5 proven influencer marketing plays that make every dollar work harder

Marketers are always asked to do more with less. Stretch the budget further. Drive greater ROI with fewer resources. Yet when it comes to the how, most of the advice out there doesn’t go beyond the obvious.

We hear you. The pressure is real—and navigating it calls for more than vague generalizations. We know you’re looking for more than just another reminder that budgets are tight or that efficiency matters. You need strategies you can actually use, backed by examples that prove what works in today’s environment.

That’s why we put together this guide: five real-world influencer activations tested and refined by Sprout’s social team. From multi-creator collaborations that deliver a thunderclap moment to evergreen content that continues working long after launch, these examples are designed to give you practical, adaptable ideas you can bring back to your next campaign.

We’ve said it before and we’ll say it again: if you’re not embedding your influencer strategy across your organization, you’re leaving impact—and budget—on the table.

Adopting a center of excellence (CoE) model for influencer marketing creates a centralized hub of expertise and best practices that aligns teams and scales success across marketing functions. Basically, it ensures everyone is moving in lock-step with your broader brand strategy.

At Sprout, we embraced this approach at the start of 2025 and have been building on it ever since. Every influencer and creator activation is planned through multiple lenses—PR, demand generation, events, paid media, sales enablement—so campaigns drive impact across the business.

In June, this approach helped us launch a stand out moment: our webinar with Zaria Parvez, formerly of Duolingo. To promote the event, we sponsored an organic LinkedIn post from Zaria and amplified it as a thought leadership ad. By coordinating efforts across channels and teams, we achieved our highest-performing webinar to date, with record attendance and engagement—not to mention a few hundred net-new leads.

Takeaway: Treat influencer partnerships as integrated marketing opportunities. From media placements to paid advertising to broader campaigns, consider how each partnership can be leveraged across your organization—and bake those ideas into contracts from the start.

Not ready for a full brand trip? That doesn’t mean your influencer collaborations need to stay online.

Involving influencers in live experiences helps generate high-quality, original content while strengthening long-term influencer relationships. These face-to-face interactions foster trust, make collaborations feel more personal and often lead to more authentic content in the future.

This approach is one of our favorites for getting more from our influencer marketing budget. Whether co-hosting a breakfast with Lia Haberman at SXSW or sponsoring Vin Matano’s presence at Art Basel to help bring our social data to life, we look for ways to create memorable, in-person moments that resonate both on social and with attendees.

Tactically, these activations work best when influencers are given clear guidance and creative freedom: provide talking points, highlight key moments to capture and offer behind-the-scenes access that allows them to tell a story that’s true to their voice.

Over the past year, we’ve been using Sprout Social Influencer Marketing to source influencers to join us for our international Vantage customer roadshow tour stops. We use the tool to source local creators with a high brand fit.

Then, we invite them to join us on-site at the event, where they create content on social recapping the event for their audience. That way, we get original promo that’s rich in social proof, and we’re able to enrich the event for our attendees curious about the influencer side of influencer marketing partnerships.

Takeaway: Whenever your business hosts or participates in a live event—store openings, community initiatives, industry conferences—make influencers a strategic part of the experience. Equip them with guidance, access and creative freedom to tell their story, and you’ll see benefits in both measurable reach and lasting relationships.

Expanding influencer marketing beyond your home market opens doors to new audiences and regions. Local creators provide culturally relevant connections your team may not be able to reach on its own, and their understanding of local norms, humor and trends helps ensure campaigns resonate without missteps.

Weave market expansion efforts into your next influencer marketing campaign by identifying priority regions for your brand, and then zero in on what success looks like.

If you’re still developing your presence in that region, we recommend measuring your campaign’s success based on awareness metrics. However, that doesn’t mean you should automatically go for the biggest creator you can afford in hopes of hitting reach goals. Micro- and mid-tier influencers often drive more authentic connections in local markets.

When applied thoughtfully, this approach can produce measurable results. One of our highest performing influencer collaborations of 2025 was with Australian brand strategy consultant Eugene Healy. It performed so well, we boosted the post as an advertisement, driving a 137% lead increase at an efficient CPL.

Takeaway: Use influencers strategically to help your business enter new markets. Choose creators who provide cultural relevance and authentic connections, and align campaign goals with local priorities to maximize impact.

Partnering with a creator outside your usual category or industry exposes your brand to communities you wouldn’t normally access, often injecting fresh storytelling angles that feel surprising and authentic.

To find the right unexpected partners, prioritize audience overlap over industry. Look for creators whose followers match your target audience, even if their niche seems unrelated to your product.

Data-driven, topic-led influencer discovery tools (like Sprout Social Influencer Marketing) will help you search for creators based on the conversations they’re actually having with their audience—as opposed to arbitrary profile metrics.

For example, say you work with a financial services organization. You know your audience is interested in budget-friendly meals, so you use Sprout Social Influencer Marketing to find a creator who specializes in low-cost meal planning. This is the first step to an unexpected but relevant collaboration.

Or, maybe you work with a software company looking to expand its brand presence at Miami Art Basel. That’s the position we found ourselves in earlier this year when we took a chance and partnered with Maxine the Fluffy Corgi.

We gave Maxine and her dog parent $2,000 to spend however they wanted to as part of their broader activation. They surprised everyone (including us!) by donating it to a local animal rescue—a heartwarming social moment that also translated into a strong brand awareness play.

Takeaway: Don’t limit yourself to the “obvious” creators. Seek out partners who can surprise your audience while remaining relevant, and use topic-led discovery and audience alignment to ensure authenticity, engagement and measurable impact.

Sometimes the most powerful way to stand out isn’t a single voice, but a chorus.

Partnering with multiple influencers for one activation creates what’s often called a thunderclap moment: a coordinated wave of content that floods feeds with your brand message all at once. Instead of scattered, one-off impressions, you get cumulative reach and repetition—which makes your campaign harder to miss and more memorable.

This strategy also works in your favor with platform algorithms, since simultaneous creator activity boosts visibility and drives conversation across different audience segments.

To get it right, curate complementary voices. Choose influencers whose audiences overlap just enough for message reinforcement, but who each bring something distinct to the table. That mix gives you both scale and authenticity.

At Sprout, we tested this approach with the launch of our ROI Toolkit. Proving ROI is mission-critical for marketers, but the term itself often gets lost in corporate jargon. To cut through the noise, we tapped four creators in the corporate humor space—Corporate Bro, Corporate Natalie, Corporate Erin and Nonprofit Boss—to develop skits promoting the resource.

By leaning into their unique comedic styles, we turned a business framework into timely, tactical content that resonated with their audiences while delivering our message at scale.

There are countless ways to optimize influencer marketing spend—that’s the real creative challenge. By taking a page from these five activations, hopefully you can experiment with ways to make your ad spend go further.

For more campaign inspiration, explore our Post Performance Report series, where we analyze standout social campaigns and break down why they work. One recent edition highlights brands who are taking influencer partnerships beyond social, turning them into IRL experiences. It’s a perfect next read if you’re looking for even more creative inspiration.