The Rise of Influencers in Digital Marketing

Influencers are no longer a “nice to have” experimental tactic. For many brands, they are now a structural acquisition and branding channel, integrated alongside SEO, paid media and email.

The reason is simple: audiences spend a huge amount of time on social platforms, and they trust recommendations from creators far more than traditional advertising. Influencer marketing budgets continue to grow, even in a context where every marketing euro is scrutinised.  

Used with a clear strategy, influencers can help you accelerate brand awareness, generate traffic that converts and feed content into all your other channels (social ads, email, website, SEO).

What is an Influencer Today?

An influencer is a content creator who has built a community around a specific niche (beauty, finance, B2B, gaming, travel, etc.) and who can guide the opinions and purchasing decisions of that audience.

Two key elements make an influencer valuable for a brand:

• Attention: their content is really watched, saved, commented and shared.
• Trust: their audience perceives their recommendations as honest and relevant, not as purely transactional ads.  

Influencer marketing, then, is simply the fact of collaborating with these creators (paid or unpaid) to co-create content that serves your objectives: awareness, consideration, conversion or loyalty.

Why Influencers Have Become Central to Digital Strategies

1. They capture attention where people really are

Social platforms concentrate an increasing share of the time spent online. In many markets, short-form video (Reels, Shorts, TikTok) has become the default way to discover products, trends and brands.  

If your brand is absent from this ecosystem, you leave the field open to competitors who are visible through creators.

2. They bring trust and social proof

Consumers are increasingly sceptical of classic ads and polished brand messaging. They rely more on people they see as “peers” – even when those peers are creators with significant audiences.

Studies show that recommendations from creators generate higher engagement and conversion than many traditional formats, because they are perceived as more authentic.  

3. They are a renewable content engine

A strong influencer strategy gives you:

• Native content adapted to each platform
• Creatives you can re-use in social media campaigns whitelisting, dark ads, UGC ads)‍
• Assets for your emails, product pages and blog content

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Instead of producing everything in-house, you co-create with people who understand the codes of their audience better than anyone.

4. They are 100% measurable

Modern influencer campaigns are no longer just about “visibility”. With tracking links, UTM tags, promo codes and CRM integration, you can measure traffic, leads and revenue per creator, and integrate this channel into a broader growth hacking approach.

The Main Types of Influencers (and When to Use Them)

There is no single “best” type of influencer. The right profile depends on your market, objectives and budget.

Mega and celebrity influencers

• Who? Celebrities and very large creators (often 1M+ followers).
• Advantages: massive reach, strong impact on awareness and brand image.
• Limitations: very high cost, sometimes weaker engagement, less targeted audiences.

Macro-influencers

• Who? Creators with large audiences (typically 100k–1M followers).
• Advantages: strong reach, still a relatively clear positioning, good fit for national campaigns.
• Limitations: higher rates, more requests, sometimes less flexibility.

Micro-influencers

• Who? Creators between ~10k and 100k followers (ranges vary depending on the market).
• Advantages: niche audiences, high engagement, more accessible budgets and easier collaboration. Many studies show that micro-influencers generate more trust and better engagement rates than celebrities.  
• Limitations: limited reach per creator; you need to work with several profiles.

Nano-influencers

• Who? Creators below 10k followers.
• Advantages: ultra-niche, very strong proximity to the audience, excellent for local campaigns or micro-segments.
• Limitations: low individual reach; requires a structured program if you want scale.

Expert / B2B influencers (KOLs)

• Who? Specialists recognised in a very specific domain (consultants, engineers, analysts, niche CEOs).
• Advantages: very high authority, especially in B2B; strong ability to influence decision-makers and complex deals.
• Limitations: audience sizes can be modest; collaborations require a strong value proposition and clear alignment.

When Does Influencer Marketing Make Sense?

Influencers are particularly relevant when you want to:

• Launch a new brand or product and generate awareness quickly
• Strengthen your positioning on a niche (eco-friendly, tech, premium, etc.)
• Accelerate social commerce (TikTok Shop, Instagram Shopping, live shopping)
• Feed a content-hungry strategy in parallel to SEO work and paid ads

• Open a new market or demographic segment without starting from zero with your own audience

Conversely, if your offer is not ready (positioning unclear, price not defined, product not validated), influencer marketing tends to be expensive and frustrating. It amplifies what already exists – it does not fix a weak value proposition.

How to Choose the Right Influencers for Your Brand

1. Start from your objectives and KPIs

Before looking for creators, clarify:

• What do you want to obtain? (reach, traffic, leads, direct sales, UGC, app installs, etc.)
• How will you measure success? (CPM, CPC, cost per lead, cost per acquisition, ROAS, etc.)

This step is often covered during a broader marketing audit, where influencer campaigns are evaluated alongside other acquisition channels.

2. Analyse audience fit

For each potential creator, check:

• Geography: where are the followers actually based?
• Demographics: age, gender, languages, interests
• Affinity: does the creator already talk about your category or similar products?

Without this match, even a “big” creator will bring you very little qualified business.

3. Evaluate engagement and authenticity

Look beyond follower count:

• Engagement rate on recent posts (likes, comments, saves, shares)
• Nature of comments (real conversations vs generic emojis)
• Consistency of views over time
• Suspicious signals: sudden spikes, low story views vs followers, many obviously fake profiles in comments  

4. Assess content style and brand fit

Ask yourself:

• Does their tone of voice match your brand?
• Is their content highly polished or more raw and spontaneous?
• How do they integrate sponsored content? Is it transparent and still authentic?  

The goal is to collaborate with creators whose style will enhance your brand instead of creating dissonance.

Building an Influencer Strategy in 5 Steps

1. Clarify the role of influencers in your funnel

Decide where creators will have the most impact:

• Top of funnel: reach, visibility, search demand for your brand
• Middle of funnel: education, demos, comparisons, testimonials
• Bottom of funnel: promo codes, limited offers, retargeting with UGC ads

Your content formats and KPIs will be different at each stage.

2. Define collaboration formats and budget

Common formats include:

• Product gifting with honest review
• Sponsored posts (feed, stories, Reels, Shorts, live)
• Long-term ambassadorships
• Affiliate partnerships with performance-based remuneration

Align formats and compensation with the expected value and with market benchmarks.

3. Co-create the brief (without killing authenticity)

Your brief should:

• Explain your brand and offer
• Clarify the objective of the campaign and the key message
• List the mandatory elements (mentions, tags, legal, hashtags if needed)
• Give examples of content you like

Then, leave room for the creator to adapt this to their tone and audience. Over-controlling tends to reduce performance.

4. Plan distribution and repurposing

Think beyond the original post:

• Can you reuse the content in social ads managed by your paid media / SEA campaigns?
• Can you integrate the videos into your product pages, landing pages or email flows?
• How will you organise storage and rights management over time?

The more you repurpose, the better your overall ROI.

5. Measure, learn, scale

Track at least:

• Reach and engagement (per creator, format and platform)
• Traffic and conversions (via UTM links and promo codes)
• Incremental impact vs your “normal” performance

Then, reinvest in the creators, formats and platforms that drive the most business value, and gradually integrate this into a broader growth hacking strategy (tests, iterations, scaling).

Common Mistakes to Avoid

Chasing follower count instead of relevance

A creator with 50k highly targeted, engaged followers in your niche can generate more revenue than a celebrity with millions of generic followers. Prioritise fit and engagement over vanity metrics.  

Treating influencers like media, not partners

If the relationship is purely transactional and short-term, the content will feel forced and your results will be inconsistent. You get better performance by building real, long-term collaborations with a smaller number of well-chosen creators.

Launching campaigns without a solid measurement framework

Without tracking links, clear landing pages and integration with your analytics stack, it becomes impossible to know what really works. Every campaign should be tied to specific KPIs and a clear way to attribute results.

Conclusion: Influencers as a Strategic Growth Lever

Influencers are now a structural part of digital marketing, not a side experiment. They help brands:

• Reach audiences that are increasingly difficult to reach via traditional ads
• Build trust and social proof in markets saturated with messages
• Produce native content at scale for all acquisition channels

The challenge is no longer “should we use influencers?” but “how do we integrate them intelligently into our marketing mix and measure their real impact on the business?”.

Brands that treat influencer marketing as a strategic, data-driven channel – and not just a series of one-shot collaborations – will be those that capture the most value in the coming years.

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