Is influencer marketing the same as social media marketing?

No. They often work together, but social media marketing uses a channel. Influencer marketing uses people, and their audiences trust them.

Why is influencer marketing worth it?

People rarely buy just because they’ve heard of a brand. They want social proof first, and influencers are trusted sources, so a recommendation from them works like a third-party review.

What types of influencers are there?

There are 3 main types, from well-known names with huge followings to smaller influencers with engaged niche audiences. What counts depends on your niche: in some, you can be an A-lister with only a few thousand followers.

How do I find the right influencers?

Start where your target audience already spends time, identify the biggest players there, and add them to a spreadsheet. The closer their audience is to yours, the better the partnership. My full process is in how to identify influencers.

How do I track the results of influencer marketing?

Set up affiliate links. Whether you pay influencers to promote you or work as partners, affiliate links show you exactly what each partnership brings in.

Do I need influencer marketing software?

No. Tools can make the process easier or faster for a fee, and they’re useful for organizing micro influencers, but you won’t find many A-listers on a marketplace.

Are there rules for influencer marketing?

Yes. In the US, the FTC has rules for how influencer marketing is disclosed. They’re mostly about transparency, and following them is your responsibility.

What are the steps of influencer marketing?

My process has 5 steps: identify potential influencers, choose the right ones, connect and add value first, make the ask, and follow up. Each step has its own full guide on navid.me.

How can AI help with influencer marketing?

AI can research an influencer's recent work, suggest a specific compliment and collaboration idea, draft outreach in your voice for you to edit, remind you to follow up and help you read your campaign results. The relationship itself stays human.

Influencer marketing: The ultimate guide to connecting & partnering with influencers

Q: What is influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing is working with influential people who already have a personal brand to reach and engage your ideal customers. Instead of using a channel to market, you’re using people.

Learn what influencer marketing is, how influencer deals work and my 5-step process to find, connect with and partner with the right influencers.

door Navid Moazzez·Bijgewerkt 30 sep 2026·11 min leestijd·

Influencer marketing: The ultimate guide to connecting & partnering with influencers

Influencer marketing is one of the fastest ways to reach people who already trust someone else.

You know what your product does and who it's for. The hard part is getting in front of those people, and earning their trust fast.

Traditional PR and ads get you impressions. Influencer marketing gets you a recommendation from someone your buyers already follow.

It's how I built my business. Every virtual summit I've hosted, from The Branding Summit in 2014 to the AI Creator Summit today, grew because influencers in my niche shared it with their audiences.

This guide covers the whole picture: what influencer marketing is, how the deals work, and my 5-step process, with a full post for each step.

Rand Fishkin

@randfish

An influencer promoting and amplifying your message, your brand, to their audience means credibility. It means additional reach, and it means you get an outsized modifier to the conversion process.

What is influencer marketing?

Influencer marketing means working with people who have the attention and trust of your target audience, so they introduce your brand, product or event to their followers.

You target the influencers instead of the market as a whole, and their recommendation spreads further than an ad would.

Influencer marketing isn't the same as social media marketing, although they often work together. Instead of using a channel to market, you're using people.

How it differs from testimonial advertising

It's a matter of platform.

In a classic testimonial ad, a company pays a celebrity to talk about its brand in a commercial, on the company's own channels.

In influencer marketing, someone shares your message with their own audience, on their own channels.

That distinction is what makes it so powerful. When a prospect sees a message from someone they trust, on a platform they already use, they're far more likely to act on it.

It's also why good influencers are careful about what they promote. Their audience's trust is their entire business model.

How influencer deals work

Influencer marketing is set up either by the influencer reaching out to a brand, or more often, by a brand reaching out to the influencer.

The content isn't limited to social media posts. It can be:

Emails to their list
Social media posts, stories and short videos
Podcast and video interviews
Guest posts and newsletters
Livestreams and account takeovers
Partner webinars and workshops
Virtual summit sessions
Reviews

And the deal usually takes one of 2 shapes:

Transactional. You pay for specific content, for example 3 posts over a month for a fixed fee.
Partnership. You work on a campaign together, with a unique affiliate link, and split the revenue at an agreed percentage. Harder to set up, and usually far more valuable for both sides.

Influencer marketing in practice

A few examples of how different brands use it:

American Express partnered with photographer Casey McPerry on a Small Business Saturday campaign. His posts highlighted other small businesses, and tied American Express to community.
Groundhouse Burger teams up with popular Los Angeles Instagram creators to promote its burgers to local food lovers.
Chandler Bolt of Self-Publishing School got 30+ influencers to join his virtual summit and generated 60,000+ email subscribers and $700,000+ in revenue.
Crosshair Music matches independent artists with micro influencers whose audiences fit the music, a digital-first take on music PR.

Chandler Bolt

Founder & CEO, Selfpublishing.com

Navid helped me earn $370k+ and 30,000 email subscribers in less than 2 months… it completely transformed our business to a multi million dollar online education company (the summit we did in 2016 was even bigger with almost 40,000 opt-ins!).

It all started with the proven business and marketing strategies Navid shared.. go sign up to his email newsletter now!

The types of influencers

Not all influencers are equal. I sort them into 3 groups, and the follower numbers vary a lot by niche:

A-listers. Household names with huge followings. Hard to reach, and they rarely respond unless you have a big budget or a real connection.
B-listers. Known experts with solid followings, often big players in smaller niches. More open to partnerships, with great credibility.
C-listers, or micro influencers. Smaller, highly engaged audiences, and usually eager to collaborate. Some of them become the A-listers of tomorrow.

A good campaign usually mixes all 3. For the full breakdown by follower count, niche and platform, see the 21 types of social media influencers.

Why influencer marketing is worth it

A few reasons it works so well:

Third-party trust. People want social proof before they buy, and an influencer is a trusted recommendation at scale.
Warm reach. You get in front of people who already care about your topic, without building every connection yourself.
Better content. Influencers make a living from content, and you get their creativity on your side.
Authority by association. Being introduced by someone your audience trusts makes you the expert too.
Growth that compounds. Once one influencer promotes you, the next one is easier to get, and good relationships last for years.

It has real downsides too, from fake followers to hard-to-measure results. I cover both sides in influencer marketing benefits and disadvantages.

For the full list, including the downsides, read influencer marketing benefits and disadvantages.