Regardless of your industry or the audience you want to reach, influencer campaigns have proven effective across all industries. One of the best ways to learn how to improve and upscale your campaigns is to look at examples from some of the best. If they have million-dollar budgets for influencers, why not use those same ideas, only scaled down?
Here are some awesome inspirational examples of marketing campaigns for big brands which can give you new ideas for your next influencer campaigns:
1. Microsoft’s Make What’s Next
Microsoft has a long-standing influencer campaign that aims to help your girls enter the STEM world in education and their careers. The campaign achieved raving success with over 3.5 million likes in one day. It was made in partnership with NatGeo, which featured female scientists and researchers in the great outdoors.
The campaign served as a brand awareness booster and positive PR by shedding light on an important issue in the industry.
How to Apply This?
Consider making a campaign that will tackle some of the burning questions and challenges of today’s world, such as climate change, the pay gap, or anything that can be linked back to the work you do in your company.
2. Audible
For Audible, influencers are one of the most important marketing channels, and they cooperate with everyone from nano-influencers to mega-stars. Most often, influencers don’t only advertise Audible but recommend a book that they like that has been proven to spark great conversion rates.
Audible deliberately chooses high-engagement profiles and prefers to work with influencers with fewer followers if they have a great relationship with them.
How to Apply This?
Look for influencers that have a dedicated community around them. Try advertising both the brand as a whole and a particular product.
3. Lyft
Just like Audible, Lyft works with everyone, from tiny, local influencers to mega-superstars, to spread the word about their brand. This has gotten almost 6 million engagements per year and is a solid of the most mentioned brand of 2019!
Some of the names that took part in Lyft’s influencer campaigns are Snoop Dogg, Shaquille O’Neal, Zayn Malik…
How to Apply This?
Consider investing more in partnerships with macro-influencers – when everything is said and done, the cost-benefit analysis might show that this was a smarter choice than micro-influencers.
4. Dunkin’ Donuts
Dunkin’ used nano-influencers to spread the word about their new espresso product. They picked influencers with high engagement rates, even with a low number of followers.
“Dunkin’ Donuts is an example of a down-to-earth campaign that appeals to the everyday American. Unlike other influencer campaigns that foster the emotions of exclusivity and FOMO, these strategies illustrate that America runs on Dunkin’”, says Kristin Savage, a blogger and writer at TrustMyPaper and GrabMyEssay.
How to Apply This?
If you want to appeal to regular people, use regular people as your influencers. Some research suggests that customers are more likely to take advice from someone whose life is similar to theirs.
5. Google
As the tech giant it is, you would expect Google to cooperate with some of the biggest influencers in the world, right? Surprisingly, Google chose two micro-influencers who run the profile @thesorrygirls to build awareness about the new Pixelbook. The super-successful post was a contest that generated tens of thousands of likes and comments.
Here are some of the services you can use to write an influencer campaign like Google: Studicus (get texts written by experts and professionals), WowGrade (find experts who can write your digital marketing campaigns), BestEssayEducation (another great writing service), Fiverr (hire independent professionals who specialize in influencer marketing campaigns).
How to Apply This?
Invest in micro-influencers with high engagement rates. Set aside time and resources to find the influencers with the best chance of working well with your brand.
6. Hilton
Hilton worked with world-famous travel influencers in its Seven Urban Wonders influencer campaign. Each Hilton location highlighted one of the hotel chain’s luxury resorts worldwide. Combined, Hilton influencers have more than 3 million followers.
How to Apply This?
If you sell a luxury product, you must run an influencer campaign to match.
7. American Express
Like Hilton, American Express influencer campaigns are all about exclusivity, glamorous lifestyles and jet-set societies. Influencers who post for Amex use breathtaking images to trigger FOMO, even among the most resilient of us.
8. Buick
Buick is not what you would consider influencer marketing material, but it could run one of the most successful and effective campaigns. To reach a younger audience, Buick cooperated with bloggers who had the task of pinning the Buick Encore as part of their style on Pinterest.
The campaign also went beyond Pinterest, as many of these bloggers went on to share their boards on other social media channels.
Another surprising and interesting thing about this campaign is that Buick seemingly chose 10 influencers who had no palpable connections to the auto industry. Still, the campaign proved to be a massive success!
How to Apply This?
If you’re running an influencer campaign, you can think beyond Instagram. Other networks can offer unique and interesting ways of expressing recommendations.
9. TikTok
TikTok started by using Instagram for their influencer campaigns in hashtag challenges. Now, it’s a stand-alone social media that’s one of the fastest-rising networks in the history of the internet. TikTok, which used influencers to promote its brand, now hosts thousands of influencers on their network.
How to Apply This?
Influencer campaigns can be a two-way street. If you’re a thought leader in your industry, try exchanging recommendation favours with another brand in the same industry.
10. FashionNova
If you haven’t seen a post with a Fashion Nova hashtag posted by anyone from nano to mega influencers, you probably spent about 5 minutes on Instagram. This brand maximizes the results from influencer marketing and makes it the company’s primary marketing channel. As far as we can tell, they are succeeding!
How to Apply This?
The lesson we can learn from Fashion Nova and influencer marketing is: go hard or go home. You don’t have to go all-in with your marketing budget, but it’s worth it to explore bigger investments.
11. Walmart
Similar to Microsoft’s campaign, Walmart’s FightHunger campaign achieved more than 86,000 user engagements in under one month.
Conclusion
You don’t have to improvise or use your intuition when it comes to influencer marketing – use some of the tried-out techniques and strategies from some of the biggest brands in the world! Even if you have a drastically lower budget, you can still use the same tricks to achieve the same effects, only in smaller numbers.
