The Different Types of Influencer Marketing Campaigns

1. Sponsored Content
2. Product Reviews & Unboxing
3. Giveaways & Contests
4. Affiliate Marketing
5. Influencer Takeover
6. Ambassador Programs
7. Event Collaborations
8. Guest Posting
9. Banner Ads

Digital marketing agencies have been banging on about the importance of influencer marketing for a while now, and the results back up the talk. According to the Influencer Marketing Hub's benchmark report, the influencer marketing industry is set to grow to approximately $24 Billion by the end of 2024.

These days, brands have stopped wasting time and started embracing influencer partnerships, working with creators and professionals across multiple industries. 

By collaborating with nano-influencers, micro-influencers, macro-influencers, and/or even big-name celebrities (mega-influencers), businesses throughout the world have seen significant improvements in reach, brand visibility, conversions, sales, and more. The benefits are seemingly endless.

But how do you make sure you get your influencer marketing campaign right? Well, the first step is to understand the different types of campaigns being executed, and then use what works best for you.

We'll cover every campaign type you need to know, but first, let's briefly discuss the different types of influencers out there.

Types of Influencers

Influencers come in various types, each distinguished by the size of their audience, the type of content they create, and their level of influence within their niche. Whether you prefer working with social media influencers or industry expert reviewers will depend on your preference.

In general, the different types of influencers can be divided as follows:

Nano-Influencers

• Audience Size: Typically have fewer than 10,000 followers.
• Engagement: High engagement rates due to a more intimate connection with followers.
• Content: Often niche-focused with specific interests, such as local businesses, niche hobbies, or specialised knowledge.
• Advantages: Authenticity and strong community engagement, cost-effective collaborations.
• Challenges: Limited reach compared to larger influencers, may require more effort to scale campaigns.

Micro-Influencers

• Audience Size: Generally between 10,000 to 100,000 followers.
• Engagement: Higher engagement rates compared to macro or mega influencers due to a more loyal and engaged following.
• Content: Often focused on specific niches such as beauty, fitness, travel, or specific lifestyle interests.
• Advantages: Authenticity and higher engagement rates, cost-effective for targeted campaigns, often seen as more trustworthy.
• Challenges: Limited reach compared to larger influencers, may require more management due to multiple collaborations.

Mid-Tier Influencers

• Audience Size: Typically between 100,000 to 500,000 followers.
• Engagement: Good engagement rates but slightly lower than micro-influencers due to larger audience size.
• Content: Diverse content spanning multiple topics or niches, often with a strong personal brand.
• Advantages: Significant reach with a moderately engaged audience, potential for broader campaign impact.
• Challenges: Balancing reach with maintaining authenticity and engagement, higher cost compared to micro-influencers.

Macro-Influencers

• Audience Size: Usually between 500,000 to 1 million followers.
• Engagement: Lower engagement rates compared to micro and mid-tier influencers due to larger follower base.
• Content: Diverse content across various platforms, often including sponsored content and brand partnerships.
• Advantages: Broad reach and visibility, ability to target larger audience segments, established authority in their niche.
• Challenges: Potential for lower engagement rates, higher costs, and maintaining authenticity amid larger-scale collaborations.

Mega-Influencers

• Audience Size: Over 1 million followers.
• Engagement: Generally lower engagement rates compared to smaller influencers due to their celebrity-like status.
• Content: Diverse content across multiple platforms, often including high-profile brand endorsements and collaborations.
• Advantages: Massive reach and visibility, influence within mainstream audiences, ability to drive significant brand awareness.
• Challenges: Expensive collaborations, potential for less personal engagement with followers, risk of brand dilution.

Occasionally macro and mid-tier influencers are seen as one category, and some people may divide up even further by considering celebrity influencers at a higher level than mega influencers.

Good influencers follow social media trends, have experience with previous campaigns, and know how to use content to improve a brand's reputation and boost sales.

All in all, each type of influencer offers unique advantages and considerations depending on your campaign goals, target audience, and budget. Choosing the right influencer involves balancing reach, engagement, and alignment with your brand values and campaign objectives.

Influencer Marketing Campaign Types

Okay, now let's run through the different types of influencer marketing campaigns so you have a clear understanding of what your options are as you look to capitalise on the world of influencers.

Sponsored Content

A sponsored post is essentially a one-off collaboration where you pay a popular blogger or influencer to create surrounding your brand, service, or product.

Sponsored content can come in the form of posts on social media platforms, reviews, or blog posts. The type of sponsored post you go for depends on your existing objectives.

A blog post tends to have a much longer lifespan than social media posts, although it may take longer to start getting traction. For instance, a lifestyle blogger might write a post about their experience using a new skincare line from a specific brand. They would detail their impressions, and benefits, and perhaps include personal photos or before-and-after results. Also, you can create storytelling illustrations or images displayed through storyboard apps to make your content more engaging.

The post would clearly disclose the sponsorship, usually at the beginning or end, to maintain transparency with the influencer's audience. These posts aim to blend promotional content with the blogger's authentic voice and expertise, providing valuable information while promoting the sponsor's offerings.

Of course, long-term partnerships are a great thing, but sponsored posts still has powerful potential to boost your brand awareness and drive a solid ROI.

In the linked article, you can see example of a blog post that Spotify sponsored to have posted on BuzzFeed covering fans speaking on The Grateful Dead's music. Spotify is willing to pay to have this post published, as they know it'll drive more traffic to The Grateful Dead's catalogue.

Product Reviews & Unboxing

A product review or unboxing video is when a popular content creator posts either a full review of a product or service, or discusses their first impressions while unboxing a product. The whole idea is to give an authentic opinion of the product to help drive new conversions and sales.

On platforms like TikTok and Instagram, you're more likely to find unboxing videos, while YouTube is seemingly the home of long-form product/service review videos. These types of influencer campaigns are incredibly popular among fashion, beauty, and tech companies.

Audiences value influencers' authenticity, especially when it comes to product recommendations. Reviews and unboxings allow influencers to provide genuine feedback based on their experiences.

These formats are also highly engaging as they allow viewers to vicariously experience the product through the influencer's perspective. Followers often comment and ask questions, further boosting engagement.

Beyond all that, product reviews and unboxings provide valuable information about the product's features, usability, and performance, helping potential buyers decide if the product meets their needs.

For example, a beauty influencer might review a new skincare serum, demonstrating its application, discussing its texture, scent, and effectiveness over a period of time, or perhaps a tech influencer might unbox and review a new smartphone, showcasing its design, features, and performance through tests like camera quality, speed, and battery life.

You can do some influencer gifting (sending products to popular influencers for free with the hope or agreement that they review or unbox it on their social media channels. Some brands pay influencers to review products.

Overall, product reviews and unboxings are powerful influencer campaign types because they combine promotional content with authentic storytelling and expertise, influencing consumer purchasing decisions through relatable and informative content.

In the below example, we see a full product review of a Samsung Galaxy Watch as a way of driving engagement.

Giveaways & Contests

Everybody loves a giveaway, and what's more fun than a good old-fashioned contest? You can leverage the reach and reputation of influencers to run contests, offer discounts, promote giveaways, and more.

Whether you do go the TikTok Challenge route or want users to sign up for something via your website, partnering with an influencer is the perfect way to make sure people know about your giveaway or contest.

To briefly sum up how each would work, we've narrowed down the important points:

Giveaways:

• Mechanism: Influencers collaborate with brands to host giveaways where followers can enter to win a product or a set of products.
• Entry Requirements: Participants typically need to follow both the influencer and the sponsoring brand, like the giveaway post, and often tag friends or comment on the post to enter.
• Duration and Winner Selection: The giveaway usually runs for a specific period (e.g., one week), after which a winner is randomly selected from the eligible entries. Winners are announced publicly to maintain transparency and trust.

Contests:

• Mechanism: Contests often involve a creative element where participants are asked to submit content (e.g., a photo, video, or caption) related to the brand or a specific theme.
• Entry Requirements: Requirements may include following the influencer and brand, creating original content with specific hashtags, and tagging the influencer and brand in their submission.
• Judging and Prizes: Entries are judged based on creativity, adherence to the theme, and sometimes by public vote. Winners receive prizes ranging from products to experiences, depending on the campaign.

Giveaways and contests encourage followers to interact with the influencer’s content, boosting likes, comments, and shares. Your brand can benefit from the increased visibility as followers participate and share the giveaway or contest with their networks, extending reach beyond the influencer's immediate audience.

As entry requirements often include following the brand and influencer, both parties end up growing their follower base, the perfect mutually beneficial relationship.

For instance, a food influencer might run a recipe contest sponsored by a kitchen appliance brand, where participants submit original recipes using the sponsor's product for a chance to win the appliance. In such a case, both parties are likely to benefit.

Affiliate Marketing

Affiliate marketing is a performance-based marketing strategy where a business rewards third-party partners (affiliates) for driving traffic or sales to the business's products or services through their marketing efforts. It's basically like working with an influencer on a contractual basis where they earn a specific commission or incentive each time a brand secures a new customer via their referral.

Affiliates promote your brand's products or services on their platforms (website, blog, social media, etc.) using unique affiliate links that you provide to keep track of everything. These links will contain tracking codes that monitor when a user clicks on them and makes a purchase or performs a desired action on your website.

The commission structure for affiliate marketing is performance-based, based on specific actions such as ales (cost per sale), leads (cost per lead), clicks (cost per click), or other predefined metrics agreed upon with the merchant. This makes affiliate marketing for small business especially attractive, as it allows for cost-effective scaling without upfront costs.

Commissions can vary widely depending on the industry, product type, and agreement between your company and the affiliate. They typically range from a percentage of the sale to a fixed amount per action.

Think of affiliate marketing as an ongoing, indefinite influencer campaign where thousands can sign up and help promote your product in exchange for an agreed-upon commission. Typically, affiliates sign up instead of brands reaching out, but feel free to approach it however you feel works best.

In summary, affiliate marketing campaigns create a mutually beneficial relationship where your business can gain increased sales and brand exposure, while affiliates earn income through promoting products or services they believe in to their audience. This type of digital marketing strategy is a hugely popular format of influencer collaboration.

The below video is an example of a video made by a Bet365 affiliate, notice that he includes affiliate links in his description of the video.

Influencer Takeovers

An influencer takeover is a marketing strategy where your business grants temporary control of your brand's social media accounts to an influencer. During this period, the influencer posts content on behalf of your brand, often showcasing products, sharing experiences, and engaging with your brand's audience in their authentic voice.

The idea is to utilise the influencer's creativity and personal connection with their followers to increase brand visibility, drive engagement, and build trust. The influencer content is generally more compelling to audiences than regular brand posts.

Social media takeovers can be particularly effective in reaching new audiences, as the influencer's followers are likely to check out your brand's account during the takeover, bringing a new and potentially diverse audience to your page.

The content created is often more relatable and engaging, as it reflects the influencer's unique style and perspective. This method is widely used to create buzz around product launches, events, or special promotions, providing a fresh and dynamic way for brands to interact with their audience.

In general, an influencer takeover can be summed up by the following key points:

• Temporary Control: An influencer takes over a brand's social media account for a specified period.
• Authentic Content: An influencer posts content in their unique style, showcasing the brand's products or services.
• Audience Engagement: You get increased interaction as the influencer engages with both their followers and the brand's audience.
• Expanded Reach: You gain access to the influencer's followers, potentially attracting new customers to the brand.
• Versatile Uses: Effective for product launches, events, promotions, and building brand awareness.
• Relatable Messaging: The content often feels more genuine and relatable, enhancing trust and credibility.
• Creative Freedom: Influencers can use their creativity to create engaging and compelling content.
• Cross-Promotion: Mutual benefit for both the brand and the influencer through shared audiences and content.

Ambassador Programs

Ambassador programs in the context of influencer marketing involve selecting individuals, often influencers, who consistently promote your brand over an extended period.

These ambassadors should typically have a deep affinity for your brand and align with its values and aesthetics. Unlike one-off influencer campaigns, ambassador programs foster long-term relationships, providing a sense of authenticity and continuity in brand messaging.

Brand ambassadors are usually provided with exclusive access to new products, behind-the-scenes information, and other perks to share their genuine experiences with their audience. This approach builds trust, as followers perceive the ambassador’s endorsements as more credible due to the sustained and authentic relationship with your brand.

Ambassador programs can drive brand loyalty, increase repeat engagement, and generate ongoing content that resonates with your target audiences.

The ambassadors you work with should have a thorough understanding of your brand, allowing them to represent it accurately and passionately. This sustained partnership allows for more strategic and in-depth collaboration, giving you the tools to make sure your brand's message is consistently and effectively communicated.

One notable example is Lululemon, which leverages local fitness instructors and athletes as brand ambassadors to promote their products through social media, in-store events, and community activities, helping the brand maintain a strong connection with its target audience.

Another example is Red Bull, which has a diverse ambassador program that includes extreme sports athletes, musicians, and artists. These ambassadors embody the brand's adventurous and energetic spirit, creating authentic and engaging content that resonates with their followers. Famous surfer Jordy Smith is one of the athlete ambassadors Red Bull has taken on.

Event Collaborations

Event collaborations involve partnering with influencers to promote, host, or participate in events to increase brand awareness and engagement.

These collaborations leverage the influencer's audience and credibility to create some hype and drive attendance or participation. The influencers you partner with may play various roles, such as event hosts, speakers, or simply attendees who share their experiences through live streams, posts, and stories across their social media platforms.

One key advantage of such collaborations is the ability to reach a highly targeted audience that aligns with your brand’s demographic.

Influencers, who often have a loyal following, can lend authenticity and trust to the event, encouraging their followers to engage with your brand. This can be particularly effective for product launches, brand activations, or exclusive experiences where creating a sense of exclusivity and excitement is critical.

For example, a fashion brand might collaborate with popular fashion influencers to host a launch party for a new collection. The influencers would promote the event in the weeks leading up to it, sharing behind-the-scenes content and generating anticipation. During the event, live updates and posts from the influencers can further amplify the brand's reach and engagement through influencer outreach.

Moreover, these collaborations often extend beyond the event itself. Influencers can provide post-event content, such as recap videos, blog posts, or photo galleries, which can continue to engage their audience and provide ongoing value to the brand. Brands can also utilise user-generated content created during the event to further their marketing efforts.

Event collaborations with influencers are a powerful strategy in influencer marketing, offering the potential to create memorable experiences, generate substantial online buzz, and foster deeper connections with target audiences.

Guest Posting

Guest posting is when influencers write and publish content on your brand's blog or website. This approach taps into the influencer's expertise and audience to drive traffic, boost credibility, and increase engagement for your brand. When influencers create content for brands, it brings fresh perspectives, high-quality content, and access to the influencer's established audience. As such, it can play a huge role in your influencer marketing strategy.

Like with most of these influencer marketing campaigns, one of the biggest perks of guest posting is reaching a wider and possibly untapped audience. When an influencer guest posts, they often share it with their followers, driving more traffic to the brand's site and increasing its visibility. 

This can even help with SEO, as quality backlinks from the influencer's site to your brand's site can improve search engine rankings.

Guest posting can also position your brand as an authority in its industry. When an influencer known for their expertise in a particular niche contributes content, it adds credibility to the brand. 

For instance, a fitness brand might have a well-known fitness influencer or gym influencer write about workout tips or healthy living, providing valuable content and associating the brand with the influencer's credibility and expertise. 

As you look to build hype, awareness, and trust around your brand, guest posting is among the many types of influencer collaborations that can help.

Banner Ads

Banner ads are a common form of online advertising that use images, text, and interactive elements to attract viewers' attention and drive traffic to a website.

As far as influencer and brand collaborations go, banner ads can be strategically placed on influencers' blogs or websites to leverage their audience's trust and engagement.

Your brand can create personalised banner ads to be strategically placed on an influencer's website that resonates with their followers. The partnership can help your brand reach niche markets, boost brand awareness, and increase conversions by capitalising on the influencer's established credibility and loyal audience base.

Advantages of Using Banner Ads in Influencer Marketing:

• Wider Reach: By placing banner ads on influencers' platforms, brands can tap into a broader and more engaged audience.
• Cost-Effective: Compared to traditional advertising, banner ads in influencer marketing can be more affordable while offering high returns on investment.
• Measurable Impact: Brands can track the performance of banner ads through metrics like click-through rates and conversions, allowing for data-driven optimisation.

Summing Up

Wrapping it up, influencer marketing offers a whole spectrum of campaign styles to suit any brand's needs and goals. Whether you're going for the massive reach of a celebrity endorsement or the authentic connection of a nano-influencer's review, there's a strategy out there that fits your vibe.

From giveaways and unboxings to long-term partnerships and event collaborations, the key is to find the right match between your brand and the influencer's audience. So dive in, experiment with different types, and watch how these dynamic partnerships can bring your brand to life in exciting new ways.

ttagz Search is an influencer search and outreach tool designed to help you discover the right partners for your brand.