The mega-influencer era just died, and nobody sent out a memo.
While brands were busy throwing millions at celebrities with perfect feeds, Nike quietly shifted the game. In 2023, micro-influencers carried 52% of Nike's media impact value according to Launchmetrics data; not A-listers, not mega-stars, but everyday fitness enthusiasts.
Meanwhile, Glossier, Inc. built a billion-dollar empire by turning 500+ customers into brand ambassadors, and SEPHORA's #SephoraSquad is pulling record numbers with 16,000+ applications this year alone.
So apparently, authenticity fatigue is real.
When your audience can smell a paycheck from three posts away, smart brands like ASOS.com and HelloFresh are betting on genuine conversations instead of staged perfection.
Nike isn't just working with elite athletes anymore, they're partnering with your local yoga teacher. Glossier, Inc.? They made every customer feel like an influencer.
The data backs it up: micro-influencers drive better engagement and ROI. But the real story? Brands are finally realizing that influence isn't about follower counts. It's about trust. And trust gets built in DMs and comment sections, not billboards and Super Bowl ads.
The future belongs to brands brave enough to hand their reputation to people who actually use their products.
Are you still chasing follower counts, or building real communities?
Loewe keeps winning on TikTok because they just get “the lore”.
The Spanish luxury fashion house has quietly mastered something extremely valuable: authentic cultural integration through strategic partnerships with niche content creators who've built recognizable content formats.
The two most recent examples showcase their approach:
First there’s @anthonybackup9 who filmed himself literally just standing in front of passing train a bag in a hand and being all melancholic, listening to one of Lorde’s top hits “Buzzcut Season”. This video blew up, as it perfectly captures the nostalgia of this song as Lorde resurfaces in pop culture through her Charli XCX collaboration and upcoming album release.
Loewe just asked him to recreate the video, handing him a branded bag and THE tomato bag (that’s a whole story in itself), letting the video speak for itself — no big changes, creative direction.
The second example is their collaboration with @antthrowny, who started hammer throwing his boombox while listening to trending pop songs (Sabrina Carpenter’s pLeAsE pLeAsE pLeAsE ᵈᵒⁿᵗ ᵖʳᵒᵛᵉ ⁱᵐ ʳⁱᵍʰᵗ went VIRAL).
And again — Loewe didn’t reinvent his content or impose their messaging: they simply integrated their product into his existing, proven format while he wore/threw their pieces naturally.
This might be an interesting content formula and cast brands and marketeers could learn from: identify pop culture angles already gaining viral momentum, partner with creators who have cultural relevance (not a follower count!!) and execute product placement that feels native to the platform, creator and format.
If you really want to create “authentic” branded content to better engage with potential consumers, this is the way to go. (Plus your marketing dollars might go much further as the cost per collab will likely be much lower than one big celebrity endorsement.
(As always, you can find the videos in the comments)
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.
Nik Sharma might be the 🐐 of influencer marketing.
Here are 18 of my favorite lessons from Nik on the power of influencer marketing + the right way to approach it as a brand:
1. By partnering with influencers, brands are able to integrate their products into a relevant community with a high conversion rate at a relatively low cost.
2. Fans expect influencers to promote products they care about.
3. Most influencers only want to work with brands that they believe in and promote products on their social channels that they would use.
4. More than 41% of consumers get more interested in a brand when they partner with a celebrity or influencer they love.
5. Traditional brands follow this template: Select the influencers. Give them free products + discount code. Pay them for a sponsored post. This approach is purely transactional and sets up the influencer marketing campaign for failure.
6. The goal of influencer marketing shouldn't be to pay them for sponsored content. Instead, you should develop a meaningful relationship that is beneficial for both parties.
7. Successful influencer partnerships are based on trust—not reach.
8. If brands are so focused on their return on investment, they can overlook the value social media influencers provide.
9. The best influencer marketing campaigns are multi-faceted.
10. Successful influencer marketing campaigns build brand loyalty, decrease customer acquisition costs, and enable marketers to track influencer-driven impact on a performance level.
11. By forging a relationship with the influencers you’re working with, they’re more likely to post about your brand without you even having to ask. This content is more native than the old-fashioned branded content with #ad front-in-center in the copy.
12. You need to find influencers with audiences that is closely aligned with your target market.
13. Find influencers who believe in your product. If they don’t, the content they create won’t resonate.
14. Offer to provide your product to the influencer to test before they have to commit.
15. When you work with an influencer that truly believes in your brand and appreciates your product, the content that they create is gold.
16. Don’t solely focus on the number of followers they have or their content, but rather, pick influencers that have a high engagement rate and have values, goals, and ethics that align with your brand.
17. Brands that treat influencers as partners as opposed to paid marketing channels will see the value in their campaigns. To take this approach, brands need to work collaboratively and focus on long-term gains rather than short-term revenue.
18. By selecting the right influencers, crafting your pitch, and maximizing your success, you’ll get more out of the partnership than a one-time increase in sales. You’ll get an entirely new audience to work with and an ambassador that’s sharing your product in effective, engaging ways.
#influencermarketing#niksharma#marketing
We’ve generated ~6M impressions for our clients at Creatorbuzz.
Our most successful influencer campaigns leverage these 5 tactics 👇
1️⃣ Video-first
We’re still seeing great engagement from text and image-based content, however, our clients who are leveraging video content are seeing higher impressions and engagement. Influencers who can make great video content will win in 2025.
2️⃣ Real World Application
Lots of B2B Marketers think Influencer Marketing only works if the influencers are customers of their products. While that helps, this is not the case. The Influencers just need to have a real world application for the product. The product needs to be able to solve an actual problem the influencer experiences or has experienced in their day job. The audience can see right through it if not.
3️⃣ High Value Resource
If your CTA is a demo page, you might need to re-evaluate your influencer strategy. In B2B, sales cycles can be 3-6 months long (sometimes even longer). And demos are usually only requested AFTER the buyer has already done 80% of their research. So by having your influencers share a demo page, this will lead to a poor conversion rate. Instead, have your influencers share a high value resource to help buyers through the funnel. For example, have them share a resource report, some sort of template, or free certification. Anything that provides immediate value.
4️⃣ Full Funnel Content
Some campaigns are strictly for brand awareness, while others are more performance based. Duh. However, I’ve noticed our best campaigns have full-funnel content. I recommend using a mix of different types of influencers to achieve this. Select some influencers who make general content in the “Marketing” space that will guarantee you impressions. Then select a few SMEs within each category that will provide more specific content within a niche of Marketing, like MOPs for example. The SMEs may not have as large of a reach, but it will help you target a specific community with tactical advice.
5️⃣ 3 Month Campaign Minimum
All of our clients start on a 3-4 month campaign minimum. Why? A few reasons. (1) For the influencers, they’re not interested in signing one off brand deals anymore. (2) In B2B, given the length of sales cycles, it may take a few months to start seeing an impact- especially, if the company has an awareness problem. (3) This 3 month campaign will be a great testing period to see what’s working and what’s not. After the 3 months are up, companies can now extend longer term agreements to the creators who are the best fit. B2B companies will have “Always On” influencer campaigns just like they would for Advertising.
These are just some of the tactics our best clients are leveraging for their Influencer campaigns.
What else would you add to the list?
Interested in launching a B2B Influencer Campaign for your business?
Send me a DM 🤝
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.
🚨 The One-Off Influencer Deal Model Is Dying 🚨 (and I’m not mad at it)
For years, brands have treated influencer marketing like a quick-fix ad buy (especially because it's cheaper than traditional media). If anything, audiences HATE seeing sponsored posts. Brands that continue to rely on one-and-done influencer campaigns will struggle. The ones that understand relationship-driven partnerships will dominate.
Speaking from experience as a creator, my repeat brands deals almost always perform better organically. The people who watch my content know exactly what I like and what I use, so they tend to interact with repeat content more than a one-off brand deal. So what does the future look like?
The smartest brands are:
✅ Locking in long-term brand ambassadorships (think REVOLVE x Camila Coehlo)
✅ Investing in multi-channel storytelling - leveraging creators across IG, TikTok, YouTube & beyond (even LinkedIn has become a place for brand deals)
✅ Partnering with influencers to co-create products (think Beaubble and their collabs with Teni Panosian and Rudi Berry)
This isn’t about one-off ads anymore; it’s about turning creators into strategic business partners. Brands that evolve will win. The ones that don’t? They’ll keep burning money.
#InfluencerMarketing#BrandPartnerships#CreatorEconomy#MarketingStrategy#DigitalMarketing#BrandBuilding#CreatorLedGrowth
Yesterday, I saw a completely new way to leverage a TikTok influencer...
Shay Mitchells’ BEIS teamed up with creator Robyn Delmonte aka GirlBossTown for their new "Airport Dads" campaign.
GirlBossTown, known for predicting PR moments and campaigns, has amassed over 650k followers by sharing her ideas publicly.
And she has been vocal about being brought in to do the biggest marketing activations.
Well, BÉIS jumped on the opportunity to involve her in their latest campaign.
BUT unlike a traditional creator collaboration, GirlBossTown used her platform to give a behind-the-scenes look at how the campaign came to life.
And THIS is a creative way to leverage creators native to their platform.
It also shows how LinkedIn creators could be similarly integrated into campaigns.
How?
Imagine if every marketer used LinkedIn to show the making of the campaign to promote the campaign itself.
It becomes part of the storytelling moment.
I 💙 the idea of leveraging behind-the-scenes voices to amplify marketing efforts.
Have any other companies done this well? What do you think about this tactic of breaking the fourth wall in advertising?
#marketing#brandbuilding#brandmarketing#brandcampaign
Here's 1 big mistake to avoid,
when you're looking for a potential evangelist...
Focusing only on their AUDIENCE SIZE.
Here are 4 other things I think matter just as much (if not more):
1. Expertise
Do they have the depth of knowledge to consitently add value to your ICP? Can they share a point-of-view that shows they know their stuff.
2. Willingness
Are they ready & wiling to collaborate in the co-creation of content? Any brand evangelist relationship won't work if it's merely transactional. You've got to build (or see the potential for) a good, collaborative partnership.
3. Audience Fit
Maybe they have a large audience, but how much does it really match up with the audience YOU want to reach? Unless you're just going for *really* broad brand awareness, you might not wanna skip this step.
4. Audience Engagement
Ever been pitched by an influencer who boasts about their HUGE follower count, but then when you look at their actual posts, there's little to no engagement? If there's no engaged audience, then you might be better off looking elsewhere.
What else should be on this list when you're considering an evangelist for your brand?
#B2B#marketing#evangelism#creatoreconomy#influencermarketing#employeeadvocacy
Traditional influencer marketing can be difficult to scale in B2B, because you might start running into things like:
- people only wanting to post about products they use/have used l
- sponsored posts not performing because their audience is used to/expects a specific type of content from them (it's easier
- them running out of things to say after one or two posts cause they're simply pushing your software
So, I wouldn't rely on that as my primary influencer marketing tactic.
Instead, you should have each influencer create their own content series on a topic:
(a) they are interested in
(b) their audience expects from them
(c) that is relevant to your business goals
And that way:
- they aren't creating content around your product, they are creating content around a topic they enjoy
- their audience doesn't skip past a clearly sponsored post, but continue to engage with it as if it was their regular content
- it plays its part in helping you progress towards a specific objective since it associates your company with a certain topic, outcome, etc.
Everybody wins.
I call it company-creator-audience fit (no, I dont).