Influencer marketing comes with tons of challenges. But influencer marketing for expensive products can feel like a different game altogether.

• The traditional best practices may not apply
• Your strategy and influencer-brand fit might differ completely
• Navigating budgets and gifting is trickier when your AOV is $1,000 instead of $50

In this article, I talked to two pro marketers — Valeriia Chemerys and Georgia Humphries —  who are actively working at brands that sell a high-priced offering.

With their help, I'll suggest solutions for 5 of the most common challenges in influencer marketing for expensive products.

1. You can't provide every influencer with a free product

If you sell a physical product, it’s not viable for you to provide every influencer with a free product above a certain value. (Even if you sell software, giving away products/subscriptions free for a lifetime might not be feasible.)

Here are two potential solutions to this problem:

a) Invite influencers to events

When you invite influencers to events, you enable them to create authentic content without owning the products themselves. For example, Samsung recently did this in India while launching two new products.

According to their press release, they also did a similar event for Galaxy AI in January of 2024.

Events are a great way for influencers to create content without actually owning the product. Each person can see and try it first-hand, and the total cost is often drastically lower than if you gifted 30-50+ influencers individually.

b) Consider asking the influencer to return the product after shooting content

Deeper Sonars recently launched a new product called the Quest Bait Boat, priced at €1,700 (the company’s other sonar products typically cost between €130 – €400). Since Valeriia (Head of Media Partnerships) couldn’t provide every brand ambassador with this expensive product, she coordinates passing products around different partners within each major market:

Valeriia Chemerys

Head of Media Partnerships, Deeper

Since we can't ship everyone a product, our team organizes cooperations between different creators and media partners. For example, our UK ambassador Henry Lennon collaborates with Total Carp and Carpology (magazines) for content on their socials. Henry also lends the Bait Boat to other influencers for content as needed.

This is an option worth having in your toolkit. Really owning the product is a plus for authenticity, but there are ways to make authentic content without owning it too.

2. It takes time to build trust with customers

Customers might make an impulse purchase for a throw-away item. Or they’re open to experimenting and seeing if a product works if it’s not breaking the bank.

But they won’t behave the same way with expensive products. Most buyers will take time to purchase a product that’s heavy on their pocket; they're unlike to just see an influencer’s post and immediately place an order.

Here are three solutions to this challenge:

a) Consider focusing on long-form content (like YouTube videos)

If your product’s expensive because it's complex to use (like a car, software, or coffee machine), consumers want to know more details about your product. What features does it have? Is it worth the cost? What are some pros/cons of this product?

An Instagram Story or a short-form TikTok video might not be able to do justice to that. Instead, go for long-form content formats like YouTube videos or a Reel series that go in-depth on the features of your product.

Following on with Valeriia's example above, Henry Lennon shared a 16-minute video of the Quest Bait Boat showing all the features in detail — making the audience feel confident in their choice before they buy the product.

b) Be more hands-on with the influencer content

Offering creative freedom to influencers when you’re selling an expensive product is tricky. You absolutely can still do it, but, especially if the product is complicated, you may wish to still have approval processes to ensure people are sharing all the right details.

Valeriia shared Deeper connect their ambassadors to product managers via WhatsApp, and approve influencer content for Quest Bait Boat:

Valeriia Chemerys

Head of Media Partnerships, Deeper

Product knowledge is more important than ever. Apart from providing video tutorials and product info to learn before filming, we also have Whatsapp chats with creators and product managers to ensure that questions are answered quickly. We also check and approve videos before publishing, to eliminate possible mistakes or incorrect technical data about the product.

From your side, you can help as much as possible with product knowledge & information, and by fact-checking before posts go live. Ensuring your creator partners hit all the right notes and display the best features will go a long way in building trust with consumers.

(If your product is expensive but simple to understand, and there's not much to get wrong, this point applies less.)

c) Build long-term relationships

One-off influencer partnerships may not be the best idea for expensive products.

• Your product isn’t an impulsive purchase that a consumer would buy with a single post
• Your product may require consumers to understand features, advantages, etc., more clearly than is possible in a single post
• You build more trust with an audience if a creator uses your products over and over again rather than just as a one-off purchase

Georgia agrees:

Georgia Humphries

Influencer Marketing Team Lead, Tourlane

High end collaborations should be spread out over a longer period of time to really get messaging across, and to be able to take time to convince the audience to purchase. More expensive products will need more educational storytelling, ideally through a multi-channel approach.

This is why it’s best to build long-term influencer partnerships where you can take the time to get familiar with a new audience and build trust with them via your creator partner.

In Tourlane's case, rather than collaborating on a single post, they plan several different pieces of content over the duration of each trip. Here's an example from their collaboration with travel creator Louisa Thomas. Louisa posted multiple times during her Thailand trip.

By building long-term influencer relationships, you hit two birds with one stone: as the influencer partners with you continually, they understand your product better and need less & less direction over time.

3. Only certain consumer demographics can afford to buy your product

When you’re vetting influencers, you also need to factor whether their followers have the buying power to purchase from you. If not, you risk marketing a product to an audience who might want your product, but can’t afford it.

Not to mention: marketing an expensive product is a lot tougher than selling an affordable one. An influencer needs to have the experience to market similar high-priced products.

Georgia Humphries

Influencer Marketing Team Lead, Tourlane

When scouting you need to look for audience age and even demographics like cities to determine roughly the average disposable income. For higher end products you'll need to look for professionalism and ideally scout creators who have a history of successful partnerships with premium brands.

So, when finding influencers, remember to check:

a) whether or not this influencer’s followers have the purchasing capacity to buy your product(s). You can do this by examining whether your ICP overlaps with a creator’s followers’ demographics. Age, location.

b) if they have the experience of marketing a pricier product. This is more of a qualitative check you can do by seeing the products they endorse, what comments they receive, etc.

You can do this with an influencer analysis tool, or by asking them to send their own screenshots. Tourlane's team use Modash for this; profile analysis in Modash looks like this:

Continuing with an example, I noticed a Reddit user sharing how they’d buy anything beauty creator Shalini Kutti recommends — even if it’s a luxury item. That’s an example of a creator having a reliable reputation among their audience — one that’s built by providing valuable content for years.

Case in point: Shalini often partners with makeup brands selling expensive products, like this event collab with Ilem Japan.

4. Influencers might be using a competitor’s product

If you’re in an industry like skincare or clothing, exclusivity isn’t that big of an issue. Audiences expect creators to have multiple items of these things. But if you sell something that’s a one-time purchase — like boat equipment — you don’t want the creator promoting a competing product.

Valeriia faced a similar problem while finding influencers for the Quest Bait Boat. She solved it by offering a free trial of the product:

Valeriia Chemerys

Head of Media Partnerships, Deeper

3 out of 5 potential brand ambassadors used other bait boats already. They were careful with recommending a new product to their audience, so we had to assure them that our product was technically better than those competitors. In the end, they switched to the Deeper Quest bait boat.

And don’t worry, exclusivity isn’t just beneficial for you. If it’s a justifiable product category (something that only requires a single purchase for a long time), exclusivity is also the foundation of building trust for the creator. Valeriia agrees:

Valeriia Chemerys

Head of Media Partnerships, Deeper

When the creator uses one product for a long time and shares educational info and tips, it's a win-win for us both. The influencer becomes a trusted & reputable source, and we get more authentic-feeling promotion to our target audience.

So, if your niche has some competition (or even general skepticism), do what Valeriia did: let the product speak for itself.

Georgia also adds how this can work positively in building excellent influencer relationships. An influencer should be invested and believe in the product themselves — especially for an expensive item. Using the product themselves can help creators witness its true value; build this tactic in your negotiations.

Georgia Humphries

Influencer Marketing Team Lead, Tourlane

During negotiations, the influencers themselves need to be ‘sold’ on the product, to be fully convinced that it is worth the price tag which takes more time than inexpensive products/services, so make sure to engage and build up a solid relationship during negotiations.

5. It’s harder to calculate ROI

Attribution is always difficult in influencer marketing, but it’s even more challenging for expensive products with longer decision-making cycles.

Depending on your business model, Georgia recommends exploring goals outside of direct conversions for expensive products.

Georgia Humphries

Influencer Marketing Team Lead, Tourlane

Instead of focusing solely on direct conversions, use influencer marketing to generate leads which you can then nurture further through CRM or retargeting campaigns.

In Tourlane's business model, that is to create a free travel plan. For SaaS/apps, it could be a free trial. For ecommerce, it's less straightforward — but you might simply track leading indicators like views and engagements (alongside conversions).

And if you choose the right influencers, you will still be able to drive some direct conversions. In fact, influencer marketing is a particularly strong channel for it, if given enough time to build up a program. At Tourlane, Georgia has great conversion rates because: a) they only choose reliable & trustworthy creator partners and b) they use their partnerships to give a walkthrough of their product.

Georgia Humphries

Influencer Marketing Team Lead, Tourlane

It's always harder to get direct conversions for services/products with a higher price point, but influencer marketing is actually one of the strongest channels. The followers get a full overview of the product, and our influencers have such a trusting audience who really takes their recommendations seriously.

For expensive products, zoom out and assess the overall ROI over a longer period. Instead of expecting to see results within a week, for instance, measure over a longer time horizon (e.g. quarterly).

Many core principles remain the same

Despite having its own set of snowflake problems, using influencer marketing for expensive products has some overlapping core principles:

• Long-term influencer partnerships generally work better than short-term ones
• Connecting with creator partners and building solid relationships with them is crucial for better ROI
• Choosing your influencer partners wisely is critical for preserving brand reputation and not tanking your budget

Keep these insights front and center while practicing influencer marketing.

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