Crafting Compelling Campaigns With Influencers In Ecommerce

Last month, Storylane drove over 700,000+ impressions through influencer marketing. And at the start of the year, I had no idea how to make this channel perform consistently. I had no playbook, no proven process, and no ideas. So, I experimented. A lot. And while we’re still figuring it out, here’s what I’ve learned so far: 1. Smaller creators are outperforming larger ones for us Smaller creators often produce better, more authentic content. They’re typically more affordable, work harder, and deliver results with a hyper-focused audience. Larger influencers charge a premium, and the content often feels average. Exceptions exist, but they’re rare. 2. Build a curated influencer portfolio. There are more great influencers out there than your budget can handle. Start small, experiment, and refine a curated portfolio of creators who align with your goals, budget, and audience. This takes trial and error, so don’t rush it. Your “go-to” influencers will emerge over time. 3. Three months is enough to evaluate an influencer. In three months, you’ll know if the partnership is worth continuing. It’s enough time to assess content quality, audience engagement, and impact. 4. Set up clear contracts with influencers Include everything in writing: - Who owns the content? - Can you run ads with it? - Will they engage with your posts? - How many posts will they deliver? Clarity now saves confusion later. 5. Influencer costs vary... a lot. Pricing is all over the place, but here's a starting point. For this platform, expect $500–$2,000 per post for influencers with fewer than 100K followers. Bigger names might quote $5K or more. The highest I’ve seen is $650k per post (no joke). Decide what’s worth it based on your goals and their audience quality. 6. Influencer onboarding matters. Hop on a 1:1 call to align. Share your knowledge, past successes, and internal data. Learn their creative process and set expectations. The better you collaborate upfront, the smoother the partnership. 7. Influencer program management is a full-time job. I tried juggling this alongside my other responsibilities, and it’s a lot. Between sourcing, contracts, payments, content review, and feedback, the workload multiplies with every creator. Bring in outside help if you can afford it or upskill someone internally. 8. Give creators creative freedom. Over-controlling a creator’s content kills authenticity. Work closely on the brief to give them all the context they need, but let their voice shine through. The results are far better when they feel trusted. 9. Ethics build trust (with influencers and your buyers) Always disclose influencer partnerships (FTC compliance isn’t optional). I see a lot of brands and creators not disclose these partnerships (on LinkedIn, in private communities, Slack groups etc.) and it's WRONG. Don't trick your buyers. Be honest. We’re still learning, but this channel is showing promise, and I plan to scale it further in 2025.

A few months ago I was on call with the CMO of a $25M+ brand. They had just wrapped up a 100 person influencer campaign. Guess how many were ROI positive? Seven. Just seven. This wasn't a failure of the other 93 creators. This was a clear indication something was fundamentally broken in how they did influencer marketing. We went through a simple 5-step checklist to that could be applied immediately. If you're a brand in a similar situation, here's how to go from "influencer marketing doesn't work" to "we need more creators!" 1. Introduce New Data Most brands model off of CPMs, never looking at actual performance. Use social commerce platforms to include actual conversion performance. Display it all against rates to sort by projections we actually care about: CPA, CPC, etc... 2. Measure Alignment Use this data to now measure actual alignment with your brand. Things like AOV, content relevance, messaging... The surface level connection is not enough. 3. Focus on Audience A creator's demographic matters less than their audience demographics. Look at the age, gender, geography of their audience. Plenty of creators that fit your demographic but have an entirely different audience demographic and vice versa. 4. Generate Creative Outlines from Creators Bring creators into the planning stages, letting them shape your creative outline. The right messaging and style is more likely to come from them than you. Then turn this into a content brief that provides direction but is not a script. Let creators do what they do best. 5. Treat Content as the Asset The reach you get from a creator is valuable, but the content they've created is far more valuable when used correctly. Setup whitelisting, repurposing to your own socials - get the most utilization out of every single video. -- Creator marketing works. But it's not 2017 anymore - sending product and seeing what happens is not a strategy. Dig in. Build the right strategy. Find the right creators. Let them do their thing. Maximize their content.

Seed Health generated $100M+ dollars in revenue through influencers, and 5X’d their return on investment in the channel. And I spoke to the woman behind the program. Here are 4 influencer marketing lessons every marketer should understand: 1) The metric that Lily Comba and her team were assessed on wasn’t impressions or likes—it was CPA (cost per acquisition). Generally, she was looking to achieve a CPA lower than $100. This is incredibly dependent on your product and unit economics, but the idea of basing the success of influencer marketing on tangible sales is something I love. To track performance, Lily and her team used codes with a 15% off discount code assigned to each influencer. Simple. 2) Early on, the team focused on Instagram stories and YouTube, versus in-feed and Reels content. Why? Simple. Both IG stories and YouTube content allows you to have easily clickable links in the content. Trying to drive sales from a post with nowhere to click adds extra friction to the process. 3) The influencer marketing team worked cross-functionally with the paid social team. The influencer team at Seed worked hand in hand with the paid social team to feed them influencer creatives to us as ads. Lily told us that at one point, 70% of their ads in their accounts were influencer content. (Side note: we continually see this approach crush for Kynship clients—often slashing CPAs by ~15%, because influencer content is just more engaging) 4) If you’re working with influencers on a pay-per-post model, you’ll want to base payment off of engagement (not follower count!). Often times, influencers with a lower follower count have better engagement and a more relevant audience for your brand (and it’ll usually do better in the ad account too). Huge thank you to Lily for taking the time to stop by the show. The episode was full of influencer marketing strategies for marketers to take note of — I’ll drop the episode in the comments for you to check out.

The best marketing doesn't feel like marketing. We rebuilt our entire creator strategy around this idea. Here's our exact playbook for becoming part of the feed (instead of interrupting it)... First, forget everything you know about the typical "influencer marketing." This isn't about paying for posts and asking them to look into the camera and say “I like this”. It's about building genuine partnerships that compound over time. Let me share what actually works for us: 1. How we find aligned creators 2. Content that actually works 3. Building real partnerships 4. Scaling without losing authenticity 1. Focus on depth over reach Look for creators that are highly aligned with your brand and engaged with their audience. Then help them pick ONE product that will truly resonate. Don’t just throw your catalog at them. Specific stories > Generic promotion 2. Arm them with knowledge, not rules We send creators extensive product knowledge when we start out. But it’s not to control their message. It’s to arm them with the information, background, and assets that they need to succeed. Let them tell your story their way. 3. Trust their creative instincts That video with "poor lighting" or "bad framing"? It often outperforms our polished content. Why? Because it feels real. Like it belongs in the feed. Stuff people would watch if it was their friends or family. 4. Think long-term We don't just send a product + a brief and be done with it. We nurture the relationship: • Do monthly product sends • Share launch previews • Include them in campaign planning • Ask for their input Creators become partners. Partners become advocates. This compounds over time. But here's the challenge: Managing these deep relationships with 100+ creators? It's chaos if you’re doing it manually. Between emails, direct messages, product sends, follow-ups, asset management… It’s a huge amount of friction. And we were dropping balls daily. That's when we use SARAL - The Influencer OS to manage our creator relationships. Their platform lets us: - Build genuine relationships at scale - Track every conversation - Manage product sends - Monitor performance - Process commissions Now we can focus on what matters: Building real partnerships instead of managing spreadsheets. Remember, the future isn't about interrupting the feed. It's about becoming part of it through genuine content that feels true to the platform. #proudpartner