Influencer Marketing for Brands: Complete Guide (2026)

Influencer marketing is a strategy in which brands work with social media creators who endorse their products or services. 

Worth an estimated $26.5 billion in 2026, the influencer marketing industry is massive, and presents a major opportunity for brands. It can help a company reach new audiences, build brand awareness, and increase trust. And, since there are many different influencer tiers and ways to work with them, this marketing strategy can be viable regardless of your business size.

This guide shares how to set up an influencer campaign, with real examples from online brands who work with creators.

What is influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing means working with social media influencers to promote your company, product, service, or message to their audience. These partnerships are usually paid arrangements in which influencers create content for a brand. Compensation can range from multi-year cash contracts to one-time product exchanges, discounts, or vouchers.

Influencers are creators and celebrities who’ve built reputations around a specific niche or built sizable audiences around their personal brands. They produce content across a number of platforms, including:

• Instagram
• YouTube
• TikTok
• Facebook
• Blogs
• X (formerly Twitter)
• Twitch
• Snapchat

According to Statista, Instagram was the leading influencer marketing platform in 2025, used by almost 85% of marketers. It was followed by TikTok (61%), Facebook (60%), and YouTube (50%).

Benefits of investing in influencer marketing

Influencer campaigns can help brands meet business goals like increasing reach, growing social engagement, and driving sales.

Here are a few other ways brands can benefit from influencer marketing:

Increase reach

Over 5.79 billion people worldwide have a social media account. Therefore it should be no surprise that in a 2025 Shopify survey, 35% of store owners named building a social media presence among their most common first-year growth strategies.*

“If I only promote through my own platforms, there are only so many people that I can reach,” says Angelina Ly, founder of Firefly Slime, in a Shopify Masters interview. “If I reach out to other people that have a different audience than I do, I'll get some more people that have never heard about me.”

Drive sales

Salsify’s “2026 Consumer Research Report” found 23% of shoppers have purchased a product online because an influencer recommended it. Moonboon used them to drive over $1 million in affiliate sales.

Gain higher earned media value

Earned media value (EMV) refers to unpaid interactions, like when an influencer’s followers (or their followers’ followers) discuss and connect on your brand. 

“Influencer marketing has been huge to us,” says Akram Abdallah, cofounder of jewelry brand Nominal, in a Shopify Masters interview. “From the very beginning, we, of course, had no budget at all. We couldn’t afford anybody.”

So what did Akram and his business partner Lena Sarsour do? They gifted influencers free jewelry. If the influencers enjoyed the products and found them sharable, they would post about the brand on social media. 

Nominal would even ask influencers for permission to repost their content on the brand’s feed. “Although we didn’t pay them, now we have [branded] content that a lot of people follow and see. We build that credibility through a famous person wearing our product.”

Influencer marketing examples

Here are two brands who run influencer campaigns using Shopify’s built-in influencer marketing platform, Shopify Collabs: 

Solgaard

Travel retailer Solgaard launched an ambassador program with one goal: to attract and build relationships with creators who share the same brand values. They use Shopify Collabs’ marketplace to find them by filtering search results by location, keywords, hashtags, and social engagement. 

Solgaard offers each influencer a personalized referral link and discount code to share with their audience. This approach has paid off: Solgaard has driven more than $50,000 in influencer-attributed sales since launch.

Lalo

Baby and toddler brand Lalo works with influencers to grow their brand awareness. They chose Shopify Collabs to manage their program, which grew sales from influencers by three times within the first six months.

“Shopify Collabs has helped us significantly streamline our affiliate program,” says cofounder, president, and CEO Michael Wieder. “Gifting, measurement, tracking, and of course, rewarding influencers and creators for their promotion has all gotten easier. As a result, we’ve seen attributable sales from influencers skyrocket.”

Types of influencers

Social media influencers can be divided into one of five tiers: nano, micro, mid, macro, and mega. Engagement rates and costs tend to differ between them:

Nano influencers (1,000–10,000 followers)

Nano influencers are everyday people with emerging personal brands. They have between 1,000 and 10,000 social media followers. 

Nano influencers are the most affordable influencers to work with, but they also have noticeably higher engagement rates than bigger accounts. Ramen brand immi found this firsthand: Their highest-performing affiliate seller has just over 10,000 Instagram followers. 

Micro influencers (10,000–100,000 followers)

Micro influencers are social media accounts with between 10,000 and 100,000 followers. They often have more targeted audiences than larger accounts, and a loyal following they engage with regularly.

Some influencer platforms, including Shopify Collabs, specialize in finding this type of micro influencer. 

Mid-tier influencers (100,000–500,000 followers)

Mid-tier influencers have a community of between 100,000 and 500,000 followers across platforms. 

Kevin Chon works with this type of influencer as the cofounder of Coop Sleep Goods. “It's been the midsize and some micro influencers that I want to say actually have a following that they can influence,” Kevin says in a Shopify Masters interview. 

Macro influencers (500,000–1 million followers)

Macro influencers are individuals with between 500,000 and 1 million followers. You may have to contact them through representatives or agents, plus their experience and reach often comes with a hefty price tag. 

Mega influencers (1 million+ followers)

Mega influencers are social media celebrities with audiences of more than one million followers.

Mega influencers like Ryan Trahan, MrBeast, and Unnecessary Inventions can provide massive reach for your brand. A single collaboration with them can run anywhere from $10,000 to well over $500,000.

6 steps to an effective influencer marketing strategy

Here’s how to find a social media influencer and agree on a collaboration with them:

1. Do your homework

Before you work with influencers, be clear about your product’s positioning. 

Toral Parel, who built an eight-figure influencer strategy for Kopari Beauty, says the key is believing in your product and that your product is differentiated.

“All you want [influencers] to do is to try the product, because if they love it … it will make its way into multiple pieces of content,” says Toral.

You can learn a lot from other brands’ influencer marketing approaches, too. Discover what works for them, get inspiration from the types of content they post, and look at which posts get the most engagement.

2. Create a clear brief

Create a brief that tells potential influencers the type of collaboration you want. 

“Go through the influencer’s feed, find the two or three assets that are either high-performing or ones that caught your attention, and use them as a North Star,” says Kimberly Kreuzberger, founder of Pivot Projects, in a Shopify Masters interview.

“When we send the brief, we say, ‘We really liked these two that you did—how you spoke in-camera, how casual you were, the environment, how you closed out that content piece,’” says Kimberly. “You’re giving them creative freedom within the range of what they do well. But it’s not a free-for-all. You’re still paying for an asset that has to work for your brand.”

3. Choose relevant influencers

Once you have a clear idea of what you want to achieve, the next step is finding relevant influencers. 

Influencer discovery strategies include:

• Browsing creators on Shopify Collabs
• Asking your customers which influencers they follow 
• Looking for existing customers already talking about your brand or products 

“It’s not necessarily the influencer or the celebrity with the largest following,” says Kimberly. “It’s who is telling the how, the why, the when. How often are they doing that with trust and authority? Those are the storytellers rising to the top and becoming really important to brands.” 

To determine a fit between your brand and an influencer, ask these questions:

• What are this influencer’s interests or passions?
• Does my brand share their interests or passions?
• If not, does my brand relate to the influencer’s interests or passions?
• How would my brand’s message sound coming from this influencer?
• Have they done any past collaborations with my competitors?

“A lot of people will make the mistake where they’ll spend money or send products to just about any influencer, anybody that has a lot of followers,” says Akram Abdallah. “It’s not the best strategy, and also a waste of time and money.”

Kevin Chon agrees. 

“You got to go to their account, look at the interactions. Are there comments? Are there saves? Are there shares? That's what counts,” he says.

Note that not all engagements are authentic; SociaVault’s 2026 study found over 37% of influencer accounts show signs of fake followers or engagement. Tools like HypeAuditor let you check this before you shortlist influencers to work with.

4. Learn how to reach out

If you’re reaching out to micro influencers, message them directly by email or their social media channel. Larger influencers, however, may have an agent or manager who fields these requests. You should be able to find this information in their social media bio. 

Limit your first email to the key details:

• Who are you interested in? (For macro influencer agents only.)
• What do you want them to do, and on which channels?
• When do you need a response?
• Why do you think your brand is a good match?

“If you’re in the first sentence telling them, ’Hey, I’m connecting because I’m starting my own brand,’ or something like that, I think that’s always helpful,” says Yasaman Bakhtiar, cofounder of Good Girl Snacks, in a Shopify Masters interview. 

“Maybe you can find a commonality between you and this person, and you can try and incorporate that so that you can create some sort of connection.”

If you don’t hear back right away, don’t assume they’re not interested. It’s perfectly OK to follow up. 

“Make it clear that there’s something on the other side for them, and that invites them to respond,” says Michelle Razavi, cofounder of Elavi, in a Shopify Masters interview.

5. Agree on a collaboration structure

Once you’ve found the influencers you want to work with, reach out to them and agree on a collaboration structure. 

Consider these six key aspects in your negotiations:

• Time frame: Be up front about the deadline and highlight that it’s imperative they meet it.
• Output: Clearly outline what you want them to produce. For example: two pieces of content, one to be published on the influencer’s account with a mention of your brand, and one to use at your discretion.
• Content usage: Let them know what content usage rights you want.
• Payment: When you’re negotiating a price, remember that you’re paying for multiple services: content creation, usage rights, and access to a new audience.
• Sponsored hashtag: Regulations on sponsored content vary around the world and change all the time. Follow FTC disclosure rules and use #spon or #ad. Check with a lawyer to make sure you’re compliant. 
• Campaign goal: Communicate a clear goal for the influencer campaign. That could be as simple as increasing followers on your account or driving clicks from their Instagram bio to your website to increase sales.

For example, water bottle brand Healthish’s influencer marketing strategy involves sending free products to relevant influencers, such as fitness vloggers, fashion influencers, and other groups related to their target market. These creators then share images and videos of its bottles online; but only if they genuinely love the product.

“We’re in a fortunate position where the product is relatively low cost,” says Healthish cofounder Nathan Chan in a Shopify Masters interview. “We just send out [products] to many subsections of the market. We don’t even ask people to post if they don’t want to. We just say, ‘If you love the products, we’d love for you to share it with your community or fans or audience.’”

Protect your brand: Tips for influencer marketing campaigns

Keep in mind that influencers are representing your brand on social media. To protect your brand image, you could pay influencers an upfront deposit with the balance due once the work is completed. This payment structure reassures the influencer you will pay them, while protecting your investment.

Influencer marketing agencies also specialize in this type of marketing. They give you an extra point of contact if mediation is required between you and the influencer.

6. Maximize the content value

Get additional value out of sponsored content by repurposing it for other channels. Here are four ways to maximize influencer content value:

• Publish it on your social media channels. Lean on an influencer’s content to fill your social media calendar. Just make sure you have the right to do so first.
• Publish it as a Facebook ad. “By using influencer content, we are now able to refresh our ad units on a regular basis,” says Shore Projects cofounder Neil Waller, adding that influencer content has improved their conversion rate by 19%. Note that mega influencers charge an additional 30% to 100% for paid ads usage.
• Run it as a whitelisted ad. “Whitelisting is when the ad comes through from the influencer’s handle,” says Kimberly. “Now you almost look like you’re getting an ad from Ashley Tisdale when she’s talking about a brand, versus the brand serving it to you directly. It shows up in your feed differently.” 
• Publish it on your website. Influencer content provides social proof, which can add more credibility to your website. For example, deodorant brand Wild displays this content on their home page. 

Influencer campaign payment structures

Here are example payment structures and considerations for influencer endorsements on social media.

Licensing and rights to content

If an influencer made a post on their account promoting your brand, that content belongs to the influencer (unless they transfer ownership of the IP). You may have to pay a licensing fee to reuse their content on your brand’s social media account. 

Pay per post

With these brand deals, you pay the influencer a certain amount of money for a set number of posts. The pricing for these deals can fluctuate based on factors like the influencer’s follower count.

The cost per post can also vary depending on the channel and type of post:

Link in bio (add-on)

With link-in-bio deals, the influencer includes a link to your brand’s site in their social media bio, keeping it pinned to the top of their account page or profile to drive direct traffic to your site. 

Multiplatform influencer campaign

If you’re targeting an influencer with a large following on multiple social media platforms, consider a multiplatform campaign with posts on each of the influencer’s accounts.

Free product as payment

Gifting is a popular strategy, according to Ryan Prior, head of marketing at Modash.

“You send out free products to influencers, either [with] no strings attached and hope that they post, or you take a barter deal in exchange for deliverables,” he says. “This is generally a very high-volume strategy, meaning you can send out a thousand packages, and the cost is just the product and shipping.”

For high-value products, consider long-term influencer partnerships or paid collaborations. Another influencer strategy involves performance-based payments, where influencers earn based on their sales, tracked through promo codes or affiliate links.

Commission

Commission is offering payment for each sale, lead, or engagement. In this model, you only pay influencers when their endorsement leads directly to your chosen success metric(s). This ranges from 5% to 15% for physical goods, or 20% to 50% for digital products, on average.

With Shopify Collabs, creators can be paid affiliate commissions on sales they drive through tracked affiliate links or unique discount codes. It offers manual and automatic payment options to award commission through the Shopify Billing system.

Influencer marketing platforms

Influencer marketing platforms are tools that businesses use to recruit, manage, and pay influencers. Many offer features like affiliate program management, marketplaces, campaign analytics, reporting tools, and relationship management software.

The global influencer marketing platform is worth an estimated $45.2 billion in 2026. With so many options to choose from, here’s a rundown of popular options:

Shopify Collabs

Shopify Collabs is an influencer marketing platform that offers ecommerce brands access to creators across social media channels. 

Top features include:

• Creator marketplace to find and recruit influencers
• Unique discount codes and referral links to track creator-driven sales 
• Analytics to track the performance of your influencer program
• Tool to send and track free products sent to influencers 
• Ability to pay affiliate commissions through your Shopify bill
• Compatibility with other Shopify tools, including Sidekick and Shopify Flow

“We can simply send influencers a Shopify link which includes a discount code and they just have to swipe up to access the checkout,” says Ricarda Humitsch, sales team lead at Snocks. “We also don’t have to worry about the site crashing when we do work with influencers because our checkout can handle such a high volume of customers.”

Grin

Grin is an influencer marketing software for ecommerce brands. Its main feature is Gia, an AI assistant designed to operate multiple campaigns end to end, from finding influencers to reporting on their results. It also integrates with Shopify to handle shipping logistics for sales made through influencers.

Upfluence

Upfluence is a self-serve platform for finding influencers. Set your own prices and find influencers to fit your criteria with more than 20 advanced search filters. Upfluence also helps you identify influential customers and fans. When a visitor shops on your site, it analyzes their social data to surface high-influence customers for potential partnerships. 

Creator.co

Creator.co is an influencer marketplace with more than 400 million influencers. It has self-service options to find influencers manually. There’s also an AI tool named London to help create briefs, manage negotiations, and track influencer performance. 

Sprout Social Influencer Marketing

Sprout Social is a social media management tool with influencer-specific features. With Sprout, you can find influencers, brief them, and monitor their sponsored posts in the same dashboard that manages your brand’s own content calendar.

*Based on a 2025 survey of 500 Shopify merchants conducted in English across Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, Ireland, New Zealand, and the United States. Respondents were established merchants with two or more years on the platform. Results reflect the experiences of this specific sample and may not be representative of all merchants.