What’s your experience using influencers to acquire users?
Over the past 10 years, influencers have taken over: from fashion to finance, from food to AI tools. Sometimes they feel genuine, sometimes… they’ll promote absolutely anything.
So I’m curious: what’s your experience working with influencers, especially when the goal is clear: user acquisition?
Here’s what’s worked for me:
1/ Only work with influencers whose audience matches your ICP and whose tone and content align with your brand. Reach > doesn’t matter if the fit isn’t there.
2/ Let them lead the creative. I always ask to see examples of previous work, but I avoid sending pre-written scripts. After all, their audience follows them, not you and your content. If they can’t tell your story in their voice, it won’t land.
What’s your take? What have you tried, learned, or would warn others about when it comes to influencer-led campaigns?👇
Replies
Accessibility isn’t mass-market, so we don’t chase mass reach. We’ve worked with people in legal compliance, design systems, even nonprofit web strategy. These aren’t typical “influencers”, but they have influence.
@a11yexpert Partnerships with other organizations/companies are a very powerful tool. Especially when they have an established base of supporters.
With minimalist phone, we tried to claim big accounts, but those campaigns were unsuccessful.
Oddly enough, the smaller creator with 5k subscribers on YouTube was bringing us new paying users (at least 14 in one month).
@busmark_w_nika Which platforms did you work with them on? Also, how did you choose them?
@byalexai I think that one was on Twitter and IG, another one on TikTok – they had like 200k and 400k followers but hardly to convert them into paid users. That one YouTube creator talking about tech with 5k subscribers was more successful. We chose them according to the topics they were talking about. The big creators talked about motivation, mental health/productivity, and that YT creator purely tech reviews.
In my commercial projects (e.g. tech, logistics, media and telecommunication) it was easier and more commercially succesful to work with micro to medium influencers. Working with the big ones was usually quite messy. In general what worked well for me was to involve them early in the ideation phase and brainstorm on creation and execution together. Making them part of the solution. Of course you only work with influencers that are anchored in your audiences. In regards to assets: on their bandwith they are in charge; on owned and operates by the customer, the brand is in charge. Again: if you involve them from the beginning into this concept you can create real magic.
@klemens_dreesbach Absolutely. Can you mention the platforms where you’ve run campaigns? Twitter / YouTube / Facebook, etc.?
@byalexai Mainly with Facebook, YouTube and TikTok. I will be working more broadly for our product launch across multiple SoMe platforms (e.g. include Insta, Twitter, LinkedIn, Bluesky etc.)
@klemens_dreesbach Awesome. When is your launch day?
Twitter is great for AI/SaaS projects.
@byalexai we are launching on August 13th - I am soooooo excited and nervous