28 Influencer Marketing Ideas That’ll Boost Your Sales

It’s time to sit down and map out your social media marketing campaigns for the holiday season. We thought it would be cool to publish a list of 28 influencer marketing ideas that we’re hoping will finally lay to rest the dreaded #basic product placement post.

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How Influencer Marketing Ideas Can Spice Up Your Holiday Campaigns

Influencer marketing is a type of word-of-mouth marketing strategy in which one company, brand, or entity pays an individual who holds a lot of clout on social media to endorse their product. Influencer campaigns are used by businesses to reach a specific segment of their target audience. But they’re also used to reach wider audiences who may fall outside their typical audience demographic. Influencer partnerships also help brands engage consumers by leveraging the trust, credibility, and reputation of popular social media creators themselves. 

Influencer marketing can take many different forms and the creativity of the concepts you can use is seemingly endless. The key is to have someone on your team who can dream up cool strategies and creator partners who are fantastic storytellers. Influencer marketing ideas can be powerful tactics for hitting important marketing goals.

Here’s to the End of the Basic Product Placement Post

Remember the early days of influencer marketing, when most campaigns were in it for brand lift? Sure, you had the unicorn campaigns like Lord & Taylor’s famously successful paisley dress campaign. But we know that most influencer campaigns for brand lift do not succeed in simultaneously introducing a new fashion line AND selling out its inventory in a few days.

In previous iterations of this post, we created one big list of influencer marketing ideas, tactics, and campaign structures. For this list, we thought it would be smart to update the strategies, yes. But also to divide tactics from concepts and concepts from optimization strategies. 

Consider this list of influencer marketing ideas your starting point for dreaming up cool campaign concepts. (And if the thought of that bums you out, we’re a click away.) 

5 Ways to Work with Influencers This Holiday Season

Whether you’re looking to establish ongoing partnerships, run a one-off campaign, or bring characters to life, influencer marketing can be a game-changer for your holiday marketing strategy. These are the standard influencer partnerships most people probably think of when they think about running an influencer marketing campaign. Here are five effective ways to structure your influencer partnerships this holiday season:

#1 Ambassador Programs

Good for brand loyalty, UGC, long-term visibility

Long-term relationships with influencers who align deeply with your brand create authentic, ongoing advocacy. Ambassadors can incorporate your brand into their lives and content consistently, which is especially impactful during the holidays when customers are looking for trusted recommendations.

Benefits:

• Consistent visibility
• Builds trust and credibility
• Great for generating UGC and cross-channel content

#2 Affiliate Marketing

Good for: Driving holiday sales, ROI-focused campaigns

Affiliate marketing leverages influencers as brand advocates who earn commissions on sales they drive. This is perfect for the gift-giving season, as influencers can authentically recommend your products while earning through trackable links or codes.

Benefits:

• Cost-effective (you pay for results)
• Great for scaling reach to new audiences
• Easy to track performance and ROI

#3 Work with Created Personalities (or Holiday Characters) That Real People Follow

Good for storytelling, brand engagement, creativity, campaign exclusivity, seasonal buzz, and sales

How It Works

Holiday campaigns thrive on creativity and storytelling, and this is where holiday characters and created personalities truly shine. These could be anything from beloved seasonal mascots (like Lewis the 6-foot pumpkin from Target) to whimsical, created personalities that bring your brand to life (like Tiny Chef in Zenni Optical’s campaign).

By collaborating with characters—whether animated, puppets, or virtual influencers—you can craft a holiday campaign that stands out, taps into nostalgia, and sparks joy. These personas provide a fun, memorable way to connect with audiences and create shareable content.

This approach works exceptionally well for brands looking to tie storytelling into their holiday marketing. You’re not just promoting products—you’re creating a holiday experience.

Benefits

• Engages audiences through creative storytelling
• Builds exclusivity with seasonal characters tied to your brand
• Sparks shareability and makes campaigns memorable
• Encourages deep emotional connections with your audience

#4 Pet Influencers

Good for brand awareness, marketing assets for  online and offline ad

How It Works

Partner with popular pet accounts to create scroll-stopping, compelling content. This strategy’s cool because it’s not just limited to brands in the pet supply industry (like this 👇🏽 Victoria’s Secret ad).

Benefits

• People enjoy content that includes pets
• Facilitates positive connections to the brand
• People are 3x more likely to buy based on pet influencer recommendations than recommendations from celebrities (not even kidding about that)

#5 Virtual Influencers

Good for creativity, storytelling, brand engagement, and breaking through the noise

How It Works

Virtual influencers are redefining what it means to be an influencer. These AI-driven, animated, or fully digital personas bring an innovative twist to influencer marketing. Whether they’re promoting products, sharing lifestyle content, or advocating for causes, virtual influencers offer a unique and often futuristic way to connect with audiences.

Some brands create their own virtual influencers to build deeper connections with their audiences, while others partner with established ones. This holiday season, consider collaborating with virtual influencers to bring your campaign to life in an unforgettable way. My favorite is probably Shudu (OMG, digital sis), though with 2.5M followers on Insta, Lil Miquela is probably the most well-known self-proclaimed “Robot living in LA”.

Benefits

• Delivers captivating, futuristic storytelling
• Offers full creative control over content
• Resonates with tech-savvy audiences
• Stands out in crowded digital spaces

Virtual influencers add a futuristic edge to your holiday campaigns, bringing creativity and innovation to the forefront.

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18 Creative Influencer Marketing Ideas and Concepts to Get Eyes On Your Brand

#1 Haul Videos

Good for brand lift, clicks, follows

How It Works

Partner with a creator to become one of multiple sponsors for a single video or video series. 

Verticals

Often focused on a holiday (like Mother’s Day, Back-to-School, Halloween, etc.), a specific vertical (like fall home decor, favorite winter beauty products), or even very niche audiences (like hardiest plants for outdoor planting in southern states or tips for growing ginger in a container indoors).

Benefits

• Engaging content
• Reaches a targeted audience (these are viewers who typically see the content as a result of specific searches)
• A fraction of the cost of a dedicated video about your product

Multiple influencers posted Sephora haul videos for the 2020 holiday season.

#2 Livestream Shopping

Good for brand lift, conversions

How It Works

Live shopping (or Livestream shopping), in its current iteration, is the interactive process of buying and selling products or services during a live broadcast on a social or digital platform. Both Amazon Live and Pinterest TV offer live broadcast capabilities that creators use to review products, provide solutions, broadcast tutorials, offer advice, and showcase different products. 

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Benefits

• Greater likelihood of reaching consumers who already have purchase intent
• Usually features multiple products per video

#3 How-To Videos and Tutorials

Good for brand lift, website content, cross-channel promoting, conversions

How It Works

Influencers create video tutorials that explain how your product works and/or the benefits and different uses of your product. How-to/tutorials are the number one type of content social media users want to see from the influencers they follow.

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Benefits

• Shareable
• Generate lots of engagement
• Great for SEO

#4 Blogs

Good for clicks, traffic, opt-ins, brand awareness, SEO, customer education

How It Works

Partner with social media influencers who are also bloggers with active, engaged readers. Identify relevant bloggers. Reach out with a personalized pitch. Outline clear collaboration terms. Provide necessary resources, and track performance to ensure your campaign aligns with your brand goals.

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Benefits

• In-depth content
• Builds trust and authority
• Content repurposing
• Longer content life cycle with blogs vs social media
• Great way to explain and demonstrate the value/benefit of a product

#5 Webinars

Good for brand awareness, conversions, sign-ups, building trust, brand reputation

How It Works

Webinars are a dynamic tool in your holiday marketing arsenal, and partnering with influencers can take them to the next level. By teaming up with influencers who align with your products and services, you can leverage webinars to boost brand awareness, drive conversions, and establish trust among your target audience during the holiday season. You can choose to partner with influencers who sell products or services that complement your offerings. For instance, you could:

1. Sponsor a webinar: Identify influencers who host webinars that cater to your target audience. By sponsoring their webinar, you gain access to a highly engaged audience introduced to your brand through a trusted influencer. This method is particularly effective for reaching audiences in B2B, service-based B2C, education, and nutrition verticals.
2. Pitch your own webinar: Take the lead by pitching a webinar to the influencer’s audience. Craft a compelling webinar topic that resonates with both your brand and the influencer’s niche. The influencer can then earn a commission on any sales generated as a result of the webinar, creating a win-win scenario.

Verticals

B2B, Service-based B2C, Education, Nutrition

Benefits

• Establish social proof and trustworthiness
• Boost brand awareness
• Drive conversions and sign-ups
• Build brand reputation

#6 Instagram Takeovers

Good for user-generated content, brand awareness, humanizing your brand, wider audience targeting

How It Works

This dynamic strategy involves influencers temporarily taking control of your brand’s Instagram account, offering their unique perspective and engaging with your audience.

Verticals

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Benefits

• Attention-grabbing
• Humanizing
• Drums up engagement
• Enhances credibility

Need inspiration to get your own influencer marketing ideas flowing? Check out this one-day Instagram takeover of the @zoos_aquariums account by @houstonzoo to raise awareness around Attwater’s Prairie Chicken program and its conservation program.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by AZA (@zoos_aquariums)

#7 Podcasts

Good for brand awareness, explainers, promoting sales and discounts

How It Works

Become a sponsor for a podcast where the listening audience overlaps your target audience. Many content creators diversified by adding podcasts to their content catalog. A lot of brands don’t consider podcasts as part of an influencer marketing strategy, but partnering with influencers who have podcasts (and there are tons of them) is great for promoting products whose value is more easily understood when audiences can hear a quick explanation.

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Benefits

• Podcasts are considered immersive content — very engaging
• Boosts thought leadership and brand authority
• Extended reach to diverse podcast communities
• Long-lasting impact: Podcast episodes remain accessible over time
• Content Repurposing: Podcast content can be repurposed for various marketing channels

#8 Product Pins/Idea Pins

Good for brand lift, influencer-generated content, conversions

How It Works

Pinterest Idea Pins allow brands and Pinners to add up to 20 pages of video and/or images + text within a single pin. Idea pins can tie content that would typically be multiple pins (maybe across multiple boards) together as one clickable pin. This makes it easier to connect ideas as part of a single theme. (So, a kick-butt candle holder pin could become an Idea Pin about a holiday tablescape, and pins can link back to blog posts/product pages.)

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Benefits

• Visual storytelling: Engage audiences with captivating visual content
• Extended reach: Tap into Pinterest’s vast user base and diverse demographics
• Enhanced discoverability: Idea Pins rank well in Pinterest searches, increasing brand visibility
• Shareability: Pins can be easily shared, broadening content distribution
• Interactive elements: Incorporate polls, text overlays, and product tags for deeper engagement
• Evergreen content: Idea Pins have a long shelf life, providing lasting brand exposure

#9 Glow-Ups

Good for brand awareness, conversions, site traffic, coupon codes/promos

How It Works

Glow-ups were super trendy a few years ago as Instagram, TikTok, and YouTube Shorts. There’s an actual Netflix show based on the concept. With glow-ups, social media users post multimedia before and after shots of themselves. The most jaw-dropping TikTok glow-ups can easily grow the creator’s follower base. Since glow-ups first became a thing, they have evolved, and many posts now zero in on self-awareness, mental health, and incrementally getting better.

In the video below, JENerationDIY created a post-quarantine glow-up of her going from her quarantine norm to being ready to face the public. You’ll notice there’s an affiliate link to a coupon code for thredUP posted in the description section beneath her video.

Verticals

Lifestyle, beauty, nutrition, weight loss, fashion, education

Benefits

• Entertaining
• Inspirational
• Shareable
• Drum up engagement
• Informational and instructional
• Great opportunity to demonstrate value

Check out the text this influencer used in the caption of her glow-up video: “Use my code JENDIY for an extra 30% off of your first thredUP order! Click here: https://bit.ly/thredUPmay2020_JENDIY. Offer expires 06/30/20. Not valid on Goody Boxes, Rescues, or on items over $150. Valid in the U.S. and Canada only. Other restrictions may apply. Thanks to thredUP for sponsoring this video.”

#10 Product Reviews

Good for brand awareness, explainers, site traffic, clicks, store traffic

How It Works

Partner with an influencer who regularly reviews products IN YOUR NICHE or a related niche. Your brand can be one of multiple sponsors for a particular video or the sole product being featured and reviewed.

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Benefits

• Great for new products or products where there’s lots of competition in the market from very similar products (like hair care)
• Influencers can touch on customer pain points
• Explain the nuances of your product compared to similar products

Haircare enthusiast Lia Lavon built a YouTube channel dedicated to haircare education and ideas. Her channel reviews not only hair care products, but also synthetic hair and hairstyle ideas to beat the summer heat, plus great-looking, no-fuss vacation hair.

#11 Q & A

Good for brand awareness, brand lift, clicks, and traffic

How It Works

Idea #1: Partner with fashion bloggers and beauty influencers or enthusiasts who’ll do a Q&A of follower/subscriber questions. These will usually be questions centered around the topic they’re enthusiastic about.

Idea #2: Partner with a lifestyle influencer who can contextually embed your product as part of s Q&A about the influencer or their life. These will be more personal questions, but the wide range of question types will likely provide multiple “ins” to introduce products.

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Benefits

• Boost brand lift and visibility
• Extol the virtues of your brand/product
• Embed products in a way that doesn’t look like a product placement
• Can be less expensive if multiple products are featured

Both of these surfaced for the search term “Car Q&As.” One has a lifestyle spin, the other has an enthusiast spin.

#12 Advice

Good for brand awareness, clicks, traffic, getting buy-in, branding, brand reputation

How It Works

Partner with an influencer to recommend your product as a solution for a common problem.

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Benefits

• Social proof
• Combats decision fatigue
• Makes content actionable

#13 Influencer-Curated Gift Guides

#14 Curated Product Collections

Good for brand awareness, social proof, clicks, site traffic, sales, retargeting

How It Works

Shoppable platforms like Instagram and Pinterest have product curation features that highlight products recommended by influencers.

Verticals

Most often beauty, fashion, and home decor. Works in way more verticals, though.

Benefits

• Spotlight featured products
• Announce sales
• On both Pinterest and Instagram, influencers are featured as curators in Shop tabs

#15 Giveaways

Good for audience engagement, brand visibility, and user-generated content

How It Works

Giveaways are promotional events where your audience can participate for a chance to win prizes, often sponsored by your brand or in collaboration with influencers. Participants typically enter the giveaway by completing specific actions These can include liking, sharing, or commenting on social media posts or subscribing to newsletters. The allure of winning prizes encourages active engagement and interaction.

Giveaways are a powerful tool to supercharge your influencer marketing campaign, driving engagement, increasing brand visibility, and generating user-generated content. 

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Benefits

• Audience engagement 
• Brand visibility increases as more people engage with giveaways
• Fosters fun 
• Builds community

#16 Walkthrough and Demo Videos

Good for brand lift, gift inspo, website content, cross-channel promoting, conversions

How It Works

Influencers take center stage by creating video tutorials that unveil the inner workings of your product or delve into its various benefits and applications. These demo videos provide an in-depth, engaging look at what your product can do and how it can make a difference in your customers’ lives.

This also works in the form of a walkthrough video (like this one from Dad Deals) wherein creators hit up your store early to provide real-time views of your products and promote your big deal days.

Verticals

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Benefits

• Engaging content
• Shareability and engagement
• SEO
• Cross-channel promotion

#17 Private Facebook Groups

Good for fostering communities, skill-building, brand engagement, and loyalty

How It Works

Private Facebook Groups offer an excellent platform for brands to sponsor and collaborate with influential content creators. This partnership can focus on teaching specific skills or fostering a community around a particular topic.

Brand-Sponsored Groups: Brands create private Facebook groups centered around their niche or industry. These groups provide a space for enthusiasts and learners to come together.

Influencer Collaboration: Influential content creators, often experts in the field, are invited to join and contribute to the group as moderators or teachers.

Skill-Building and Knowledge Sharing: The influencers facilitate skill-building sessions, share valuable insights, or lead discussions within the group. This guidance helps members learn and engage with the brand’s products or services.

Community Building Over time, the group becomes a community, where members connect, share experiences, and support one another. This sense of belonging fosters brand engagement and loyalty.

Verticals

Private Facebook Groups can be tailored to suit virtually any industry or topic, making them highly adaptable for influencer marketing campaigns.

Benefits

• Community fostering
• Skill enhancement 
• Brand engagement 
• Long-term relationships
• Audience growth

#18 Interest Graph Content

Good for engagement, brand visibility, and audience connection

How It Works

Entertaining videos have become a potent tool in the influencer marketing landscape, offering a unique way to engage audiences and boost brand visibility. Partnering with influencers who’re well known for their entertaining content can be a game-changer. Entertaining videos created in collaboration with influencers inject a sense of fun and excitement into your influencer marketing campaign. By leveraging influencers’ entertaining charm, you can capture the hearts and attention of your audience while effectively delivering your brand message. This video from kerri-oke has 231K views.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by Kerri Hyland (@kerri_okiee)

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Benefits

• Audience engagement
• Brand visibility
• Audience connection
• Shareability
• Diverse engagement

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Repurposing Content to Stretch Your Influencer Marketing Ideas

Repurposing content is one of the most underutilized influencer marketing ideas. In order to create that echo chamber effect where your brand is showing up in every place your customers are active, there needs to be a plan for getting the most use out of your content.

Reusing content from an influencer marketing campaign is vital for maximizing its impact. It extends the lifespan of valuable assets, maintains brand consistency, and amplifies your message across multiple platforms. Repurposing influencer-generated content not only increases reach and engagement but also ensures that your brand’s message continues to resonate with your audience long after the campaign has ended.

#1 Email Marketing

Good for brand lift, conversions

How does it work?

Partner with influencers whose email subscribers are most likely interested in your product or service, and have them feature your product as part of their normal email marketing strategy.  

Verticals

All 

Benefits

• Partnerships can include social media influencers, B2B influencers, web-only publications like Morning Brew, and sponsorship packages from larger publications that have a digital presence

#2 In-App Ads

Good for brand lift, conversions

How Does It Work?

Influencers create video content (usually videos that can be used as pre-roll, mid-roll, and in-app mobile ads).

Verticals

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Benefits

• Brand lift
• Targeted to reach app users, which can include people who may not be looking specifically for your brand or your product
• Track consumers’ online behavior

#3 Retargeting

Good for increasing touchpoints along the path to purchase, clicks, and site traffic

How It Works

Retargeting should be part of your conversion funnel for influencer campaigns. One way to keep your product and offering top-of-mind is to repurpose influencer content from an active influencer marketing campaign to be used in your site content as well as a smart ad across the web.

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Benefits

• Scroll-stopping content
• Keeping your brand top-of-mind
• Cheaper than buying new marketing assets

#4 Local Search on Pinterest

Good for foot traffic, site traffic, brand awareness, clicks

How It Works

You don’t need to hire a Pinterest influencer to be seen on the platform. Pinterest can include local results for topical searches if your brand has a verified Pinterest business account and you’ve uploaded your products for inclusion in Pinterest.

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Benefits

• Wider exposure for retailers with ecommerce functionality
• Extended life cycle for Pinterest posts, as pictures can be repinned to millions of boards by pinners
• Supports local SEO efforts as 97% of Pinterest searches are unbranded, so local companies will now surface in results for broad categories

#5 Direct Mail and Catalogs

Good for brand awareness, driving site traffic, expanding your audience, connecting offline and online campaigns

How It Works

Retailers, and especially digital natives, send postcards and catalogs out via US mail with coupon codes or incentives to visit the brand online or locally.

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Benefits

• Introduce e-commerce brands to shoppers who traditionally have bought similar products offline
• Incentivize new and existing customers to buy with discounts and coupon codes
• Influencer content can provide a wider variety of themes for direct mail assets than a product shoot
• Minimizes decision fatigue
• Gives customers a way to rehearse decision-making offline
• Clears the path for buyers to streamline their decision-making process

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Which of These Influencer Marketing Ideas Floats Your Boat?

There you have it — 28 influencer marketing ideas spotlighting a few different ways you can work with influencers this holiday season and stave off those basic-looking product placement posts. #kryptonite

If you need help with your holiday campaign or coming up with influencer marketing ideas, there’s still time. We’ve rolled out campaigns in days that converted for our clients. We don’t LIKE TO…but we have done it and delivered. So, if you need an influencer marketing agency partner that can implement these influencer campaign ideas for you, The Shelf team is into full-funnel stuff.

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