Boost Your Brand with Effective Brand Awareness Influencer Marketing

To an outsider, the success of influencer marketing might be chalked up to obviously tangible goals, like product discovery, improved SEO efforts, or higher conversions. But in today’s saturated digital marketplace, brand awareness is the precursor to achieving your brand’s performance-marketing goals and influencer marketing is the right tool for the job.

Understanding influencer marketing

According to eMarketer’s influencer marketing guide, spending on influencer marketing rose nearly 3.5 times faster than spending on social ads last year. Marketers understand consumers are constantly flooded with branded content and ads on social media. To cut through the noise, brands pair up with content creators whose followers fall under the same umbrella target audience.

Influencer marketing is especially effective because consumers trust the influencers they follow, especially niche and non-celebrity creators. By simply allowing influencers to share information authentically and largely unaffected by corporate influence, brands earn trust, followers, and sales.

While well-known brands may have the budget to partner with celebrities and mega-influencers (those with 1 million-plus followers) to cast a wide net with reach, it’s not necessarily the most cost-effective tactic.

Working with individual (or groups of) nano- and micro-influencers can boost brand awareness among more targeted audiences and for far less of a blow to your marketing budget. Think of it as a realtor spending $1 million to mail a new home listing to everyone in the city vs. spending $1,000 on an influencer who runs a local page for renters actively looking to buy a home.

With a trusted creator engaging a targeted audience at a fraction of the cost, you’d be hard-pressed to find a better tactic, especially when influencer content is boosted with targeted ads.

The role of influencers in brand awareness

Influencers can help increase a brand’s visibility in several ways, whether by sharing something on their own social media accounts or the brand’s channels. The key to success isn’t necessarily related to where—or even what—is shared. It’s about the creator’s perceived authenticity and the trust that has been developed with their audience.

IZEA’s 2025 Trust in Influencer Marketing report found that 77% of respondents prefer content created by social media influencers over scripted advertising from marketing professionals, and 85% of social media users trust sponsored posts from influencers more than celebrities.

Influencers can enhance brand awareness in many types of collaborations, not just sponsored content. These include:

Product seeding: Gift influencers with a product and ask them to review it in a natural way if they like it.
Giveaways: An influencer-hosted giveaway can involve asking followers to share their post, tag friends, and follow your brand on social media to be entered into the drawing.
Social takeover: Allow an influencer to post on one of your brand’s social channels for a day. Encourage them to promote specific products, create a tutorial, review features and benefits, answer questions, or showcase various ways to use or wear your products.
Live streaming: Enlist the help of an influencer to interview employees and customers in your brick-and-mortar store during a big event.
Contests: Creators can ask their followers to submit their photos, videos, or conceptual ideas (e.g., “Name our new line!”) in the comments for a chance to win a prize.
Brand ambassador program: Launching a brand ambassador program provides a way for more influencers to earn income (or free products) while raising awareness about your brand.

How to harness the power of influencers for brand awareness

The right influencer for your awareness campaign will have an engaged, loyal following that aligns with your brand’s target audience.

Influencer discovery

Although you can start by looking at your brand’s online followers to see if any loyalists fit the bill, that can be time-consuming. Instead, reach out to an influencer marketing agency or use an influencer marketing tool to discover and vet content creators. Using criteria such as platform, engagement, language, price, niche, location, and experience, among others, you can narrow down your search quickly.

Build a relationship

Once you’ve worked with influencers, you’ll want to continue building your relationship with them for future campaigns. To create a sense of intimacy with these brand ambassadors, you’ll want to develop an open line of communication, remain forthright with their performance metrics, demonstrate that you care about the person as an individual—not just as an advertising outlet, and pay on time.

Measuring the success of influencer marketing campaigns

How do you measure the success of influencer marketing campaigns when the goal is to raise brand awareness? Start with these key performance indicators:

Engagement (likes, comments, shares, saves)
Brand mentions
Brand search volume
Share of voice on social media
Website traffic
Backlinks
Earned media

Any brand that plans to scale its influencer marketing efforts should invest in tools to help them track and analyze campaign results. Whether you choose software, an influencer marketing platform, or outsourced influencer marketing management, your team won’t be wasting time on manual information-gathering.

The future of influencer marketing and brand awareness

To stay atop of trends, predictions, and changes in the influencer marketing landscape, consider subscribing to industry journals, magazines, and newsletters. Follow leading martech companies and thought leaders on LinkedIn to stay updated on all things influencer marketing.

When it comes to brand awareness, your marketing team can push out all the ads and branded content it wants, but it still won’t compare to the power of influencer marketing. By harnessing the authenticity, trust, and audience attention that comes from content created and shared by real people, you’ll stand out from the competition.

If you’re not already using influencer marketing as part of your marketing strategy, you’re behind the curve. Make this the year you learn how to do it well and gradually scale your efforts to boost your visibility with new audiences.