Best Influencer Marketing Campaigns: Examples + Expert Tips

The best influencer marketing campaigns help you boost brand visibility, expand your target market, and drive sales. 

It’s a tactic trusted by marketers and customers alike. A 2025 Sprout Social study found that 16% of consumers rank influencer marketing as having the most impact on their purchasing decisions, and a 2026 Aspire survey of nearly 900 marketing professionals reports that influencer marketing spend is expected to exceed $12 billion in the US in 2026, up more than 15% from the year before. From niche influencers to those with millions of followers, brands can find strategic partnerships to suit every product, price point, and platform.

In this guide, you’ll see examples of successful influencer marketing campaigns and tips for perfecting your influencer marketing efforts from social media and influencer consultant Kendall Dickieson, author of the industry newsletter No Filter. 

What are influencer marketing campaigns?

An influencer marketing campaign is a marketing strategy in which a brand partners with an influencer or content creator to promote a product, service, or event. Influencer campaigns typically run on social media platforms such as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube. They can take various forms, such as product reviews, promotions, giveaways, or social media takeovers (when a creator temporarily posts content on a brand’s account). These strategic partnerships let brands connect with customers via people they already follow and trust, increasing the likelihood of conversions. 

Influencer campaigns begin with a business identifying a creator (or multiple creators) whose personal brand and niche audiences align with the company’s brand identity and target audience. The next steps involve outreach and sending influencer briefs that outline details like deliverables, compensation, and timeline. Then, the creator executes their influencer content. Brands can measure the key performance indicators (KPIs) of these campaigns by tracking metrics like affiliate link and discount code conversions, post engagement, and impressions. Shopify’s Campaigns feature helps you track multichannel marketing efforts, including influencer activations with custom discount codes, UTM parameters, and conversion attribution. 

6 of the best influencer marketing campaigns

• Graza: Seeding campaign
• Kopari Beauty: Event co-hosting
• Olipop: Multipronged approach
• Made In: Platform-native strategy
• Gymshark: Creator-led brand building
• Nailboo: Whitelisted ads

Successful influencer marketing campaigns begin with a clear match between the brand’s target audience and the influencer’s reach. “It all starts at the top,” says Kendall, whose clients have included Graza, Canopy, Immi, and more. “I feel like where most people get it wrong is not paying attention to their ideal customer persona (ICP) and recognizing whether the influencers support their ICP testing.”

The campaigns on this list demonstrate how complementary ICPs, creative ideas, and thoughtful approaches can create something effective and memorable. Here are six top influencer marketing examples. 

Graza: Seeding campaign

When Graza was preparing to launch its squeeze bottle Sizzle and Drizzle olive oils in 2022, Kendall (their social media marketing manager at the time) leaned heavily on influencer product seeding. This influencer strategy entails gifting products to creators with relevant audiences in the hopes that they share the product on their channels. What resulted was a seriously effective influencer marketing campaign that created significant buzz: Graza sold out of olive oil in its first week.

The campaign succeeded in part because the creators that were chosen to receive products—like beloved home cooks Molly Baz and Samin Nosrat—had a natural connection with the brand. This led to more authentic, organic influencer-generated content. 

“I feel like the work I did with Graza changed the perspective of influencer seeding,” Kendall says. “I feel like there’s more of an open-mindedness to being OK with saying, ’We’re sending this out, we’re not asking for people to post, it’s not a transaction.’ It’s important to be able to test the market, to then say, ’Hey, these people are fantastic; they keep sharing the product.’ And then inviting them to an affiliate program or ambassador program and tiering them up. If they’re advocating for you, keep rewarding them.”

Kopari Beauty: Event co-hosting

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A post shared by Gabriella Athena Halikas (@ellahalikas)

Hosting events with influencers can activate their followers to support both them and your brand in person. Toral Patel, the vice president of marketing at clean beauty brand Kopari, recommends starting with small events to organically grow your follower base. “Build a small community that you have deep relationships with and then start to expand it,” she says on Shopify Masters. “You don’t have to jump into a big dinner event or a big splashy trip or anything like that.”

For example, Kopari co-hosted an intimate pool party with model and CEO of Confidence Ella Halikas, whose focus on body positivity aligns well with the brand. The party—which was attended by followers and other influencers—produced tons of authentic user-generated content (UGC). 

Toral finds that niche influencers tend to have engaged audiences rooting for their success. She recommends working on events with creators who love your brand and who will be able to mobilize their audiences to care about your brand too. The result? Authentic content and an engaged target audience. 

Olipop: Multipronged approach

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A post shared by OLIPOP (@drinkolipop)

Prebiotic soda brand Olipop keeps its community engaged across social media platforms with a wide array of influencer marketing campaigns. These campaigns range from major partnerships with mega-influencers like Camila Cabello to more integrated videos with micro-influencers, like its mukbang-style video with creator @shelby.eating. 

By working with a diverse group of creators—from lifestyle influencers to fitness influencers to beauty influencers—Olipop reaches a wide range of audience segments. This mix allows the brand to connect with both mainstream and niche audiences, which isn’t always possible when relying on a single type of approach. A steady flow of content across creators also helps maintain ongoing visibility and brand awareness.

Made In: Platform-native strategy

Cookware company Made In focuses its influencer campaigns on YouTube, where audiences are already looking for cooking and related product content. “People are always searching [YouTube] for [things like] how to clean a cast-iron pan,” says Kendall, who has worked with Made In on paid partnerships. That built-in search intent makes influencer integrations feel natural rather than interruptive. “Their organic channel is one of the best I’ve ever seen perform,” Kendall adds.

Rather than chasing short-form viral posts, Made In has invested in long-form creative partnerships with chefs and food personalities like Claire Saffitz, collaborating on content that mirrors how people actually research cookware. 

Gymshark: Creator-led brand building

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A post shared by Whitney Simmons (@whitneyysimmons)

Fitness brand Gymshark believes that influencers aren’t just for product promotion—they’re also part of how the product gets made. These creator partners (dubbed “athletes” by Gymshark) are often invited to provide feedback on the clothing itself and sometimes collaborate on their own lines for Gymshark. For example, fitness influencer Whitney Simmons has worked on multiple collections with the brand. 

This influencer marketing strategy deepens authenticity and brand loyalty, and the resulting posts feel less like advertising and more like a natural extension of the creator’s content. 

Nailboo: Whitelisted ads

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A post shared by Brooke Kelly (@brooke_kelly_nutrition)

Whitelisting, or Partnership Ads, is an influencer marketing tactic in which a brand runs targeted paid ads directly through the influencer’s own social media account. Unlike a typical sponsored post, which appears organically in an influencer’s feed and is left to perform on its own, whitelisted content is treated as paid media. The brand puts ad spend behind the post and distributes it to target audiences through the creator’s account. This also allows the brand to test different audiences, optimize performance, and scale spend, while still retaining the influencer’s likeness and voice.

Cookware brand Our Place partners with influencers of all sizes to run whitelisted ads. This one, with Instagram account @costco_doesitagain, highlights the brand’s offerings available at the megastore. Unlike standard paid partnerships, the brand doesn’t show up as a co-creator on the Reel, though they are listed in the comments and the hashtag #OurPlacePartner clarifies that this is a paid partnership rather than an organic recommendation.

Best practices for managing influencer marketing campaigns

• Keep outreach simple
• Have a clear brief
• Embrace seeding
• Dig into influencers’ analytics
• Consider adding a paid usage clause
• Regularly communicate with and incentivize long-term collaborators

Read on for tips from Kendall to help you create the best influencer marketing campaigns possible. 

Keep outreach simple

When initiating an influencer marketing campaign, introduce your brand to the influencer first before sending any unique links or codes. “Don’t spew an affiliate link to someone when they haven’t even tried your product yet,” Kendall says. “Don’t say, ‘We’d love to send you this, and by the way, we made you a custom code.’ They don’t even know if they like your product.” 

Instead, Kendall advises sending straightforward outreach messages and following up a few times if needed. 

You can use Shopify Collabs to recruit and manage influencer partnerships. This free affiliate marketing app for Shopify store owners includes tools for direct invites, open access programs, gift sending, discount codes, affiliate sales tracking, and commission payments. 

Have a clear brief

To achieve the desired influencer campaign results, brands need to provide clear briefs. Kendall recommends getting detailed about the number of deliverables, tone, and talking points. “Sometimes I see briefs that say ‘Make a Reel,’ and that’s it,” Kendall says. “You’re not giving them any info. And then brands say, ‘What we’re paying for and what we’re getting are so wrong.’ And the immediate reaction is that the creator didn’t understand. But it’s not the creator’s fault.” 

At the same time, Kendall suggests brands avoid overly rigid briefs that limit a creator’s voice. “It’s a balance of creative freedom,” she says. “It’s important that it’s collaborative—that it doesn’t feel like a demand, but a concept.”

A strong brief requires setting financial parameters upfront. Kendall recommends getting quotes from creators early on in the process to better understand their payment structures. “Even if it takes a little bit longer for the budgeting process, it’s easier to then activate the influencers because you have their fees already,” she says. This also means you’re only putting effort into influencers you can actually afford to work with. 

Finally, Kendall advises building target CPM (cost per thousand impressions) into the negotiation process from the start, asking clients: “What’s our CPM that we aim for, so when I’m negotiating with influencers, I can make sure that we’re working within this ideal range?” 

Embrace seeding 

Kendall encourages brands to embrace product seeding as an early influencer marketing campaign strategy—“especially if you’re a day-zero, scrappy brand that’s finding influencers manually and not paying for a ton of multi-use platforms for managing UGC and paid marketing and search.” 

Though it can feel nerve-wracking to gift products without a guaranteed post in return, it’s a great way to capture authentic UGC, and it’s still possible to track performance. “There are tools that we can use to track the content, like Archive and Superfiliate, so that I’m able to then show earned media value of that influencer seeding, and what impact it’s having across our competitive market.” 

Seeding isn’t the right fit for all brands. It’s generally more effective for lower-cost products rather than higher-priced items. Kendall notes that food and beverage brands are especially good candidates for this marketing technique. 

Dig into influencers’ analytics 

To choose the right influencer partners for your campaigns, it’s critical to have a strong sense of their demographic, reach, and engagement. Kendall recommends using a tool like CreatorIQ, Superfiliate, or Archive to do a deep dive into a creator’s analytics or to simply ask them for their back-end analytics. She also stresses the importance of considering non-follower reach, which indicates whether an influencer’s content is spreading beyond just their followers. 

Consider adding a paid usage clause

A paid usage clause is a section of the contract that gives your company the right to use an influencer’s branded content how you see fit. For example, it could enable you to turn an influencer’s UGC into a paid ad down the road. 

Kendall finds that paid usage clauses make influencer partnerships more valuable and easier to justify internally. “It’s a little more tolerable to the broader team, because even if we pay $6,000 for a paid partnership, we could actually make $20,000 because we had paid usage on that,” she says.

Regularly communicate with and incentivize long-term collaborators

Building healthy influencer partnerships doesn’t end once you’ve onboarded creators to your affiliate or influencer program. “Holding retention within affiliate programs is really important,” Kendall says. “Community in all regards is key.” 

She suggests sending out a biweekly or monthly newsletter to creators, asking them about challenges they’re encountering in their work, which creates an opportunity for your brand to get feedback on your process. Offering incentives, like free products, to top performers can also help reinforce long-term relationships.