Mastering Influencer Marketing Strategy: The 2025 Guide for UK Marketers

Setting objectives: How do you succeed in influencer marketing?

There are many reasons to work with influencers. So, the first step on the way to a successful influencer marketing strategy is to set clear objectives. Knowing what you want to achieve will help you develop an effective campaign that achieves those goals.

These are a few of the early considerations:

• Desired Results: Consider which KPIs you'll track. How will success be measured? Do you want to up your brand's follower count, increase brand loyalty, or drive sales?
• Timeline: How quickly do you want to achieve these results? Define whether you're supporting a product launch or trying to drive long-term results.
• Budget: How much are you willing to invest in your influencer marketing campaign? Your budget will define the type of influencers you work with, how you partner with them, and the tools you use.
• Messaging: What critical information or values do you want the influencer to convey about your brand or product? Consider the style of post you wish to create, for example, whether you will use humour, serious messaging, or artistic posts.

Now you understand your own limitations and goals. Next, it's time to analyse your audience and their behaviour on social media. This will tell you the best ways to connect with them.

Consider the following:

• Audience Demographics: This includes basic statistical information such as age, gender, education level, income, marital status, and whether they are parents.
• Psychographics: Including core values, personal beliefs, hobbies, professional interests, personality types, and lifestyle choices, psychographics go beyond simple demographics and involve deeper psychological analysis. These factors provide insights into what drives your audience's behaviours and decisions.
• Habits & Behaviours: This includes more day-to-day actions, such as living habits and how your audience interacts with different content and marketing channels.
• Geographics: These are the locations you're targeting, whether regional, countrywide, or international.
• Niche Audience or Mass Market: Niche audiences have specific needs or interests, allowing you to specify influencers for your industry. On the other hand, mass-market products attract a large and diverse group with varying needs and interests.

Each of these audience segments requires different strategies and approaches. For example, TikTok is more popular with Gen Z than other platforms. Therefore, influencer marketers hoping to reach younger demographics may choose to launch strategies on TikTok.

Here's an example from Arla's TikTok campaign design to target Gen Z: This video by influencer @tomtrottercoaching. Of his 865k followers, 49% are aged between 18 and 24.

Identifying influencers: What are the 3 R's of influencer marketing?

All the data you've gained from the first steps (defining your goals and audience) should be applied during influencer selection. This is one of the most important parts of your campaign, so make sure to choose carefully.

Here are the three qualities influencers must have to serve your influencer marketing campaign effectively.

Reach

Reach includes those obvious and easy-to-track metrics, such as follower count, across different social media platforms.

The number of followers an influencer has defines their category:

• Nano-influencers (1,000 - 10,000 followers): Nano-influencers tend to be authentic and niche influencers with a highly engaged but small community. These individuals often have day jobs and create content about topics they are interested in. Brands may work with a group of nano-influencers to enhance their reach.
• Micro-influencers (10,000 - 100,000 followers): Micro-influencers are still likely to work within a niche, but it will be broader. 64% of marketing teams choose to work with micro-influencers to access their combination of reach and authentic connections.
• Macro-influencers (100,000 - 1 million followers): Macro influencers are creators who produce widely appealing content. While these individuals aren't necessarily celebrities, they are well-known in their domain.
• Mega-influencers (1 million+ followers): Mega-influencers are hugely popular creators with large followings. These influencers can generate buzz around a campaign and enhance brand prestige. However, due to their popularity, they are expensive to work with.

Follower count is often called a vanity metric because it's easy to discover and doesn't tell you enough to make a good decision. But it's still an important factor, and 51% of UK marketers rely on it.

Relevance

Relevance goes deeper than reach. It's the analysis of whether the influencer creates content that matches your brand ethos, mission, style, audience, and products.

For example, suppose a marketer for a male fashion brand pinpoints an influencer who fits the business ethos and style but whose audience is mostly female. In that case, the collaboration won't be effective.

Partnering with relevant creators will strengthen your branding, giving shoppers a better idea of your brand's values. It will also ensure that the audience you're tapping into will bring high-quality leads with the potential to become long-term customers.

Resonance

Brands looking to benefit from social media marketing must find ways to build genuine connections. An authentic and, therefore, trustworthy influencer is significantly more likely to persuade and inspire their followers. Typically, this type of influencer has worked hard to maintain their integrity through honest reviews and relatable, high-quality content.

For example, a marketer may identify an influencer who creates relevant content and has a substantial reach of 400,000 followers. However, if the creator only receives 15 comments and 300 likes per post, their audience isn't engaged, and they are unlikely to possess sufficient clout to persuade their audience.

Sometimes, this can be due to influencer scams, in which "influencers" buy fake followers to appear popular. While social media platforms are cracking down on fraud influencers, the risk remains, and brands should analyse whether an influencer's follower count will translate into tangible benefits.

Below is an example of a campaign in which the audience resonated with the content. Josh Berry is an influencer and comedian with 240k followers on Instagram. His audience is highly credible (according to Kolsquare data), and his engagement rate for Instagram Reels is 4.16%. He creates skits that poke fun at British stereotypes. In this ad for Samsung, he subtly advertised the new features of the Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra with content that matches his typical style.

To avoid wasting time investing in influencers with disengaged audiences, you can use an influencer platform like Kolsquare. Kolsquare's Credibility Score immediately assesses how engaged an influencer's audience is, helping you match with top creators. It also offers a range of search options and filters, allowing you to search by keywords, demographics, follower count, hashtags, engagement rates, and more!  

Book in for a Kolsquare demo today.

Campaign tactics: What is the best influencer marketing strategy?

There are many different ways for marketers to work with influencers. Let's take a look at some of the most common methods:

• Gifting: This is offering free products or services to influencers in exchange for reviews or promotions. It's a cost-effective strategy often used to generate organic content and foster goodwill.
• Affiliate marketing: Influencers are given unique discount codes or links that offer their followers special offers with a brand. In return, influencers receive a commission for each sale made through their link, motivating them to drive conversions.
• Sponsored posts: This approach involves paying influencers directly to create content featuring the brand or its product. This provides more creative control over the content.
• Long-term partnerships: Establishing ongoing relationships with influencers, including multiple campaigns or ambassador roles, deepens the influencer's association with the brand and can lead to more authentic and sustained engagement with their audience.
• Brand ambassador programs: Influencers who become brand ambassadors commit to working with the brand for an extended period. Brands expect these key opinion leaders (KOLs) to consistently share their values and products on social networks.
• Co-creating content: Collaborating with influencers to create content for both the brand's and the influencer's platforms. This strategy leverages the influencer's creativity and ensures the content fits both parties' styles and audiences.
• Social media takeovers: These involve allowing an influencer to take control of a brand's social media account for a set period. This can provide a fresh perspective and attract the influencer's followers to the brand's channels.
• Experiential Marketing: Here, a brand invites influencers to events or experiences, such as launches, tours, or vacations, and asks them to share content about their experiences.

You can decide how to work with influencers based on your goals, budget, and the nature of the product or service being marketed. You can even include a variety of these tactics in one campaign.

For example, you could start by gifting free products and then select some of the influencers who reacted positively to create sponsored posts. If your brand strongly aligns with one of these creators, you could then ask them to become a brand ambassador.

Quick Tip: Consider asking employees to be influencers

Incorporating your employees as influencers is an authentic way to humanise your brand and connect with your audience. Employees bring a unique perspective that showcases your brand’s culture, values, and day-to-day operations in a relatable and credible way.

You could create behind-the-scenes content in which employees share snapshots of their work days. Whether it’s product development, team collaborations, or office shenanigans, this type of content gives followers an insider’s view that feels genuine and engaging.

For retail or service-based brands, encourage in-store staff to create content showcasing customer interactions, product features, or even their favourite items. This approach adds authenticity and highlights the people behind the brand.

Remember to celebrate employees who create impactful content by acknowledging their efforts on your brand’s social media or through internal rewards. Employee influencers add a layer of trust and authenticity to your influencer marketing strategy. Their real-world perspective and passion for the brand can resonate more deeply with audiences.

Crafting compelling campaigns: How to create an influencer marketing strategy?

Once you have identified the best-fit influencers to reach your target audience, you can design a content roadmap.

Here are the best practices you should follow when working with influencers to develop your influencer marketing campaign:

Celebrate creative freedom

If you've taken the time to select an influencer with an engaged audience and excellent content, give them at least partial creative freedom. After all, these creators are experts in speaking to their followers. Respecting influencers' expertise is a vital part of collaboration.

You can also pair influencers' authentic content with more orchestrated, high-impact campaigns multiple times in the year. For example, you could run traditional influencer campaigns throughout the year and then reignite interest through an exciting pop event in the summer.

Creative, interesting campaigns will keep people watching and create a stronger, longer-lasting impression.

Create authentic content

Any company seeking to connect deeply with an influencer's audience should tap into their authentic voice. This is most important when working with nano-influencers and micro-influencers whose posts are honest and relatable.

Ensure the messaging matches both your brand voice and the influencer's. This often means that showy, overly professional or staged content may not connect. It can be better to have an influencer speak candidly to the camera about a product rather than a typically ad-style post.

Guided influencer collaboration

When working with influencers long term, you should craft a content plan. Decide whether you want to create video, text, or photo posts, and clearly explain the desired results for each piece of content. Tell influencers which metrics you'll be tracking so that they can tailor their content to your needs.

Ethics and Inclusivity

By partnering with diverse influencers who reflect varied identities and experiences, brands can resonate with broader audiences. At the same time, ethical practices—such as avoiding influencers with fake followers or those who lie about using filters —are crucial for maintaining trust and credibility.

However, Kolsquare's report found that few brands focus on inclusivity.

"The results of the study highlight significant gaps in the industry when it comes to diversity and inclusion. It is disappointing to see that only a small percentage of marketers prioritise selecting influencers based on diverse backgrounds and experiences. This suggests that diversity and ethics are not yet embedded in the mainstream decision-making processes. However, it is important to emphasise that fostering diversity and inclusion is not just about doing the right thing ethically; it has been proven to lead to better performance and outcomes. Companies that embrace diversity tend to be more innovative and achieve better financial results." - Digital marketing expert and Chairman of Germany’s Federal Association of Digital Media, Hans Neubert

Develop clear channels of communication

Communication is vital to any working relationship. Decide how you'll keep in touch with influencers, whether through email, direct messages, or a relationship management tool. In addition, create clear timelines for responses and communication expectations. This will help you both stay on the right track.

An influencer platform can help here. Platforms combine your insights and communications into one influencer campaign management interface. Simply integrate your email and you have one go-to spot for managing influencer relationships.

Negotiating partnerships and contracts: Strategies for effective influencer collaborations

Influencers work similarly to freelancers, and there is a significant opportunity for negotiation. If you've completed an in-depth assessment of the influencer, you should have an approximate figure for the profits they can bring you.

Here are strategic approaches to ensure that your negotiations lead to fruitful, long-term collaborations.

Partnering with an invested influencer

Partnering with influencers who are already familiar with or at least enthusiastic about your brand is a great way to simplify negotiations. These digital creators, often genuine product users, may offer more favourable rates due to their connection with your brand.

These creators will endorse your brand with an authentic voice, making the content more likely to resonate deeply with audiences and thereby enhance the campaign's performance.

Leveraging performance-based compensation

Implementing affiliate programs or pay-for-performance models aligns the influencer's compensation with the campaign's success. Such arrangements motivate influencers to meet the brand's goals and help keep budgets low. They also provide clear benchmarks for measuring campaign success. These types of campaigns are very popular in the UK.

Offering non-monetary compensation benefits

Monetary payment isn't the only form of compensation for influencers. Offering non-monetary benefits, such as exclusive experiences, trips, early access to products, or special events, can also be attractive.

These perks enhance the influencer's experience and encourage them to lower their rates in exchange for unique opportunities that enrich their brand and appeal to their followers.

However, you should remain respectful towards influencers and offer them payment if the collaboration benefits your brand.

Utilising concrete data for negotiation

Effective negotiations are grounded in data. Information is invaluable for negotiating fair rates because it lets you clearly explain the benefits you hope to achieve. This approach ensures that investment in influencer partnerships is justified by measurable outcomes, maximising the ROI.

Using influencer marketing platforms gives you detailed insights into an influencer's performance metrics, such as audience size, engagement rate, and overall reach.

Protect both parties with a contract

At the end of the day, marketers and influencers are people, so contracts are needed to protect both parties. Clear, detailed agreements with influencers ensure that all parties have aligned expectations. These contracts should outline roles, deliverables, compensation, payment structure, and other terms of the partnership to avoid potential conflicts and misunderstandings.

What are the four Ps of influencer marketing?

The four Ps of influencer marketing are essential elements for designing and executing successful campaigns. They ensure a structured approach that aligns with a brand’s goals and maximises impact.

• People: Selecting the right influencers is key. This includes assessing their audience demographics, engagement rates, and authenticity to ensure they align with your brand and resonate with your target customers.
• Platform: Choosing the right social media platform is crucial, as different platforms cater to varying content formats and audiences. For instance, Instagram and TikTok are ideal for visual and short-form content, while YouTube suits in-depth reviews and tutorials.
• Partnership: Building a collaborative relationship with influencers is critical. Give influencers creative freedom to produce authentic content while aligning with your brand's messaging and goals. Long-term collaborations often yield better results.
• Performance: Measuring the success of influencer campaigns is essential. Track key metrics such as reach, engagement, conversions, and ROI to evaluate the impact and optimise future strategies. Tools like Kolsquare help brands monitor performance effectively.

Focusing on these four Ps ensures a comprehensive and effective approach to influencer marketing.

The Importance of data in an Influencer marketing strategy for brands: Measuring performance and ROI

Ongoing tracking of a campaign allows you to modify and improve your strategy to acquire better results. It also helps you understand whether the influencer is helping you achieve your goals.

But it's not easy.

According to Kolsquare data, accurately measuring ROI is a challenge for 51% of UK marketers, In fact, it's their biggest pain point.

That's likely because measuring the ROI of influencer marketing campaigns relies on several KPIs. These include:

• Reach: This metric reflects the potential number of customers a campaign can engage.
• Impressions: The total views a post, story, or video receives, indicating the breadth of content visibility.
• Engagement rates: This includes all interactions with the content, helping brands gauge the effectiveness of their engagement strategies.
• Social media and website traffic: The amount of direct traffic driven to the brand's site or social media accounts as a result of the campaign.
• Conversions: For many brands, conversions are the ultimate indicator of an influencer marketing campaign's success. In fact, 70% of brands track sales, more than any other metric. Conversions are measured through actions such as sales or sign-ups directly attributed to the influencer's efforts. However, they can be challenging to measure directly.
• Earned media value (EMV): The monetary value of organic exposure, such as likes, shares, and mentions, compared to traditional advertising costs.
• Lifetime Value (LTV) of New Customers: The projected revenue from new customers acquired through the influencer campaign. This assesses the quality of leads gained.
• Sentiment Analysis: Evaluating brand sentiment before and after the campaign to assess its impact on consumer perception.
• Return on Ad Spend (ROAS): Revenue generated from the campaign divided by the total ad spend, expressed as a ratio (e.g., £5 revenue for every £1 spent equals 5:1 ROAS).
• Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): The total cost of the campaign divided by the number of new customers gained.

For practical implementation, brands can track these metrics using specific tools and techniques such as:

• Promo codes and affiliate links: These are handy for measuring conversions and can be easily tracked through ad servers like Google's Campaign Manager or analytics tools like Google Analytics. Each influencer has their own link or promo code, which tells you who brought in the most customers.
• Social listening tools: These tools help monitor brand sentiment and the overall impact of campaigns on brand image. They track mentions and conversations about your brand.
• Influencer marketing platform: Platforms give you advanced reports of your influencer marketing campaign. Why spend hours creating spreadsheets when a platform can automatically collect key data, such as insights on engagement rates, audience reach, and post counts? Check out Kolsquare's influencer campaign reporting here!

Ultimately, influencer marketing, especially analysing metrics, can be time-consuming. It can also be challenging to explain to stakeholders how the campaign has performed. This is why it is so important to use tools and consider the metrics you want to track before launching your campaign.

Streamlining Collaborations: Influencer marketing agency vs platform

Influencer marketing can be complex. You may not have the team members or time available to run an effective campaign. Thankfully, platforms and agencies are available that can streamline the process.

When deciding between an influencer marketing agency and a platform, the right choice depends on your brand's specific needs, goals, and resources. Both options offer distinct advantages, and each fits different levels of expertise and campaign complexity.

Influencer Marketing Agency

Agencies provide a hands-on approach, handling everything from influencer selection to campaign execution. They are particularly valuable for brands without in-house expertise or those seeking tailored services. Agencies often have established relationships with influencers, which can streamline collaboration and ensure quality content. However, this personalised approach often comes with higher costs, and brands have less control over the process. For instance, UK agencies such as Summer or Greenstory are known for blending creative campaigns with ethical influencer selection.

Influencer Marketing Platform

Platforms like Kolsquare empower you to manage campaigns directly by offering tools for influencer discovery, audience analysis, and performance tracking. They are ideal for brands seeking cost-effective, data-driven solutions with a DIY approach.

Kolsquare, for example, offers a range of useful features for finding compatible influencers:

• a database containing details about over 3 million influencers
• semantic searches and filters, including audience demographics, location, platforms, and more
• detailed influencer profiles showing engagement rates, previous collaborations, profile growth, and more
• Credibility Score to evaluate audience authenticity, ensuring impactful collaborations
• Compliance Score, which tells you whether an influencer adheres to regulations

These features help you choose influencers who are well-suited to your requirements. From there, Kolsqaure also provides contact information and allows you to manage relationships on the platform. It also provides real-time reports that help you understand and optimise campaigns quickly.

Book in for a Kolsquare demo today.

Unique Tactics for Influencer Marketing on Facebook, TikTok, Instagram, and YouTube

Each social media platform offers unique opportunities for influencer marketing. Tailoring your tactics to each platform's strengths can maximise engagement and campaign success.

Here are a few tips for each platform:

Facebook: Community and Targeted Engagement

Facebook is used by 73% of the UK population. Its largest global user group is 25-34-year-olds, who account for 29.9% of users. On average, users spend 16 hours and 45 minutes per month on the platform.

Here are a few of the key features:

• Leverage Groups: Collaborate with influencers to engage in Facebook Groups relevant to your niche, fostering discussions and sharing exclusive content.
• Live Streams: Partner with influencers for live Q&A sessions or product launches to create real-time interaction and build trust.
• Boosted Content: Use Facebook’s paid tools to amplify influencer posts, ensuring your message reaches a broader, targeted audience.

TikTok: Viral Trends and Short-Form Creativity

TikTok boasts 23 million users in the UK, with its largest age group, 18-24-year-olds, making up over 40% of the user base. The platform’s audience skews heavily female, with 66.25% women compared to 33.75% men. Users spend an impressive average of 49 hours and 29 minutes per month on TikTok, making it the most time-intensive social media app in the UK.

Here are some tactics to try:

• Hashtag Challenges: Create branded hashtag challenges with influencers to encourage user participation and drive massive visibility.
• Trend Leveraging: Partner with influencers who excel at adapting trends to your brand’s message, ensuring relevance and authenticity.
• Authentic Ads: Use TikTok’s Spark Ads to boost organic influencer posts, blending sponsored content seamlessly into users’ For You Pages.

Instagram: Visual Storytelling and Product Discovery

60% of the UK population uses Instagram. Globally, the largest age groups are 18-24 (30.8%) and 25-34 (30.6%).

Here are a few tips:

• Reels and Stories: Collaborate with influencers to create engaging, short-form content that highlights your products in action. Reels have the most potential to go viral.
• Shoppable Content: Use Instagram’s shopping features to enable direct purchases from influencer posts, streamlining the buyer’s journey.
• Takeovers: Allow influencers to take over your brand’s Instagram account for a day to share their perspective and engage with followers. You can tag your brand and the influencer.

YouTube: Long-Form Content and In-Depth Reviews

Users globally spend an average of 19 hours and 10 minutes per month on the platform. In the UK, 56.2 million people—82.2% of the population—use social media, spending an average of 1 hour and 49 minutes daily across 6.4 platforms. Among these, TikTok stands out with the highest engagement despite having a smaller user base than Facebook and Instagram.

Here are a few tips for using YouTube:

• Tutorials and Reviews: YouTube is a great place for long-form video content. Collaborate with influencers to create detailed product reviews or tutorials, building trust and showcasing your offerings.
• Collaborative Series: Partner with influencers for a multi-part series, fostering ongoing engagement and storytelling.
• Call-to-Actions: Encourage influencers to include calls-to-action in video descriptions, such as discount codes or affiliate links, to track conversions effectively.

How to build long-term relationships with social media influencers

Developing long-term relationships with the right influencers can significantly enhance the effectiveness and depth of your marketing campaigns. When brands invest in sustained partnerships rather than one-off projects, they cultivate a sense of loyalty and alignment with their influencers, leading to more authentic engagement with their target audience.

Here are key strategies for building and maintaining these valuable long-term connections:

Prioritise communication

Clear, consistent, and transparent communication forms the backbone of any successful long-term relationship. Regular check-ins and updates, not just about current campaigns but also about the influencer's overall experience and feedback, foster a collaborative atmosphere. This ongoing dialogue ensures that both parties feel heard and valued, which is crucial for nurturing a strong partnership.

Offer consistent Support

Supporting your influencers goes beyond financial compensation. Provide them with resources such as access to exclusive information, products, or events that can help them create more engaging and relevant content.

Define mutual goals

For long-term relationships to thrive, it is essential that both you and the influencer share mutual goals. Work together to set objectives that advance both your influencer marketing strategies and the influencer's objectives.

This alignment improves campaign outcomes and ensures that both parties are equally invested in the success of their collaborations.

Recognise and reward loyalty

Recognising and rewarding the right influencers for their loyalty and contributions can significantly enhance relationships.

Consider implementing incentive programs that reward successful long-term collaborations, whether through bonuses, public recognition, or additional perks. These gestures show appreciation and can motivate influencers to continue prioritising your brand.

Be flexible and adaptive

The digital marketing landscape is continually evolving, and so are influencers' roles within it. Being open to adapting the terms of collaborations as influencers' platforms and audiences grow shows that you respect their development and are committed to evolving alongside them. This flexibility can make influencers feel more comfortable and engaged in a long-term partnership.

Evaluate and evolve together

Regular evaluations of the partnership's effectiveness ensure that both parties meet their agreed-upon goals. These evaluations can lead to mutual benefits and better campaigns, deepening the relationship through shared successes and continuous growth.

B2C vs B2B influencer marketing strategy

Influencer marketing functions differently in B2B versus B2C contexts.

B2B influencer marketing prioritises professional trust and industry expertise, focusing on long-term relationships with thought leaders who provide valuable insights through in-depth content. B2B influencers are typically industry professionals or academics whose authority is rooted in their deep understanding of business challenges.

As a result, B2B brands tend to prioritise the relevance and trustworthiness of influencers. However, B2B influencer marketing strategies are still not widely adopted, with studies showing that half of B2B marketers do not use influencer marketing.

In contrast, a B2C influencer marketing campaign should leverage products' emotional and lifestyle elements. Influencers in the B2C space engage their followers with quick, visually appealing content that often leads to immediate consumer actions, such as purchases or social media interactions. Unlike the B2B approach, which is systematic and grounded in rational appeal, B2C influencer marketing thrives on quick, emotional engagement and the influencer's ability to influence consumer habits on a more impulsive level.

Influencer marketing example: Ooh & Aah Cookies' strategic TikTok campaign

Goals and challenges: Ooh & Aah Cookies aimed to amplify their brand presence and boost direct-to-consumer sales across the UK and Ireland. Their plan was to leverage TikTok to enhance brand awareness and drive sales, building on their reputation for delivering delicious treats.

Plans: The Ooh & Aah team adopted a multifaceted advertising strategy on TikTok, mixing organic content with creator collaborations and targeted advertising tools. Initiating their campaign in September 2023, they launched a Creator Competition to discover fresh talent for content creation. They used the winning entries in their ad campaigns and boosted them with Spark Ads to direct traffic to their TikTok Shop.

Results: The campaign, which ran until January 2024, yielded exceptional results: a return on advertising spend of 8.81, far surpassing their target of 3, and impressive engagement with 2.9 million views and a conversion rate of 6%. The campaign's success led to a 57% increase in overall sales and necessitated a team expansion to manage increased demand.

Starling Bank

Goals and Challenges: Starling Bank sought to expand its reach within the highly competitive UK consumer banking sector by targeting tech-savvy millennials and Gen Z. The goal was to position Starling as a user-friendly, innovative, and reliable digital banking solution while overcoming the challenge of standing out against well-established high-street banks and other digital-first competitors.

Plans: Starling Bank partnered with a diverse range of lifestyle and finance-focused influencers to highlight the benefits of their app and services, such as fee-free spending abroad and budgeting tools. The campaign leveraged platforms like Instagram, YouTube, and TikTok to showcase authentic user experiences through influencer testimonials, "day-in-the-life" videos, and budgeting tips. Influencers were encouraged to share how Starling’s features integrated seamlessly into their lives, from travel to daily expenses. The campaign also utilised a mix of paid ads and organic influencer content to amplify reach.

Results: The campaign significantly boosted Starling Bank’s consumer engagement. Influencer content achieved high engagement rates, particularly on TikTok, where videos using the campaign hashtag garnered millions of views. Starling saw a notable increase in customer sign-ups from younger demographics, further cementing its position as a leading digital bank in the UK.

What is Starbucks' influencer marketing strategy?

Starbucks has effectively integrated influencer marketing into its broader strategy to enhance brand engagement and reach. Here's an overview of their approach:

Goals and Challenges: Starbucks aims to deepen customer engagement by leveraging influencers who resonate with diverse audiences. The challenge lies in maintaining authenticity and ensuring that influencer partnerships align with the brand's values and mission.

Plans: Starbucks partners with influencers across various platforms, including Instagram and TikTok, to create content that showcases their products in relatable and creative contexts. By encouraging influencers to share their unique Starbucks experiences, the brand creates a sense of community and inclusivity.

Results: These collaborations have expanded Starbucks' reach, particularly among younger demographics active on social media platforms.

Improve your influencer marketing tactics: What is an influencer marketing strategist?

One of the easiest ways to ensure you create the most effective influencer marketing strategy is to work with a strategist. An agency or specialist can help you build a killer campaign.

However, these are costly options.

Another way to improve your tactics is to become an influencer marketing strategist yourself.

How?

Platforms help you find the right influencers quickly with AI-driven search results. These platforms provide more flexibility than agencies, allowing you to run effective campaigns independently from a single dashboard.

Book a demo with Kolsquare to start improving your influencer marketing campaign today.

How did the influencer marketing strategy grow when it first began?

The influencer marketing industry didn’t start with millions of followers or polished campaigns—it began with tight-knit communities and authentic connections. In the early 2000s, platforms like MySpace, LiveJournal, and early blogs were the breeding grounds for the first wave of influencers. These creators built trust within niche communities by sharing honest tips and recommendations, earning a loyal following that saw them as relatable and trustworthy voices.

By the late 2000s, platforms like YouTube and Instagram began to take off, offering visual formats that allowed creators to showcase their lifestyles, skills, and product reviews more dynamically. Companies started recognising the potential of these creators to reach highly engaged audiences, often sending free products in exchange for mentions or reviews. This era marked the shift from organic endorsements to the more structured collaborations we see today.

In the 2010s, the strategy matured further as platforms introduced monetisation options. Sponsored posts, affiliate links, and brand ambassadorships became common as companies realised influencer campaigns often outperformed traditional advertising. Due diligence also became critical at this stage, as brands sought to ensure influencers aligned with their values and could deliver genuine results. This decade also saw the rise of micro and nano-influencers, proving that smaller, tight-knit communities could drive significant impact.

Today, influencer marketing has evolved into a multi-billion-pound industry, blending data-driven strategies with the human connections that first made it so effective. While the tools and platforms have changed, the best things about influencer marketing remain the same—authenticity, creativity, and the power to inspire action through shared interests. By staying true to its roots while adapting to new technologies, the influencer marketing industry continues to thrive as one of the most impactful channels in modern marketing.