As the global influencer market projects unprecedented growth toward $139 billion by 2031, small businesses face mounting pressure to compete in an increasingly crowded social media landscape. With limited budgets, growing customer acquisition costs, and fierce competition from larger brands, many struggle to find their footing in influencer marketing.

We spoke with thirteen leading voices in the creator economy about what actually works. From the founder of Social Shopping Platform Emcee Studios to the CEO of UGC Marketplace Glewee, these industry leaders represent companies that collectively facilitate millions of creator partnerships annually, offering a unique vantage point on what truly drives results.

Their insights come at a critical moment, as recent data shows 80% of consumers are more likely to purchase from brands featuring user-generated content. This trend is even more pronounced among younger demographics, with 86% of Gen Z and 81% of Millennials citing authentic creator content as a primary factor in their purchasing decisions. Yet despite these compelling statistics, many small businesses continue to approach influencer partnerships with outdated strategies that prioritize reach over resonance.

Here’s how these industry leaders say small businesses should approach influencer marketing to maximize their investment.

John Aghayan, Founder and CEO, Emcee Studios

Go beyond traditional talent agencies: Think outside the box, don’t go for the obvious creators who have already partnered with brands in your category, find the underdogs, the rising stars, creators from whom a piece of content got you hooked but don’t have a huge following yet. Authenticity comes first, instead of focusing on follower count, brands should value the depth and diversity of engagement of a creator, 10,000 engaged followers will legitimize a brand more than 100,000 disconnected followers.

Build authentic and long-lasting relationships: Work with influencers who genuinely want or already use your products. Build relationships based on trust and collaboration, as if they were part of your own team or valued customers. Influencers who are personally invested in your brand will deliver more authentic and impactful content.

Explore diverse content types: Polls, questions, voting, comments and curation allow the consumer to build an emotional connection with the creator who represents the brand and make the consumer feel seen, included and part of a community. This diversification of content types allows people to relate to your brand in a non-transactional way, while still experiencing the essence of what makes it special. In a world of subcultures, generic messaging falls flat. Great campaigns foster dialogue and allow consumers to feel connected. Also, the algorithms on social platforms typically prioritize the use of their new features, so you can increase your reach by leveraging them!

Focus on creative: Treat influencer marketing with the same level of creative effort as any other campaign. Set your influencers up for success by providing strong creative references, mood boards and direction on how you envision the content.

Kaaveh Shoamanesh, Founder & CEO, Plaiced

Three things matter most, 1. Choose relevant influencers that share your brand values and your target audience. 2. Quantify what success looks like in advance, i.e. 100 clicks, 10 comments, 5 shares, etc. 3. Request the content from the influencer to be provided in different formats/sizes to use on various platforms.

Sarah McNabb, CMO, GigaStar

For small businesses, setting clear goals is crucial for successful influencer partnerships, and, for GigaStar, we prioritize transparency, human-centered guidance, and building long-term relationships to ensure lasting success. YouTube Creators who list a revenue-share offering on our platform receive personalized, white glove support from a dedicated Creator Success Manager. They help the influencer balance creative freedom with regulatory compliance in the marketing of their drop offering. We maintain partnerships with our Creators after a drop offering has closed to continue championing their growth.

Christian Brown, Co-Founder & CEO, Glewee

Influencer marketing is an incredibly important part of all the marketing mix for small businesses. With the opportunity to reach millions of eyeballs through social media, small businesses can work with influencers to promote their products, services, and offerings with ease. 

There are three key ways that small businesses can work with influencers and content creators. The first is by paying an influencer to create content and publish the content to their social media pages, this is helpful to drive awareness and sales. Next is paying content creators to create authentic content that small businesses can use in their ads, website, newsletters, and marketing material, known as UGC (User-Generated Content). Lastly, small businesses can send free “gifted” products to influencers in exchange for product shout outs and free content being posted to the influencers’ pages. By doing these three types of influencer marketing, small businesses will be able to re-shape the way they are reaching new audiences, enhancing their ads, and getting their product into the hands of real influencers who will drive results and sales. 

Finding the right influencers to promote your small business does not need to take a long time, be difficult, or cost absorbant amounts of money. Platforms like Glewee make influencer marketing fast, easy and affordable for small businesses.

Olivia McNaughten, Senior Director of Product Marketing & Partnerships, GRIN

As a small business, Influencer Marketing can be an incredible way to boost brand awareness and drive sales, but to spend your investment wisely I recommend a few best practices.

Focus on creators with high engagement rates, not just high follower counts. Micro- and nano-influencers are amazing at driving conversations within niche communities, and this is invaluable for smaller brands looking to make a meaningful impact.

Only collaborate with influencers who naturally align with your brand because consumers are savvy and will spot when something feels inauthentic. When you partner with influencers who genuinely love your brand, this will come through in their content and help build trust with their followers.

Don’t just gift products, invest in long-term paid partnerships with creators you love. These partnerships tend to outperform one-off gifting campaigns because they guarantee content and foster sustained brand loyalty. When influencers consistently advocate for a business, their followers begin to see the brand as an integral part of their lifestyle, leading to stronger, lasting relationships that convert into sales.

Monica Banks, Founder & CEO, Gugu Guru

One of the strongest tactics a small business can adopt when partnering with influencers is treating each relationship like a potential long-term partnership from the start versus a one-time transaction. So many brands think influencer marketing is a magic pill – pay the influencer and voila! it will produce instant brand awareness and sales. Nothing could be further from the truth. The best content is authentic and authenticity comes from forging a relationship with the influencers. Let the influencers have input, make them feel ownership and like stakeholders in your brand where your success is their success. Don’t miss out on that connection piece as it will make all of the difference.

Chris Jacks, Director, Growth Strategy, HireInfluence

The best way to maximize the impact of any influencer marketing campaign, including those being implemented by small businesses, is to have clear expectations of the results they expect from the activation. Once the goals and KPIs are clearly defined, the ability to engineer a strategy is enhanced. The worst thing any small business can do is aimlessly activate influencers with no thought process or campaign strategy and hope for the best.

Our first recommendation is to define the type of campaign you want to run based on your business objectives. Are you looking to maximize brand awareness? Do you want to direct people to a landing page? Do you want to use the content organically on your own social media channels? Are you going to run paid media on the content?

It is important to consider all of these factors, as each has a direct impact on the overall cost of engaging with a creator. For example, if you contract a micro-tier creator to make a TikTok video that they will post on their own feed, it might cost you $500. However, if you also want organic and paid media usage rights on that content so that you can run spark ads to increase the visibility of the content the price might increase to $750, impacting your overall influencer marketing budget.

When we work with small businesses or brands with smaller budgets, we almost always advocate for an approach that prioritizes working with a larger number of smaller influencers and amplifying the content via influencer-first paid media. We like this approach for multiple reasons, as it yields deliverables with varying styles of content production, narrative, and product application. Additionally, the paid media strategy allows us to extend the lifestyle of the creator’s content beyond the initial organic post while maintaining the ability to hyper-target the brand’s defined audience demographics. As a result, we have not only created an abundance of valuable content, but we are also increasing the number of consumer touchpoints, which contribute to mid/lower-funnel actions like website clicks and purchases.

Developing a well-thought-out influencer strategy always pays off in the long run. The benefit of working with an agency like HireInfluence is that we build comprehensive influencer strategies for each client and campaign we work on. The methodology and level of detail that we offer our Fortune 500 clients are the same as those we offer our small business clients.

Gigi Robinson, Founder, Hosts of Influence

When partnering with influencers, it’s essential to make sure that they are a good fit prior to signing a deal with them. Are they a great match because they love your product and talk about it organically or use it, or do they just have great reach.! The way that you find the perfect creator to maximize the impact of marketing campaigns is through direct communication asking them 1. If they have used or tried the product and what their experience with it is, if the answer is yes move to question 2. Are they interested in working on a project together around the product? Many brands work with creators who do one or the other, but when you can find a creator who fits into both categories you are almost destined for success.

Daniel Sánchez, Founder and CEO, Influencity

Small businesses can pack a powerful punch with influencer marketing, even on a budget. The key is to focus on authenticity, relevance, and clear expectations. Start by partnering with influencers who genuinely resonate with your brand values and target audience. Nano and micro-influencers are hidden gems for small businesses—because they may have smaller follower counts, but they’re highly engaged and more accessible. Also, keep it real—authenticity trumps flashy content. Collaborate on a campaign that feels natural, and let the influencer’s personality shine through.

And don’t forget the basics: be clear about deliverables, define your campaign goals, and track the metrics that matter to you. Above all, remember that influencer partnerships are just that—partnerships! A little flexibility and collaboration go a long way toward making a lasting impression and maximizing your ROI.

Kenny Layton, Co-Founder, Jan One

Small businesses should focus on authenticity and long-term relationships. Start by identifying creators whose values and audience align with your brand, ensuring that any collaboration feels genuine. You likely might not see direct returns during the first campaign; so think beyond one-off activations and build longer partnerships to foster trust and deeper connections with their audience, creating sustained value over time.

Al Nafea, VP of Growth, LoudCrowd

Small businesses should first prioritize partnering with local influencers. A local influencer often has a smaller but highly loyal and engaged audience in a specific area. Think of them as the cool kid in a friend group. They have a ton of influence over the group’s buying behaviors… anything from clothing to buy and restaurants to try.

Marty Michael, CEO, Gumball

Ensuring the influencers actually receive, try, and like the product: It is important for the ad to feel/sound authentic. Also, if an influencer has information about their audience, say through a survey (if a podcaster) or through platform analytics, it can help with more granular audience targeting.

Product market fit: The product being promoted has to have some success before it can be tested by influence marketing (i.e. the channel isn’t a magic revenue generator).

Do your research: Help level set expectations by understanding the influencers you’re partnering with. What does their typical creative look like? What kind of ads have they done in the past? How does their audience engage with them? If you like the answers to those questions and trust the creator is a good fit for your business, then actually put your trust in them to make creative that is true to them and works for you.

Faique Moqeet, CEO, Hamster Garage

Test and Learn. While influencer marketing is often seen as a channel for enterprise brands and well-funded start-ups, small businesses like restaurants and local vendors can also explore working with local creators. It’s as simple as building a hit list, reaching out, having creators try or experience a product or service, and having them talk about it through their social channels. Starting with a list of 10 to 20 and seeing what works is the best way to get started. Once a brand gets a sense of what’s working and which creators customers are mentioning, they can build a strategy using real data.