Top 5 Examples of Influencer Marketing to Make Your Brand Explode

Any time you swipe, click, or watch something online, you’re bound to see an influencer promoting their new favorite product.

Why?

Because it works.

People trust people- not companies.

Influencer content strikes customers as more genuine than marketing tactics coming straight from brands.

The exciting part?

You can take advantage of influencer marketing to grow your brand.

In this article, we are going to cover some examples of influencer marketing and how it can be integrated with your e-commerce marketing strategy.

ecommerce influencer marketing

The most common form of influencer marketing is sponsored content. This strategy involves paying an influencer to film a video, write a blog post, post a photo, or create a story about a specific product.

Your brand will supply the influencer with guidelines, such as certain product features they should mention. Though you want to ensure that your brand is represented appropriately, you should give the influencer creative freedom to control the content. The content needs to be authentic- or else it won’t come across as genuine to their following.

Let’s take a look at examples of influencer marketing through sponsored content.

Moon Mountain Man, an influencer whose Instagram feed boasts breathtaking travel photos, managed to produce over 13,000 likes and 250 comments on a sponsored post for the e-commerce brand Live a Great Story. Using the post as an opportunity to share photos of the company’s pillows, he captioned it with a creative story. Examples of influencer marketing like this one shows us that the content spoke to his audience because it reflected his style, ultimately positioning Live a Great Story as an attractive brand.

beauty influencers

Reviews

Reviews are a popular form of social media marketing, particularly on YouTube and IGTV.

As you might be aware, beauty influencers provide excellent examples of influencing marketing via reviews.

Essentially, you offer an influencer your product for free in exchange for their review. This kind of marketing is effective because it appears genuine, and consumers get an insider’s experience with a product before purchasing, increasing their confidence.

Just how well does it work, you ask?

YouTube creator Samantha Ravndahl created a video review of concealer for the cosmetics company Hourglass, which gained almost 200,000 views and over 1,000 comments.

The video was released in January, a week before the concealer hit stores. The success of this example of influencer marketing highlights the effectiveness behind creating hype prior to a product launch.

As you might have guessed, a review can get tricky. People love influencer content because it’s more genuine than traditional advertising. So, when a brand asks influencers to provide a review in exchange for free products, wouldn’t it come across as disingenuous?

Not quite. If the influencer has built trust with their audience, their followers will have confidence in the review’s authenticity.

Advice to keep in mind when asking for reviews:

The type of agreement you make with an influencer will have a major effect on the content they create and how well it’s received.

If you control the content by requiring the influencer to create a positive review, this may be a red flag to their audience, who will quickly detect the shift away from transparency. On the other hand, by failing to create guidelines, you might end up with a negative review. It’s important to strike a balance that will be beneficial to your brand, the influencer, and the influencer’s audience.

cake instagram posts

Platform Takeovers

A platform takeover is a unique example of influencer marketing that will bring some fresh life to an otherwise stale Instagram page. Essentially, it means giving an influencer free reign over your social media account.

Some brands allow the influencer to post permanent content, while others prefer fleeting stories for Instagram or Snapchat. The takeover should only last for a short period of time to make it exciting, with the typical timeline for a takeover lasting just a day.

You may be familiar with Wilton for their popular bakeware and cake decorating supplies, and as you might have noticed, they’ve featured many food influencers on their Instagram.

An example of influencer marketing that was especially successful for Wilton included influencer Rachel Fulhara, a cake artist and photographer from Frosted Fuji Cakes, posting a series of five Halloween-themed cakes. The takeover was so effective that it attracted almost 400,000 likes and over 600 comments.

Like any strategy, there are downsides.

By handing over the keys to your account, you are instilling tremendous trust in an influencer. One bad experience could be disastrous for your brand. That being said, it is advisable to only use this strategy with influencers you’ve established long term relationships with.

influencer giveaway

Giveaways

Hosting a giveaway is exciting for your current audience, but it’s also a great way to gain new followers.

Influencers can host product giveaways for a brand, and yes, they are more effective than brands hosting giveaways themselves. Typically, this example of influencer marketing is mutually beneficial, leading to increased exposure for both the brand and the influencer.

Many times, the brand will require followers to like, comment, and share a post or tag their friends in the comments as a condition of entering. Either way, it’s driving more traffic to the brand and to the influencer.

Google famously conducted an influencer giveaway back in 2017 when they partnered with The Sorry Girls.

The product?

Google’s brand-new Pixelbook.

It was the perfect partnership, as The Sorry Girls are DIY-focused. The influencers asked their audience to comment on an Instagram post with an explanation of how they would use the Pixelbook to enter the giveaway. The result was an increase in Sorry Girls’ engagement by nearly 60% while generating interest in Google’s new product.

examples of influencer marketing

Brand Ambassadors

If you’re interested in having a longer-term relationship with an influencer, you could benefit from making an influencer a brand ambassador.

Because of the long-term nature of this example of influencer marketing, your brand will get regular exposure on the influencer’s page through consistent promotional content.

While the scope of many influencer partnerships is small, a long-term ambassador allows you to showcase additional facets of your business that couldn’t be hit with a single post. This can also come across as more subtle- an influencer can post about many products over time without the campaign seeming overly promotional.

It’s important to note that long-term ambassadors are based around a steady relationship. This level of consistency allows the influencer partnership to be more meaningful for you, and, more importantly, it improves credibility with the influencer’s audience.

A great example of influencer marketing with brand ambassadors is fitness influencer Matt Upston, who is an ambassador for the sports nutrition company Science in Sport. Matt regularly tweets about the brand. This is a perfect fit because the influencer and the company are both focused on fitness and nutrition.

How to Build a Better Influencer Marketing Strategy

Interested in putting influencers to work for your brand? Growing your customer base? Driving sales?

You can leverage the power of influencers just like these companies.

Not sure where to start?

Let us build your ecommerce influencer marketing strategy. At HelloConvo, we will partner you with the best influencers for your brand. We ensure your success with our analytics and personalized guidance.

And, we’re offering a free strategy session to get you started.

Sound good?

Click here to book your call.