Influencer marketing - what is it and what benefits does it offer?
Tips
26 June 2025
Social media is a space not only for following your friends or celebrities, but also a place for advertising and sales. It is in social media that creative campaigns with millions of reaches take place. They are very often accompanied by well-known faces. Influencer marketing - what is it, what advantages does it have and in which industries will it work?
Influencer marketing - what is it?
Influencer marketing is a form of advertising that takes place on social media. It involves popular people who are active on the internet. We are talking about influencers. The term influencer comes from the English word influence, which means influence. In this case, well-known personalities recommend specific products or services and often encourage their purchase by providing discount codes.
Examples of influencer marketing include making a post on an Instagram profile showcasing a product and describing its benefits, posting videos or reels focused on a particular commodity online, and talking about a product or service during a live broadcast.
Benefits of influencer marketing
Influencer marketing has a myriad of benefits for both the marketer and the advertiser. Online creators have a huge influence on their audience, especially when they gather an engaged and active community around them. Sales results through their referrals increase dramatically. In addition, social media campaigns are highly paid, so influencers also reap considerable profits.
By selecting specific creators to work with, a brand can target specific groups with an interest in the goods. This makes the campaign more likely to have a measurable effect. Of course, there are also drawbacks to influencer marketing that lead to over-consumerism or the sale of low-quality products at inflated prices.
In order for this form of promotion to be beneficial, the retailer must select influencers appropriately. It is important that the product is proven, suits the influencer in question and does not conflict with the influencer's image. Influencers who advertise a wide variety of products lose the trust of the community and lack credibility. 
In which industries will influencer marketing work?
Influencer marketing in the age of new media has now reached into a great many industries. Online influencers are constantly promoting cosmetics, clothing, gym gadgets, snacks, hair styling accessories, services at specific beauty salons, soy candles, films and series on streaming platforms and much, much more. Such activities, as long as they are consistent with the influencer's image, are very effective. The problem begins when the influencer starts to advertise products that are not consistent with their image.
Most controversy arises when adverts for dietary supplements, alcohol or aesthetic medical treatments appear on social media. Such products interfere too much with the recipient's life and health, so they should not be shown on social media. Polish law prohibits the promotion of alcoholic beverages other than beer, and is soon to ban also advertisements related to procedures performed by doctors.
Methods of billing in influencer marketing - barter, performance contracts
For many influencers, marketing on Instagram is their main source of income. They are usually self-employed and account for Social Security or the tax office on this basis. Some of the most common methods of collaboration with brands are barter and a contract for work.
Barter involves a company donating its products or performing a service to an influencer in exchange for the creator recommending these items on their social media profiles. In the case of a contract for work, the celebrity performs certain advertising activities and is paid for them. The rates vary depending on, among other things, how engaged the creator's community is or what the creator is actually expected to do as part of the collaboration (e.g. recommending a product on a story on Instagram, recording a video on YouTube or creating a TikTok).
It is not uncommon for the performance of promotional services by influencers to involve them in a number of interesting activities. For example, they may take part in overseas trips to film premieres or conferences, as well as participate in panel discussions and events to promote particular merchandise.
How do you look for influencers for influencer marketing?
Ways to find influencers for campaigns are plentiful. Companies can use special tools on the web that allow them to find people whose activities are related to their products. It is also worth manually browsing social media to see which influencers are creating interesting and engaging content. In this way, it is possible to immediately see how they have presented previous campaigns with other brands. The influencer rankings, which are updated each year, are helpful. 
Micro- and macro-influencers - who are they and how do they reach their audience?
Online creators are divided into two types - micro and macro. Microinfluencers are assumed to have between 1 000 and 100 000 followers on their social media profiles. Macro-influencers, on the other hand, gather between 100 000 and one million followers. While the numbers may be impressive, they are not the only factor influencing the choice of faces for product advertising.
In order to reach real audiences, it is necessary to measure the level of engagement of an influencer's community, which is referred to in the industry as engagement rate. This is calculated by comparing the number of followers with the number of their reactions, comments or likes. This shows what percentage of the audience is really paying attention to what the influencer is presenting. The higher the ER rate, the greater the chance of a campaign being effective.
Working with an agency or directly with an influencer - what is worth knowing?
There are several ways to work with influencers, and the most common is through an agency or directly through a company that wants to advertise. In the former case, the services of marketing professionals are used to select the right people to advertise products. There is therefore no need to spend time searching for creators or contacting them, as the agencies use their bases and take care of all the paperwork. This is a convenient solution, but you also have to pay for it.
Direct contact with the influencer offers the opportunity to establish individual terms and conditions and to avoid agency costs. However, one has to reckon with the fact that this requires time and commitment, and the creator does not always decide to cooperate, for example, outside the agency with which he or she is affiliated. The choice of hiring influencers therefore depends on the budget and on what scale and with which creator you want to run a campaign. For large projects, the help of professionals is very valuable.
Mistakes made with influencer marketing
One of the most common mistakes made in influencer marketing is to mis-match the product with the creator. Sometimes people wearing braces or having veneers, for example, advertise teeth straightening trays, which is not credible at all. It is not uncommon for influencers to promote, for example, a brand's smartphone, while they themselves use a competitor's equipment on a daily basis.
It is a mistake to work with influencers who have many followers but low community engagement. In addition, it is not worth hiring influencers with controversial images or who preach extreme views for campaigns, as they may be associated with the brand and reduce product sales.
Companies sometimes involve too many online personalities in their advertising, so that the merchandise loses its appeal and people do not want to buy it. It is also a mistake to tell every creator to present products in the same way, i.e. by recording identical trends on TikTok, for example. One should not forget yet to sign contracts and act in accordance with the law.
If you want to invest in influencer marketing to reach new customers, it is essential to ensure that bloggers or others have a consistent profile with active users. Only with a viable audience can you build interest in your product and conquer the internet. Make sure that the creator's lifestyle matches your strategy and fits with the brand.
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