How Influencers Help Brands: 5 Examples for Inspiration

With creative skills and a trusted audience at the ready, influencers can help brands in many ways. From creating promotional content to supporting your marketing team, take a look at how influencer collaborations can elevate your brand: 

Influencers advertise products in a natural way

One of the reasons consumers gravitate toward influencers is because they’re real people with real lives and experiences. Their authenticity is appealing to customers and a powerful tool for brands. 

When a brand collaborates with an influencer, the sponsored content is perceived more as a recommendation from a friend rather than an advertisement. Considering that 93% of consumers trust friends’ recommendations, influencer marketing is an effective way to promote products.

When NYX Cosmetics, a professional makeup brand, wanted to promote two new products, it collaborated with U.K. beauty influencer Isabelle Kate. In the content, fans saw how the products can be incorporated into a new trend called double glossing. 

The short product demo is a natural ad from a trusted beauty influencer, making it resonate with customers.

Influencers expand your reach

When influencers endorse your product or service on their channel, they’re helping your brand reach a new audience. You get a chance to introduce your brand and products to a fresh set of eyes, and by doing so, you’re connecting with future customers and even loyalists. 

Using influencer marketing to expand reach is common, but it’s most effective when you work with the right influencer. Finding the right creator to work with is paramount to the success of your campaign, which means you should invest a fair amount of time finding, vetting, and communicating with potential candidates before any collaboration begins. 

More specifically, check an influencer’s:

• Niche
• Audience demographics  
• Engagement rate
• Previous posts
• Previous sponsored content

Doing your due diligence will maximize your reach to a well-defined target audience that aligns with yours. 

In this example, Jasmine Camble, known as oneflymama on Instagram, shows how she loves pairing Silk with Kellogg’s cereal. In the video and caption, she asks her followers whether they prep their kids’ meals daily and shows how her children love to enjoy the cereal and Silk. 

Influencers help brands participate in events and moments

By working with influencers, brands can participate in cultural moments, events and other occasions without needing to sponsor the event itself. Influencers act as a bridge between the brand and the audience, providing a more authentic and relatable connection. They can generate buzz, create content, and drive conversations around these events, ultimately promoting the brand’s visibility and engagement. This approach not only saves brands a significant amount of money but also allows them to reach their target audience more organically and effectively.

An example is asking an influencer to interview athletes participating in a sporting event like the Olympics. Former athlete Kylie Kelce shared a video with U.S. field hockey players Ashley Sessa and Kelee LePage in partnership with NBC Philadelphia. 

Influencers improve your shot of going viral

Going viral isn’t easy, but if you’re trying to play the odds, it’s more likely to happen with influencer content than it is for brand content. While brand content can be fun and innovative and go viral, influencer-generated content has a better chance of blowing up because of its authenticity. 

When Polycam, a 3D scanning app, wanted to promote its coolest features, it contacted visual effects expert Goran Kraljevic Koehler. Through the collaboration, Goran used Polycam to make a stunning animation of himself exploding into rocks, which he shared on Instagram. It’s this kind of creativity that can help a brand go viral:

Influencers can support marketing teams

Many brands opt for long-term relationships with influencers. Some brands launch brand ambassador programs with dozens of influencers, while others might consistently work with two or three influencers. Regardless of the number of creators you work with, they can support your marketing team with additional efforts in time. 

For instance, influencers make great beta testers. Ask them to try a product out and gather their feedback. Ask them their thoughts on a logo change or a new website. Invite them to marketing events or ask them to speak on a panel. Influencers can become valued team members, even if they’re not in the office daily.

Lululemon has a well-known brand ambassador program. The brand works with a team of influencers to promote products and share health and fitness advice, but the brand leans on its ambassadors for other things, too. Influencers try out new apparel and are asked to weigh in on things like which “throwback prints” should be revived and sold during flash sales, like this one:

Influencers are more than just content creators. They have a bevy of skills that your brand can utilize, and with a long-term relationship, the assistance you’ll gain from influencers will only grow.  

Influencers:

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Marketers:

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