Despite influencer marketing being relatively new with a lot of skepticism around whether it actually drives positive ROI for brands and businesses that use it – there are plenty of different influencer marketing campaign types for you to try.

The truth is, influencer marketing does work. But many brands aren’t yet sure how to make the most out of this form of marketing. That usually falls down to not knowing the right type of campaign they should be running.

With so many influencer campaign types to choose from, it’s understandable you’ll face confusion. So, in this post, we’ve outlined 14 different options you can choose from.

The top 14 types of influencer marketing campaigns are:

1.    Product placement
2.    Unboxing
3.    Pre-release
4.    Sponsored content
5.    “Brought to you by”
6.    Integrated content
7.    Themed or hashtag campaigns
8.    Shoutout content
9.    Giveaways
10.    Discount codes
11.    Social media takeover
12.    Affiliate marketing
13.    Brand ambassadors
14.    Events

 

What is an influencer campaign?

An influencer campaign is where your brand works with social influence to help promote your products or business. Influencer marketing campaigns work best when you choose influencers who have some interest in your industry or niche. This way when they promote, sell, or talk about your products online or offline, they’re doing so to an audience with a shared interest in the type of products or services you offer.

What are the different types of influencers?

Not all influencers are equal. Not only will they charge different amounts to work with you but they’ll run their businesses in different ways too. In short, there are four key types of influencers you can work with. Nano, micro, macro and mega (celebrity) influencers all serve different purposes but most importantly, different price points.

 

Nano influencers

Nano usually have anywhere between 500-5000 instagram followers. Many businesses might think there is little to no point in working with these influencers but they’re often very involved within the same industry you operate in and their followers are too. Given their usual low follower count, startups are able to get more bang for their buck by working with more influencers across a range of campaigns.

Nano influencer work best for: small startups still looking to test the water with influencer marketing or brands with little to no budget.

 

Micro influencers

Micro influencers usually have anywhere between 2000-50000 followers online. These followers usually have a much higher engagement rate than influencers with large followings as their follower base is much more highly concentrated on one specific interest.

Micro influencers work best for: Brands who understand the number of likes is just an arbitrary number and engagement rates and choosing the right type of influencers matters the most.

 

Macro influencers

Macro influencers can have anywhere from 50,000 to 500,000 followers. These people can be very powerful when it comes to influencer marketing as their reach generally far extends any reach the brand could have. These influencers often found success from YouTube or reality TV. Keep in mind, though, given the large following count, the audience they have might not actually be interested in the products you offer.

Macro influencers work best for: Brands who want to extend their social reach and have budget to support this working with high-profile influencers.

 

Mega (celebrity) influencers

Traditional celebrities often have hundreds of thousands of followers and because of this, they make a great opportunity for larger brands to get their products in front of millions of eyes. But as these influencers generally make their sole income from other means, you’ll have to have not only a great product they like but the budget to afford them.

Mega influencers work best for: Larger brands with huge budgets.

The different types of influencer marketing campaigns

Now that you know the different types of influencers you can work with, it’s time to better understand the different types of campaigns you can run.

 

Product placement

Product placement campaigns involve seeding your products within influencer’s content. For example, an influencer might take a photo of themselves during a holiday and they’re holding the sunglasses you’ve sent them.

Within a product placement campaign the influencer may or may not write something specific about the brand but they will more often than not tag the product so that those who are interested can check out the brand for themselves.

 

Unboxing

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From the moment your customers receive their product, they’re on a journey with you to connect with your brand. Unboxing influencer marketing campaigns are effective as they allow influencers to take their audience on the journey with them. For example, you might send a well packaged product to an influencer and ask them to open it on camera, use the product and talk about their experience with it. Their audience is then able to make informed decisions about whether the product (and unboxing process) is something they’d like to try as well.

Unboxing campaigns are also a great way for you to go above and beyond to position your brand leagues ahead of your competitors.

This influencer created an unboxing video on her Instagram Stories after Les Georgettes By Altesse gifted her new jewellery. During the video he takes viewers through the process of unboxing a beatiful personalised package by our clients.

 

 

Pre release

Pre-release campaigns work well for brands who want to drum up excitement about a product or launch before it happens. Pre-release campaigns work well because influencers who are invited to take part feel a sense of exclusivity that they have their hands on the product before anyone else.

When running pre-release campaigns be sure to check whether the content the influencer’s posted resulted in any sales once your product does launch. Alternatively, if you’re using a ‘coming soon’ sign up strategy, have your chosen influencers link to this page in order to directly track and attribute the influencer’s role in driving sign ups.

 

Sponsored content

Sponsored content is any content you’ve sponsored the influencer to create. For example, if you’re a travel agency, you might sponsor an influencer to go on holiday. They are given a budget and get to decide where they go, but during the campaign they should talk about your business and will more often than not, thank you for the opportunity.

 

Brought to you by

Brought to you by campaigns are similar to sponsored content, but there is less need for the content published to have a direct relation to the brand. For example, if you own a supplement brand, you might work with an influencer on their ‘moving house tour’ video. It might seem like a strange strategy but it actually works well if you get your influencer targeting right. You want to work with influencers who have an audience that might buy your products. That way, even though the content of the video isn’t directly related to the products you offer, the influencer’s audience would still have a genuine interest in checking out your business.

 

Brand ambassador

Brand ambassadors usually work with a company for an extended period of time. Brand ambassadors refers to influencers who regularly post content for a brand. Creating brand ambassadors is a great way to merge multiple of the influencer campaign types listed above.

What’s more, brand ambassadors aren’t always paid for the work they do. Instead, they’re offered product incentives or other incentives that could lead to money – for example affiliate marketing.

 

 

Integrated – weave the brand or product into the storyline

Integrated campaigns often feel less sales-y than other forms of influencer marketing campaigns. They use a process that weaves your product into their story without your product becoming the sole focus of the post. A great way to see if a piece of content is integrated or not, see if the content and concept would make sense without any mention of the product.

 

Theme or hashtag campaign

Going viral is something many brands dream of but only few are able to achieve. Virility happens when more and more people start sharing or talking about you, your content or your products . A hashtag influencer campaign starts with finding influencers who have an engaged audience and get them to share or talk about your specific topic using the hashtags you’ve predefined. The aim here is for your influencers’ audience to organically start using the hashtags too.

 

Shoutout

Shoutout campaigns are fairly easy to do and often used by smaller brands who can’t afford to pay for a dedicated piece of content on social media. Influencers might talk about your product in their insta-story, snapchat or other time sensitive content. Shoutout content is super effective when you work with an influencer who has actually bought your product – as they have a much higher chance of giving a shout out about it on social media compared to someone who has never heard of your brand.

 

Giveaway

Giveaway influencer marketing campaigns work by you giving influencers a product they can push for a giveaway. If the influencer has a similar audience to you and a larger following, they are more likely to generate better ROI than you could if you ran the competition or giveaway by yourself. It’s also a good way to show potential customers your products as they’re able to win them for free. Sometimes, you might even be able to generate additional sales from people who didn’t win the contest.

 

 

Discount code

If you’re working with influencers to generate sales you need to do more than just hope people make a purchase. By offering the influencers you work with a discount code to use for potential buyer’s you do two things.

First, you’re using influencers to widen your overall reach. Second, by offering a discount code you encourage consumers to take action and make a purchase. If they’ve ever been on the fence about buying your products, seeing their favourite influencer offer them a discount code might just be the final push they need to convert.

 

This pet brand gave a dog account a discount code that gives users over 30% off each purchase.

 

Social media takeover

When you work closely with an influencer, you might want to offer them the chance to take over your social media. This could mean posting updates on your Insta story, or allowing them to do a live Q&A on Facebook.

Allowing influencers to take over your social channels works in your best interest, you get content for free and influencers let their own followers know about the takeover, introducing more people to your brand.

But remember to put together your own set of editorial guidelines so that the influencers you choose know what they can and can’t post about. Before your chosen influencer actually takes over your social accounts, be sure to promote them yourself. This way, they wont be sending content that falls on deaf ears.

 

Affiliate marketing

Affiliate marketing campaigns are a great way to work with loads of influencers for little cost. One of the benefits of this campaign type is you can run it with as many influencers as possible, regardless of your budget. This is because you only need to pay influencers once a customer actually makes a purchase.

Suppose you had an e-commerce brand selling socks or speciality coffee. You give 10 influencer a unique code for them to share. Whenever a person makes a purchase after clicking on an influencer’s link, the influencer in question will receive a commission.

 

Events

There’s no better way to build a relationship with an influencer than by meeting them in person. Think about it. If you just send over your product in the post and all the correspondence happens on email, the influencer will struggle to understand who you are as a brand. So, if you do plan to run events consider inviting influencers along to boost numbers and share the event to increase coverage on social channels.

These influencers were invited to an event hosted by The Sims. While they were there, both influencers freely posted photos of their time there, encouraging people to check out the video game company.

With all these influencer marketing campaign, make sure that the influencer’s you work with declare when work is #gifted #paid #spon. With new ASA rules for brands and influencers, authorities are cracking down on dishonest advertising in the wake of the new world of influencer marketing.

 

Find your perfect campaign type

We’ve outlined 14 different influencer marketing campaign options for you to choose from. Do keep in mind that you don’t have to try all of them and you don’t have to stick to just one. Many brands benefit from using an influencer marketing strategy that combines multiple campaign types into the overarching strategy.

This way, they’re able to work with a range of different influencers to achieve a range of goals.

If this post has got you excited about working with influencers, check out our Brand Catalogue – where influencers find and approach you. It allows you to work with 5 influencers completely free!