Instagram opened its gates to sponsored posts in 2013. A decade later, it continues to get top billing in the influencer marketing game.

But Instagram influencer marketing isn’t a walk in the park. From finding the right Instagram influencers, figuring out different collaboration types, measuring return on investment, and rewiring your strategy based on data — executing a successful influencer marketing campaign on Instagram is a ton of work.

With this one-stop guide, you’ll learn the A-Z of Instagram influencer marketing without breaking a sweat.

How Instagram influencer marketing works (the short version)

Here’s a quick TL;DR of how to get started with Instagram influencer marketing. Details on each step are available in the following sections.

Step 1: Get crystal clear on your goals to set yourself up for success

How will you reach your destination if you don’t know where you’re going? The first step is setting measurable influencer marketing KPIs and defining what success on Instagram looks like for your brand.

Step 2: Determine your Instagram influencer marketing strategy to lay out the next steps

A goal gives you something to work towards. A strategy gives you direction on the next step you should take. The second step is determining which collaboration type works for you, what types of Instagram creators would be right for your brand, and how you will manage influencer payments.

Step 3: Find relevant Instagram influencers who can help you hit your goal

How successful your Instagram influencer marketing will be will heavily rely on the influencers you choose. With your criteria in mind, the third step is discovering influencers who’d be a match for your brand.

Step 4: Outreach to influencers to start a collaboration

After discovery, you’ll reach out to your shortlisted Instagram creators. But many popular influencers might not respond if you share a templated message. Stand out by personalizing your email, and don’t forget to follow up.

Step 5: Set up the logistics for a successful Instagram influencer marketing campaign

If no one’s told you yet, there’s a load of admin work attached to influencer marketing — making things official by influencer contracts, keeping influencer-generated content (IGC) on-brand using influencer briefs, and storing the IGC to repurpose into valuable brand assets.

Step 6: Nurturing influencer relationships to keep your creator partners happy

Influencers who love working with you will give you the best content. Nourish your influencer relationships by prompt payments, pushing their posts, and sharing performance data that can help them market themselves.

Step 7: Measure influencer performance to understand what works and what needs tweaking

The last step is collating data and deriving learning insights about what you did right and what you should skip or tweak for your next campaign. Have an exit examination of your Instagram influencer marketing campaigns.

Before diving into the nitty-gritty, you should understand how Instagram stacks up to other influencer marketing channels like TikTok and YouTube. Understanding the differences, advantages, and disadvantages of Instagram influencer marketing will help you determine whether it’s the right channel for your company to invest in right now.

Instagram vs. other platforms for influencer marketing

Instagram competes with primarily two other influencer marketing platforms: TikTok and YouTube. Here’s how Instagram stands in their comparison.

Instagram vs. TikTok

TikTok influencer marketing is similar to Instagram in many aspects:

• Both platforms have younger demographics — between the ages of 18 and 24
• Both channels have a strong creator community worldwide
• Both social media platforms have ready-to-buy audiences

If you’re tackling any of these platforms, you’ll likely expand to the other because Instagram and TikTok work quite similarly. That said, there are some differences you should know to customize your strategy for each platform and understand which channel you should prioritize:

Instagram vs TikTok differences for influencer marketing

Most brands would benefit from having a social presence on both Instagram and TikTok. And it’s not very difficult: since both apps are video friendly, you can easily repurpose TikTok videos to Instagram Reels.

⚠️ Remember: don’t directly repost TikTok videos to Instagram Reels. Remember to customize the captions, use native app fonts and camera (optional), and refine editing for Instagram. Instagram officially recommends not posting Reels with a watermark and logos from other apps.

But if you choose to build a presence on both platforms simultaneously, don’t forget to experiment with the various content types on Instagram — like carousel posts, 24-hour Stories, and single images.

Instagram vs. YouTube

YouTube sees toe to toe with Instagram because:

• Both channels have finely edited video content
• Both platforms are video-friendly and more than a decade old (YouTube was launched before)
• Both platforms support short-form videos with Instagram Reels and YouTube Shorts

But apart from these basic common grounds, YouTube influencer marketing differs significantly from Instagram’s. Here are the differences you should know:

Instagram vs YouTube differences for influencer marketing

You might use both Instagram and YouTube for your influencer marketing efforts, but it won’t be as straightforward as using Instagram and TikTok together.

Why? YouTube requires a separate strategy and creators who are excellent with long-form videos.

The type of content also differs: Instagram requires an influencer to use your product on video, while YouTube needs a creator to share a detailed review of your product.

But you can easily repurpose your longer YouTube videos for Instagram Reels (and even TikTok videos). Colin and Samir regularly do this with their YouTube podcast — they trim the clips to make them snappy and publish them as Instagram Reels.

Depending on the type of content you create, it might be easy to recycle your long-form YouTube videos to Instagram Reels. But what are the different forms of collaboration you can do on Instagram?

7 ways you can collaborate with an Instagram influencer

There are plenty of ways to collaborate with influencers. Here are the top seven with details on the method, when it’s best to use, and real-life examples.

1: Influencer gifting

What it is: Influencer gifting is sending your product to relevant influencers for free. You can ask them for a review or content assets in exchange, or keep no strings attached (called product seeding).

Best for:

• Getting product reviews
• Receiving branded assets on a tight budget
• Building long-term influencer partnerships (better via influencer seeding)

What it looks like in action: Cosmetics brand, Madeca Derma, gifted their products to beauty influencer, Debanhi Nicole, in exchange for a review.

2: Sponsored posts

What it is: A sponsored post is when an influencer shares content about your brand in exchange for a fee. It can be a one-off partnership where they’re paid per post or performance-based pay, where you pay creators based on how their post(s) performs. These posts must include the #ad hashtag or be posted under the “Paid partnership” feature to meet FTC guidelines.

Best for:

• One-off deals
• Building social proof
• Generating influencer content

What it looks like in action: Doctor and influencer, Michelle Wong, collaborated with Bioderma to create a paid Instagram post.

⚡Alternative method: if you’re running ads on Instagram, experiment with running them with influencers. You can either:

a) Run an ad for your product from the influencer’s account (called influencer whitelisting)

b) Incorporate influencers using your product in your ads

c) Post ads with your and the influencers’ account

Here’s an example of each for Simply Nam, Tego Fit, and Snitch practicing the above three ad types.

3: Giveaways

What it is: Giveaways are a partnership where you give free merch to the influencer’s audience in exchange for a desired action — like following your account, commenting on your post, or anything else.

Best for:

• Requesting specific customer actions
• Instantly boosting brand awareness through engagement
• Running a high-touch influencer marketing campaign

What it looks like in action: Ellana Cosmetics did a good job combining a sponsored post and giveaway with Jaycelle Playda. The instructions were to follow both accounts, mention why you’d want to try Ellana products, tag a friend in the comments, and DM the screenshot.

⚠️ Remember: make the instructions to enter the giveaway crystal-clear by adding steps and bullet points.

4: Brand ambassador program

What it is: When you’ve set solid footing on Instagram influencer marketing, you can scale your creator partnerships by building a brand ambassador program for Instagram. A brand ambassador is one step above the Instagram influencer because they enter into a long-term exclusive partnership with your brand and become your company’s spokesperson.

Best for:

• Getting a deeper commitment out of your creator partners
• Converting influencers to brand advocates
• Scaling influencer marketing

What it looks like in action: Lululemon thrives on its brand ambassador community — from global to local partners. Every ambassador represents their values and promotes their products authentically. And it’s considered a great honor to be their ambassador — this announcement post by Beth Willson is proof.

💡Learn more: Companies with brand ambassador programs. 7 Examples and learnings

5: Instagram takeovers

What it is: An Instagram takeover is when you hand your brand’s Instagram account to an influencer for one day. This can be to answer questions related to your product, take your audience behind-the-scenes in your production process, or share knowledge related to your industry.

Best for:

• Answering your followers’ questions
• Low-commitment influencer collaboration
• Sharing influencer content on your brand’s Instagram account

What it looks like in action: The non-profit organization, Women in CyberSecurity, hosted an Instagram takeover with Jodie Kautt, the vice president of Cyber Security at Target. She might not be an Instagram influencer with hundreds of thousands of followers per se, but she’s a key opinion leader in the space, and her advice would be valuable to their community.

⚡Pro-tip: take your Instagram takeovers up a notch by —

Step 1: Decide on a topic your audience cares about.

Step 2: Bring a trusted influencer with an overlapping audience to share details about the topic.

Step 3: Ask the influencer to answer half the questions/share half the info on their account.

Step 4: The influencer will prompt their audience that the remaining information will be on your brand’s account and redirect them toward your Instagram — boosting your Instagram profile’s engagement.

This way, your audience stays hooked for more and arrives on your Instagram page naturally.

6: Co-creating products with influencers

What it is: Co-creating content with products is what it sounds like — you launch a new collection in partnership with the influencer. It’s a win-win scenario where you tap into a new audience and release new products while the influencer uses your production resources to sell something partly their own.

Best for:

• Deepening partnerships with existing influencers and brand ambassadors
• Collaborating with famous influencers
• Large marketing budgets

What it looks like in action: Freelance illustrator, Laura Jane, designed iPhone covers, laptop stickers, and more in collaboration with Casteify. Her audience would buy something with the unique Laura factor — boosting Casteify’s brand visibility and sales.

⚠️ Warning: product collaborations are certainly an advanced Instagram collaboration method with high risk and high reward. Be mindful of only partnering with creators you trust, have previously worked with, and witnessed successful partnerships with them. Ideally, launch a product in collaboration with a brand ambassador since they represent your brand already.

7: Commercials

What it is: If you’re working with many popular, big-name influencers, it makes sense to gather them all and make a traditional commercial — but on Instagram. You can also use this collaboration off Instagram in your advertisements, website, and more.

Best for:

• Partnering with popular influencers and celebrities
• Enriching partnerships with existing influencers
• Large-scale influencer marketing campaign

What it looks like in action: Beauty brand, Aveeno, partnered with four influencers for their #MySensitiveSide campaign and released stories about each creator individually. Influencers also post their videos on their own Instagram profile.

⚠️ Remember: commercials require a large budget. You’ll likely need your own production crew to shoot influencer content, pay your popular influencers a fair rate, and promote the campaign thoroughly.

Now you know the various types of Instagram collaboration to choose from. Next, let’s dive into the specific steps to run a successful Instagram influencer marketing campaign.

How to run an Instagram influencer marketing campaign in 7 steps

Step 1: Get crystal clear on your goals to set yourself up for success

The fundamental thing is to figure out where Instagram fits into your:

• Social media strategy
• Overall business goals
• Influencer marketing objectives

For example, if your business goals are to acquire new customers and you want to make influencer marketing an acquisition channel, use influencer and affiliate marketing together to boost conversions.

Related reading: 11 Ways To Find Affiliates For Your Brand (+Best Practices)

And remember: long-term influencer partnerships are important. But they aren’t the only way to get Instagram influencer marketing success — especially if you have a lower AOV.

For example, Creators Entertainment Group generated $160,000 (🤯!!) in sales for a pain patch for period cramps ($120 AOV) from just three Instagram Story slides. Even better: the influencer talking about the product for the first time ever.

How did this magic happen?

Aaron Helisek says it boils down to two things:

1) The influencer genuinely loved the product. The enthusiasm showed in their content, selling, and strong CTA.

2) The creator was a social seller — meaning their audience proactively hunts for recommendations on what to buy from their page. They’re loyal to them and trust their stamp of approval.

Of course, one-off partnerships don’t work for every industry and every type of product. But if your product has low AOV and only needs to be bought once — look for social seller Instagram creators to generate revenue from the get-go.

Instead of following generalized tips and setting textbook goals, tailor your Instagram objectives to your industry, niche, company, and product type.

Understanding where Instagram fits into your overall marketing strategy and company goals will help you lay out tangible KPIs — which, by extension, will form the basis of your Instagram influencer marketing strategy.

Step 2: Determine your Instagram influencer marketing strategy to lay out the next steps

If your goal is to “increase website visitors by 30% in Q2 2023 via Instagram influencer marketing,” what is the process you need to follow to achieve that goal? The exact steps will differ from business to business — even if you have the same objective — because no two companies have the same resources.

Your rough process for the above example can be:

Step 1

Determine how many Instagram creators you want to partner with to achieve your goal and how many followers they should have — do you need to find micro-influencers or choose from macro-creators?

Remember, long-term creator relationships require maintenance to be fruitful — be realistic about your team’s bandwidth. It’s better to have quality over quantity.

Step 2

Decide which type of collaboration and influencers make sense for your business. If you’re tight on budget, finding nano-influencers with a strong niche for product seeding & influencer gifting campaigns are cost-effective options (only COGS required).

But if you have some wiggle room to play with, experiment with bigger creators doing sponsored posts and brand ambassador programs.

Step 3

Divide responsibilities among your teammates — decide who’ll find influencers, reach out to them, follow up with them, measure their performance, and communicate with them throughout.

Other employees can partake in admin stuff — such as drafting influencer contracts, ensuring creator payments go through on time, and creating influencer briefs.

Step 4

Start the process and keep a pulse on how your Instagram influencer marketing campaign is performing. In the end, tweak what didn’t work — and rinse and repeat for the next quarter.

Once you know the direction you need to go in and each step of the process is clear, begin hunting relevant Instagram influencers.

Step 3: Find relevant Instagram influencers who can help you hit your goal

Finding fits-like-a-glove Instagram influencers is where most brands need help. But it doesn’t have to be so complicated and daunting if you use influencer search tools like Modash. Using technology is reliable, efficient, and scalable. Modash has over whopping 71M Instagram creators — it lists every creator with over 1,000 followers in every niche, country, and city. 🤯

You can add various audience and influencer filters — such as follower range, location, average Reels play, and more.

Not just this: Modash also has an analytics feature that lets you check an influencer’s audience demographics, posts’ performance, top content, engagement rate, and more — without ever reaching out to the creator.

Test it at no cost: your first 14 days are on me. 😉

Looking for additional ways to find Instagram influencers? Here are five things you can try:

• If you have already done the legwork of finding TikTok influencers or finding YouTube creators, check if they have an Instagram presence. Many influencers develop audiences on multiple platforms and would be willing to cross-promote content on other channels for your brand at an additional cost. This partnership will be easy since you both already understand the work and requirements.
• Use the Instagram app and search for influencers using industry-relevant hashtags and keywords. For example, if you’re a beauty brand, search for #beautyproducts and the “beauty” keyword on the Instagram app.

But this process is a bit manual and time-intensive since you have to manually comb through each influencer’s profile. And you still have to use an influencer analysis tool to get their engagement rates, followers’ demographics, and more.

• If you already know an Instagram influencer you love, find similar creators using Modash’s influencer lookalike tool. For instance, Modash lists over 12K similar influencers to my favorite creator, Laura.

• Ask for referrals from your existing influencer partners (if any). Even TikTok and YouTube creators might have references for Instagram influencers.
• Search on Google (or even ChatGPT) to find a list of Instagram creators in your niche. Remember to be specific for better results.

💡 Learn more: 11 Ways To Find Relevant Instagram Influencers For Your Brand

Shortlist Instagram influencers you like and want to partner with. Next, tackle your outreach game to get a yes from them.

Step 4: Outreach to influencers to start a collaboration

Emailing an influencer and asking them to promote your product looks easy on the surface. But creators (especially good ones!) are in high demand today. They are picky about which brands to partner with because they don’t want to experiment with the trust of their audience.

There are a few ways to stand out in your outreach to influencers:

• Keep it short, sweet, and personal: No one likes a mass-produced message. But it’s tough to manage influencer communication at scale without templates. What do you do? Tweak our influencer outreach templates for personalization — mention why you like the creator, why you think they’d be a good fit for your brand, and what they get in return.
• Have an intriguing subject line: Popular influencers receive hundreds of emails every day. Keep your subject line short, snappy, and straightforward. Don’t use words like “free” which might land you in Spam.
• Address what’s in it for them: Influencers are running their own businesses and need to provide value to their audience. Apart from the monetary payment and/or free product, mention how this partnership would be profitable for their business.

💡 Learn more: Influencer Outreach Guide

But how do you find the email of these Instagram creators? There are two options:

• If you’re using Modash (recommended), you can easily save the influencers you’ve shortlisted > create their list > and export their contact details. Three clicks, and your job is done.
• If you’re using the Instagram app (very laborious), see if the influencer has their email available on their profile. This feature is only available on Instagram’s mobile app.

⚡ Pro-tip: don’t forget to follow up with unresponsive influencers at regular intervals. Emails often get lost and there’s no harm in a gentle nudge.

Step 5: Set up the logistics for a successful Instagram influencer marketing campaign

Behind a successful Instagram influencer marketing campaign are a gazillion admin things done right.

Before your partnership begins, three things must be in place:

• Influencer contract before you start any formal content creation
• Influencer brief specific to each post
• Monitoring influencer content

First, influencer contracts. This document should include:

• Ownership details about who owns the influencer-generated content
• Content production process the influencer should follow
• Data you’re tracking to measure success
• Any legalities like FTC guidelines
• Goals and KPIs of the campaign
• Payment terms

💡 Learn more: 11 Things To Include in Influencer Contracts

Second, influencer briefs. These are specific for each Instagram post and are context-dependent depending on your type of collaboration. Here are some non-negotiables:

• Overview of what your company does
• Brief about your Instagram influencer marketing campaign
• Objectives of the specific campaign and goals to achieve at the end
• Deliverables owed by the influencer with timelines and review process
• Guidelines on writing Instagram captions and instructions on visual media

💡 Learn more: 7 Things To Include in Influencer Briefs

Lastly, influencer tracking. Instead of a document, this is a process to ensure the guidelines in the influencer brief are adhered to and that the campaign performance is ideal.

How to track influencer content and its performance? Monitor every post an influencer does, whether it aligns with the brief, and track how it’s performing. Use promo codes or UTM links to make this easily trackable.

For instance, if you asked an influencer to share a discount code post at 11 AM PST, check if it:

• Went live at the right time
• Whether the influencer used the right caption and image/video
• How it’s performing in terms of engagement, conversions, and website visits

Sounds like too much work? It is. Make it easier by using Modash’s campaign monitoring platform. Track published content, influencer cost, engagement, the total number of posts, and more — all under one tab.

But the biggest maintenance work of all is sustaining strong creator relationships.

Step 6: Nurturing influencer relationships to keep your creator partners happy

Influencer relationships make or break your Instagram influencer marketing campaign long-term. Sure, an influencer might take a pay cheque from you and post about your brand, but they won’t go the extra mile or love working with you with a transactional arrangement.

There are plenty of ways to nourish influencer relationships:

• Start an influencer newsletter: Spotlight creators who are performing well, share post ideas, keep your influencer community updated about new launches, and more.
• Make prompt payments: No one likes a company that paid 30 days late, no matter how high the amount was. Talk to your accounting team and pay your creator partners fairly and on time.
• Promote their business: Influencers have a business just like you. They’ll love you promoting them on your company page unasked, sharing their posts, and appreciating their efforts. Being human goes a long way.

💡 Learn more: 7 Proven Influencer Relationship Management Methods

Step 7: Measure influencer performance to understand what works and what needs tweaking

You monitored individual influencer performance, but what next? How did your campaign perform on a large scale? Did it meet your business objectives?

Examine what went right in your Instagram influencer marketing campaign and what you could’ve improved. What was your Instagram influencer marketing ROI, and how could you have amplified it further?

Return to step one and check how close you were to hit your goals. Don’t be discouraged if you don’t hit the ceiling you had set — influencer marketing on any channel is often a long game and a matter of experimenting to find what works best for you.

⚡ Pro-tip: create an exit survey for influencers to ask them what they think went well in the campaign and what part of the process you can improve. This will help you uncover blind spots in your strategy and operations.

3 Instagram influencer marketing campaigns done right

Let’s look at what successful Instagram influencer marketing looks like in action. Here are three examples to inspire:

1: Dove’s #TheCROWNAct collaboration with Instagram influencers

Dove sells hair products. But they stand for much more than that. They support various social causes in collaboration with influencers on Instagram and share stories through their profile.

Most recently, they partnered with multiple influencers — including Chanel — for their Crown Act. This campaign shares stories of real women who faced hair discrimination in the workplace and took a stance against it.

The result?

🎉 #TheCROWNAct hashtag has over more than 23K Instagram posts.

🎉 All posts related to this campaign have a minimum of over 20K views on Instagram Reels — with one post garnering as much as 338K views.

🎉 The comments on this campaign’s posts are wildly appreciative of Dove and the impact they’re making with their influencer partnerships.

Key takeaways:

✅ Use Instagram influencer partnerships to highlight your brand values and mission.

✅ Share your Instagram influencers’ and brand ambassadors’ personal stories on your profile to forge a stronger relationship and create more authentic content.

✅ Almost all creators Dove partnered with for this campaign have under 30K followers — goes to show the importance of relevance over a large distributed following.

2: Calm co-creating Instagram content with Dr. Julie

Calm is a meditation app that regularly partners with Instagram creators to create webinars, Instagram content, and even guided meditations.

Most recently, they collaborated with Dr. Julie — a clinical psychologist — to create a series called, “Overcome Stress and Anxiety.”

The result?

🎉 All Instagram Reels with Dr. Julie have over 500K views.

🎉 Dr. Julie reposted the Reels from her account, boosting viewership.

🎉 Most comments highlight that they found Dr. Julie’s content extremely useful.

Key takeaways:

✅ Co-create content with influencers if it fits your service and/or product. It’s a low commitment compared to co-creating tangible products with creators.

✅ Find influencers whose audience aligns with yours. Dr. Julie is a clinical psychologist with a bestselling book on mental well-being — which fits Calm’s demographics perfectly.

✅ If the partnership is right, don’t hesitate to take the collaboration off Instagram. You might get more bang for your buck and strengthen your relationship with the creator.

3: Touchland’s Instagram influencer gifting strategy

Touchland sells scented hand sanitizers, which are the choice of hand cleaning from the likes of Kris Jenner, Mandy Moore, and even Kate Hudson.

But how does Touchland get these A-list celebrities to discover its products? Influencer gifting. It might sound like a far shot, but the founder regularly reaches out to beauty bloggers herself, shares her story, and asks them to share honest reviews — which led to their products being discovered by celebrity makeup artist Jamie Greenberg. Then, a domino effect followed.

The results?

🎉 Popular A-list celebrities started using Touchland’s hand sanitizers, boosting its brand awareness and press.

🎉 Given the celebrity backing, Touchland could easily position itself as a beauty product and charge $10 for its hand sanitizers.

🎉 Touchland continues to partner with various micro-influencers via influencer gifting — which means they’re not spending a dime except COGS and still getting fantastic ROI.

Key takeaways:

✅ Methods like influencer gifting and product seeding might require more hustling, but the payoff is huge.

✅ Aesthetics matter — create a memorable unboxing experience and pretty packaging.

✅ Leverage your Instagram influencer marketing success to position yourself at a premium.

💡 Learn more: 16 Influencer Marketing Campaign Examples [+ Key Takeaways]

Would you do it for the ‘gram?

Instagram influencer marketing is increasingly becoming necessary for e-commerce businesses. With this guide under your reference, you know exactly the steps you need to take to master the process.

But it can still be overwhelming — finding influencers, experimenting with collaboration types, tracking ROI, and so much more. Streamline it all using Modash and get some significant tasks — like finding Instagram influencers — off your plate.

Sign-up today for a 14-day free trial.