As consumers seek more authentic interactions with brands, it makes sense that more and more businesses are investing in influencer marketing.

In this article, I’ll dive into the biggest benefits of influencer marketing, including real-world examples to inspire your own influencer strategy.

Let’s get into it…

Benefit 1: Boost brand awareness 🌱

One-fifth of marketers say building brand awareness is their #1 reason for investing in influencer marketing.

Brand awareness is about increasing familiarity with your brand and products among your target audience. The idea being that when a potential customer is ready to buy, your brand will be front of mind.

Increasing awareness also helps you enjoy the benefits of brand loyalty bias, whereby consumers favor familiar brands over unfamiliar ones — even to the extent of ignoring higher-quality or better-value products.

Real-world example:

BURGA turns everyday essentials — like phone cases, case covers, and laptop sleeves — into fashion accessories.

They build brand awareness through product seeding, which involves giving away products to influencers for free. It’s a highly scalable approach, with BURGA’s head of global partnerships Rugile Paleviciute revealing that the brand seeds 500+ creators a month, resulting in 800 – 1,000 influencer posts.

But they’re not giving products away to anyone and everyone. Instead, BURGA uses Modash to filter for influencers with at least a 1% engagement rate, relevant interests, age, and location.

They even take the time to comment on their influencer partners’ seeding posts, which helps them build stronger influencer relationships:

🤓 Pro tip: Use product seeding campaigns to drive brand awareness and immediate sales at the same time by gifting products to influencers along with an affiliate discount code, just like BURGA does here:

Benefit 2: Increase sales 💰

Whether they’re a multinational brand or just getting started, every company wants to sell more. And influencer marketing can help, given that 46% of social media users have purchased products promoted by influencers.

In other words: when consumers see their favorite influencers promoting your products, they’re more likely to sit up, take notice, and buy.

Real-world example:

Animalhouse Fitness develops innovative products to help athletes and health enthusiasts achieve their fitness goals.

When launching MonkeyFeet — a product for attaching weights to your feet — the brand invested in building meaningful relationships with influencers. The campaign goals were to create hype and awareness around the launch, and to get the product in front of the target audience.

For the campaign, AnimalHouse Fitness sent MonkeyFeet as a gift to 100+ fitness influencers.

One influencer partner, Noah J. Richter, recommended MonkeyFeet to his audience of tens of thousands of followers on Instagram:

When another fitness influencer, Ben Patrick, shared MonkeyFeet, the product caught the eye of podcast supremo Joe Rogan.

The “comedian” mentioned MonkeyFeet no fewer than four times on the Joe Rogan Experience, which has 14.5 million followers on Shopify and 17.5 million YouTube subscribers. That’s the kind of awareness that only a ton of money can buy — and Animalhouse got it for free.

Overall, 1,471 influencers posted about MonkeyFeet during the launch campaign, resulting in 3,700+ posts (images and videos) being shared.

This helped Animalhouse raise revenue of $7 million and hit the top 1% of fastest-growing companies on Shopify.

Benefit 3: Capture high-quality content for repurposing 🤳

Many brands lack the resources or skills to create a constant stream of high-quality content — and influencer marketing is an obvious solution. After all, influencers are professional content creators. They understand what plays well with their audience, and they’re often happy for brands to repurpose their content

Which explains why “capturing user-generated content” (UGC) is the #1 reason for running influencer campaigns, cited by 56% of brand marketers.

Working with influencers opens the door for repurposing their assets across other platforms. For example, you can post UGC on product pages to build trust and social proof, and use high-performing influencer content to run whitelisting ads.

Real-world example:

Parfumado is a subscription service that helps consumers find their new favorite fragrances and beauty products. They regularly use influencer content in whitelisting campaigns, like this example from a 30-day campaign featuring Dutch lifestyle influencer Josha Peeters:

Compared to other video ads Parfumado promoted during the same 30-day period, the whitelisting ads in this campaign generated:

✅ 10% lower CACs

✅ 40% better hook rates (percentage of people who watched the first three seconds of the video)

✅ 20% better hold rates (percentage of people who watched the full video)

Benefit 4: Break into new markets 🌍

You might be a big name in your niche. But if you’re branching out into a new market or territory, you’re effectively starting from scratch with zero presence or awareness.

That’s why it pays to team up with influencers who are already well-known in your new market.

Collaborating with local, established influencers can help you build trust. This is a massive factor in persuading people to buy from you; it’s why nearly half (45%) of consumers won’t purchase a product if there are no reviews available for it.

Real-world example:

Angling tech company Deeper Sonar recently launched a new product called the Quest Bait Boat. With a price tag of €1,700, Quest is up to 10 times more expensive than Deeper’s other products, so they were targeting a slightly different — and higher-spending — audience than in their regular campaigns.

Once again, influencer marketing offered the perfect solution.

To promote the launch of Quest, Deeper teamed up with one influencer in each of their five top locations. Those five influencers had to fulfill the following criteria:

✅ Big followings in the angling community

✅ Already used (or had potential to use) a bait boat

✅ Strong, trusted reputation in their local market

Their influencer partners shared unboxing content, attended trade shows, published reviews, and collaborated with high-profile fishing publications to spread the word about Quest:

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It worked so well that demand for Quest was three times higher than expected, resulting in the bait boat selling out in just two weeks after pre-orders opened.

Benefit 5: Gather product feedback 👨‍👩‍👧‍👦

Even if you’ve launched a ton of products before, you can never be 100% sure whether your latest release will do numbers or fall flat. One way to boost certainty around launches is to seek feedback from a small group of trusted influencers before your product hits the market.

Think about it: influencers know their niche like the back of their hand. They’ve used your products (and your competitors’ products) before. So they’re ideally placed to tell you what would make them promote your product and brand.

Real-world example:

Influencer marketing consultant Andreea Moise (AKA the Hype Maven) loves using this tactic when working with brands on B2C product launches. She recommends sending soon-to-launch products to a small group of influencers you know and trust, and asking them questions like:

📱 Is it Instagrammable enough?

👭 Would you share it with your friends?

💫 Does it appeal to you on a creative and aesthetic level?

🛠️ Does the functionality meet your standards?

🤳🏼 Do you think other influencers would like it?

If they love your product, great — you’re good to go.

But if their feedback is less glowing, you can address the issues early on. You could even send a second version to the same influencers and see how they rate the improvements.

Andreea Moise

Influencer Marketing Consultant, Hype Maven

Influencers are taking a risk by recommending something that no one has ever tried before. Get as much feedback as possible from that small sample, then as you start to scale and more people post about you, it will get easier.

Benefit 6: Build trust and authority 🤝

Trust is a major factor in purchase decisions: if consumers don’t think you’re legit, they’re not going to buy from you.

So how can you persuade them that you’re the real deal? It’s simple: work with influencers your audience already trusts.

Both brands and consumers agree that Influencers have a significant impact on brand trust and authority. Indeed, 62% of social media users say they trust influencers over celebrities, while 67% of marketers have identified trust and authenticity as the most important strengths of influencer marketing.

Real-world example:

When it comes to building trust, implementing a brand ambassadorship program is hard to beat. Ambassadors have a much deeper allegiance to your brand than traditional influencers, which helps your partnerships feel more genuine and trustworthy.

Skincare brand CeraVe has a lot of brand ambassadors who consistently promote their products using the hashtag #CeraVePartner. They’ve built long-term relationships with influencers in a range of niches, from lifestyle influencers like Niamh Adkins to certified dermatologists like Dr Adeline Kikam:

🤓 Pro tip: Have a “test run” before upgrading an influencer to a brand ambassador. Form a long-term influencer partnership, measure their performance, and get to know their personality and work ethic. If it feels like a good fit for both parties, upgrade them to ambassador status.

Benefit 7: Educate customers about your product 🎓

If you sell socks or ketchup or phone cases, your products likely don’t need a ton of explaining. But if they’re a little more complex, you might need to educate your audience about the features, benefits, and use cases.

Once upon a time, if you wanted to learn about a product, you’d just Google it. But younger consumers are shifting away from traditional search engines and toward social platforms like TikTok and YouTube. In fact, research shows that:

✅ Gen Z is 25% less likely to use Google for searches than Gen X

✅ 46% of Gen Z and 35% of Millennials prefer social media over traditional search engines

All of which brings influencers into play as a way to educate current and future customers on your products.

Real-world example:

One-off influencer collaborations aren’t the best fit for educating your audience on complex and/or higher-end products.

For starters, it’s hard to communicate innovative features and benefits in a single post. Plus you’ll build more trust with your audience if an influencer uses (and posts about) your products over and over again.

One brand that understands the value of building long-term influencer partnerships is Tourlane, a travel booking platform offering personalized trip planning services. Those trips typically involve multiple locations, so it’s a more complicated proposition than booking an all-inclusive holiday to a single destination.

Tourlane plans multiple pieces of content with influencers before they set off on a trip. Here's an example from their collaboration with travel influencer Louisa Thomas, who posted multiple times while traveling around Thailand:

Building stronger influencer relationships is like hitting two birds with one stone: the influencer gains a better understanding of your product, which makes their content more valuable. Plus they need less direction over time, which makes your partnership more efficient.

Benefit 8: Promote product launches 🚀

We’ve already spoken about how influencers can provide invaluable feedback on new products. And they can also help you promote those new releases, with 36% of consumers saying influencer posts are most effective at convincing them to try new products.

Case study:

Eva NYC is a cruelty-free, vegan hair care brand. Through their creator community, #helloimeva, influencers can apply to receive free products (provided they agree to promote those products on social media).

Combining product seeding with brand ambassadorship is highly scalable, with thousands of posts showing up on Instagram with the hashtag #helloimeva.

Eva NYC uses this approach in its business-as-usual activity. But they ramped it up for the launch of a new haircare product, H2-Whoa, generating more influencer content in a shorter period of time:

Investing in influencer marketing for product launches is a smart tactic because it spreads the word about your new product while also building brand awareness.

Types of businesses that can benefit from influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing is predominantly used in B2C, but other brands can leverage it too. Let’s look at three types of businesses that benefit from running influencer campaigns:

Consumer brands 🛍️

B2C brands across pretty much all consumer markets use influencer marketing to grow awareness, generate sales, and build a library of high-quality influencer content. But it’s especially popular in niches like:

Fashion and beauty 👠

Fashion and beauty brands are more likely to use influencer marketing than those in any other niche.

High-profile examples include Sephora, which runs the Sephora Squad influencer community. At time of writing, the hashtag #sephorasquad has 98,000+ posts on Instagram.

The best thing about this strategy? Sephora limits access to its community, with applications opening for less than a month at a time. This encourages tons of influencers to post about the brand in the hope of boosting their application:

CPG 🍫

CPG brands dedicate approximately one-quarter of their total marketing budgets to digital channels — and plenty of that money goes toward influencer campaigns.

Big influencer marketing spenders in the sector include PepsiCo, which regularly collaborates with micro influencers like Skylar Currie to promote new CPG products:

As a huge brand, Pepsi also works with plenty of bigger names, with recent collaborations including Megan Thee Stallion and American football star Derrick Henry Jr.

Health and wellness 💪

Trust is a key factor in buying new health and wellness products. Influencers play an important role here, with 71% of consumers who follow health influencers saying they’ve bought a product promoted by an influencer in the niche.

One health and wellness brand that relies on influencer marketing to drive awareness and sales is Care/of, which sells personalized vitamin supplements. They work with a variety of influencers across Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube — from mom influencers to lifestyle creators to cultural/internet commentary influencers like YouTuber Tiffany Ferg:

Like many brands, Care/of shares individual discount codes with its influencer partners. Not only does this make it easier to track influencer marketing ROI, but by offering an aggressive 50% discount, it also gives potential customers a compelling reason to try Care/of products.

B2C mobile apps 📱

Mobile apps are big business, with global revenue in the sector expected to hit $522+ billion in 2024.

Unsurprisingly, app makers are keen to grab their slice of the pie — and many use influencer marketing to make it happen.

Prominent examples include Aumio, a sleep and relaxation app for kids. Aumio has a clear goal from influencer marketing: to increase app signups. They mostly practice long-term influencer partnerships, with almost 70% of promo code redemptions coming from influencers who’ve collaborated with Aumio 5+ times.

So how do they find the right influencers?

Speaking to Modash, Aumio’s Community & Brand Marketing Lead Anna-Maria Klappenbach explained how the brand prioritizes follower growth rate when searching for micro-influencers.

This helps her find influencers who are rapidly growing at a more affordable cost and also pick up tidbits from their social media strategies to implement with the rest of the influencer partners. Anna also switches fast-growing influencers from their affiliate program to their fixed-pay influencer program if the influencer requests it, or if their growth warrants it.

🤓 Pro tip: Modash's influencer discovery tool has a “growth rate” filter to make this process even easier for Aumio:

👉 Try Modash for yourself at no cost for 14 days.

B2B brands 🏢

Influencer marketing can also play a key role in promoting serious, grown-up B2B products.

We should know, because we use it ourselves to promote Modash. For example, we collaborate with social media marketing community Pretty Little Marketer to run sponsored post campaigns on LinkedIn:

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Next steps

If influencer marketing is right for your brand, we’ve got plenty more resources to help you get up and running. I recommend starting with these:

👉 Influencer Marketing for Small Businesses: The Complete Guide

👉 What To Include In An Influencer Contract (+Free Template)

👉 11 Ways To Find Micro Influencers (Free & Paid Methods!)

Enjoy!