works.
Action Plan: In this example, a food company Dorot got influencers to create recipes using their chopped herb blends. To top it off, Dorot decided to add a $1 discount code to get readers to take action.
Results: Each blogger created a recipe and tutorial on how to use the products for their readers.
Takeaways: The takeaway is pretty clear. Instead of talking how great your product or service is, demonstrate how it works. Come up with valuable content that incorporates your product or service which communicates the value of your product far better than a standard promotion.
7. How 50,000 Likes Resulted From The Body Shop’s Massive Giveaways
- Goal: Even smaller brands operating eCommerce stores can get excellent results by using influencer marketing campaigns correctly. The Body Shop, a vegetarian based beauty company, decided to promote their new product line through a simple giveaway.
- Action Plan: They got in touch with the influencers in Belgium to promote their giveaway through a collection of photos. The idea was to get local users to share the social posts using hashtags. All users had to do to enter the product line giveaway was make a post with the hashtag #HealthyMoment.
- Results: The influencer marketing campaign resulted in over 50,000 likes and more Belgian based followers for their social media pages.
- Takeaways: The takeaway here is to make it easy for users to enter your contest or giveaway and base it around a simple hashtag that becomes an efficient method to establish brand awareness. It will also help if you target specific influencers (in this case, Belgium based) to reach the right audience.
8. Major Brand Visibility From BoxedWater’s ReTree Project
- Goal: BoxedWater is a company that sells water in environmentally friendly packaging. So, it was only natural that they build an influencer marketing campaign around an environmental cause. In this case, they partnered up with the National Forest Foundation to promote their ReTree Project.
- Action Plan: The project aimed to plant two trees for every photo that was posted by users on Instagram. If you can tie your brand to a relevant cause, then you can leverage it to extend your brand’s reach.
- Results: In BoxedWater’s example, their environmentally focused influencer marketing campaign brought about the support of many celebrity names.
- Takeaways: It tapped into the altruistic nature of people. All users had to do was post a photo and a hashtag in order for two new trees to get planted under the project.
9. How DJ Khaled Helped With Stride Gum’s Buzzworthy Celebrity Takeover
- Goal: One of the best ways to generate buzz around your brand is to attach yourself to a popular celebrity.
- Action Plan: In this example, Stride Gum decided to reach out to famous hip-hop producer, DJ Khaled. The partnership made sense because DJ Khaled has a large and responsive following on Snapchat. But instead of the standard approach where a celebrity endorses a brand, they decided to make the campaign unique. DJ Khaled would regularly takeover Stride Gum’s Snapchat page. The takeovers included everything from interviews and fun conversations.
- Results: The influencer marketing campaign resulted in his followers coming to Stride Gum’s Snapchat page to join in on the event.
- Takeaways: Many brands can use the same takeover feature available on Instagram and Snapchat to force the influencer’s followers to come to their social media page.
10. How Nikon and SXSW’s Strategic Partnership Turned Into A Branding Success
- Goal: A strategic partnership isn’t the first thing to come to mind when it comes to influencer marketing. However, the Nikon and SXSW’s collaboration is a perfect example of a perfectly executed partnership campaign.
- Action Plan: Nikon was the exclusive camera used for all the photos in the SXSW music event. All of the social media posts prominently mentioned the two brands, and they would also cross-promote each other on their social media accounts.
- Results: In short, they leveraged with the entire network between the two companies resulting in an even greater reach.
- Takeaways: Strategic partnerships also have another benefit. If a partner already is working with several influencers, your social media posts will also trickle down to their followers. You want to use this example to think about potential partners that you can work with and how you can complement each other through social media content.
These ten examples take a different approach on how to utilize influencers and are ones you can model for your marketing campaigns. It is also important to note that you should approach these influencers in the best possible manner to create trustworthy and lasting relationships. Whichever method you choose will depend on your company’s goals, but the important thing here is to focus on the details that have made these campaigns work successfully.
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