How to Use Influencer Content in All Your Marketing

When you get a new couch, you don't just sit on it to watch TV. You lie down for afternoon naps, use it as an extra bed for guests, prop up your laptop for work, and maybe even turn it into a fort for the kids. You naturally find ways to get the most value from your purchase.

The same mindset should apply to your influencer marketing.

When you partner with creators, don't just think about Instagram posts or TikTok videos. Use influencers' content beyond social media. Their content can make your emails more interesting and your ads more effective. You can even use their videos as social proof on your website.

In this guide, we'll show you practical ways to maximize the value of every influencer collaboration by integrating it across your entire marketing strategy.

1— Social Proof On Your Website

When shoppers visit your website, they want to know if they can trust what you're selling. That's why you need social proof — testimonials from people saying why they like your products.

The problem is that gathering good reviews from regular customers can take a long time. And when customers do leave reviews, they might be short like "Great product!" or “I got the product delivered on time.” Such reviews don't tell potential buyers anything specific about why they should choose your product.

How Can Influencers Help Show Social Proof?

Influencers can help you create effective social proof, quickly, because:

• Instead of waiting for perfect customer reviews to come in naturally, you can work with influencers to create social proof that looks good and says exactly what you want.
• With influencer testimonials, you can control the narrative as you're in touch with your influencers.

For example, Kettle and Fire worked with Dan White (the UFC champion) to record a testimonial about how their broth is useful when someone is fasting, and it's clean.

And then the brand used the transcript from this post on their website under bone broth products:

3 Tips When Using Influencer Content As Social Proof

1. Guide Different Influencers To Talk About Specific Things

For example, if you're selling a protein powder you can ask one influencer to focus on taste and they might say: "Finally a protein powder that doesn't feel like chalk." Another could highlight convenience: "Fits perfectly in my gym bag and mixes instantly." A third might share results: "Helped me hit my protein goals without bloating."

This creates a complete story about your product that covers all the important benefits. Influencers are also good at creating attractive photos and videos and explaining things clearly in ways that convince people to buy.

Don't think of it as making up fake opinions about your product. Instead, you're giving them direction about which specific features or benefits to focus on in their honest review.

Here's an example from Squatch Nation of Dr Squatch showing videos from creators on their website to build social proof:

2. Don't Dump All Testimonials On One Page. Put Them Where They Matter Most

If you're selling protein powder, put the CrossFit athlete's performance review on your "Premium Formula" page, the nutritionist's breakdown on your "Ingredients" page, and the busy mom's convenience testimonial on your "Subscribe & Save" page. Each piece of social proof can show how it's solving specific customer concerns.

3. Leverage Expert Testimonials

If your influencers are well-known experts like Tim Ferriss or recognized professionals, create a dedicated "Expert Endorsements" section to highlight their credibility and specialized knowledge. Here's an example from Athletic Greens 👇

This strategy works only if you have the right influencers who will appeal to your target audience.

Finding these perfectly aligned influencers manually can be incredibly time-consuming, which is why many brands use platforms like SARAL to streamline the process. SARAL's discovery tools help you identify influencers whose audience demographics match your target customers.

Our Chrome extension even lets you quickly evaluate engagement quality and other influencer metrics before reaching out, so you don't waste time on influencers whose followers won't connect with your brand.

Want to see how you could find the perfect influencers for your website testimonials? Book a quick demo with SARAL.

2— Reusing Influencer Content As Creatives For Your Ads

Beyond having influencers post about your products on their own channels, you can leverage their content in your advertising.

There are two main approaches here:

1— Using influencer-created content in your brand's ads

Here's an example Native, a beauty brand. You can see multiple ads with different creatives from different influencers:

2— Running ads directly through influencer accounts (this is called whitelisting)

What is Influencer Whitelisting?

Whitelisting is when an influencer gives your brand permission to run paid ads directly through their social media account. This means your brand can create and control ads that appear to come from the influencer, leveraging their audience and credibility.

For example, here are some ads that are prompting Athletic Greens but they're not from the brand's account:

Why Use Influencer Content for Ads?

1. Lower Production Costs

Creating professional ad content with traditional methods gets expensive fast. When you repurpose content that influencers have already created for their own channels, you save a lot of money. No need to hire models, photographers, or video production teams - you're using content that already exists.

Even when you commission new content from influencers specifically for ads, it's typically much cheaper than working with a production agency. Influencers are often one-person operations who can create, model, film, and edit — handling jobs that would require multiple specialists at a production house. This keeps costs down while still delivering content that resonates with audiences.

2. More Authentic Feel

People are tired of polished, corporate-looking ads. Influencer content typically has a more genuine, relatable quality that performs better with today's consumers. These ads don't look like ads. They look like content from someone the viewer already trusts, hence influencer UGC is more authentic.

For example, here's an ad whitelisted on an influencer's page. This feels like entertainment first and advertising second, which is why it likely performs better than traditional ads—viewers connect with the relatable humor before noticing it's promoting a booking service.

3. Greater Variety of Content

Working with multiple influencers gives you a diverse library of content featuring different people, settings, and approaches. This lets you test different styles to see what resonates best with your audience without creating everything from scratch.

Important things to remember

Before you start pulling from your influencer content bank for ads, make sure you handle these two important things properly:

1. Get Usage and Modifications Right Upfront.

Always discuss and document exactly how you'll use an influencer's content before they create it.

Specify if you'll run it as ads, for how long, on which platforms, and whether you'll need to edit or modify it. Mention if you'll add text overlays, crop for different formats, or change any elements.

Getting these permissions in writing prevents awkward situations later where influencers might object to how their content is being used, potentially forcing you to pull campaigns that are already running.

You can use SARAL to upload your own influencer contract templates and use an intuitive drag-and-drop editor to auto-populate fields with relevant data.

Influencers can sign these contracts, ensuring a smooth and professional experience.

This is just one of the useful features of SARAL, an all-in-one influencer marketing platform. Book a demo to see how we can help you run influencer marketing efficiently.

2. Guide Creators To Build Creatives Around Your Key Messaging.

Don't just ask influencers to "make something cool" about your product. Provide clear direction on the specific selling points you want to highlight and the campaign goals you're trying to achieve. Brief them on your target audience, the pain points you solve, and any specific calls to action you need included.

Aditya Mahapatra from Augmentum Media shares his approach to briefing influencers when planning to use their content across multiple channels:

"When briefing creators for multiple channels as opposed to just socials - for example, if we are looking to repurpose content as paid ads - there are a few slight changes. From our work in that space, we understand what kind of content converts: face to camera, showing before & after effects, and outlining clearly the product benefits - ideally with a visual representation. Statics and super short form work best. We always push for the influencer to be as authentic as possible, but when the content is being repurposed we ask the creator to keep the content fairly broad, as it will be getting amplified to a wider audience who don't know that particular influencer as well."

This strategic guidance ensures their creative content serves your marketing objectives while still maintaining their authentic voice. The best influencer content balances the creator's natural style with your brand's core message.

3— In Offline Marketing — Billboards, End-Caps, and Storefronts

Just like you can use influencer content on your website and in your ads, you can also feature influencers in your offline marketing—on billboards, in-store displays, and retail end-caps.

There are 3 reasons to extend your influencer partnerships into the physical world:

1 . Lower Costs Than Traditional Modeling

Hiring professional models for commercial photography is expensive. You need to pay modeling fees, photographer costs, location rentals, and more. When you already have great content and relationships with influencers, you can often negotiate with the influencer the rights to use their likeness in physical advertising for much less than a traditional modeling campaign would cost.

2. Creates Stronger Brand Relationships

When you put an influencer on a billboard or store display, you're signaling that they're more than just a paid post—they're part of your brand family. This level of recognition makes influencers feel valued and invested in their long-term success.

For example, here's a post from Elliegoldenlife account that features two golden retriever dogs. Their post was used in front of the Target store to showcase pet products.

You can see how meaningful this moment was for the creator. The influencer mentions feeling "so grateful for this opportunity to partner with @target," showing how offline exposure strengthened their connection to the brand.

3. Recognition Factor Creates Stronger Consumer Connections

When someone walks through a store and sees a familiar face from their Instagram feed on a product display, it creates an immediate "Hey, I know them!" reaction. This recognition is powerful—it's like spotting someone you know in a crowd of strangers.

The Topicals brand display uses influencer photos and quotes right on their store shelves. When shoppers recognize these faces from social media, the products instantly feel more familiar and trustworthy.

4. Generates Bonus Social Content

Here's a clever bonus: When influencers see themselves featured in offline marketing, they almost always share it with their followers. It's a proud moment that most creators want to document.

Look at the Gymshark example. The influencer is standing in front of her own Times Square billboard, creating entirely new content about the excitement of seeing herself featured.

Notice the engagement—over 414,000 likes and enthusiastic comments from other influencers. This post likely generated more engagement than the original sponsored content, giving Gymshark a second wave of digital reach from its offline advertising investment.

The post about the golden retrievers' posters got nearly 219,000 likes—that's a lot of extra exposure from what started as an offline marketing initiative.

What To Keep In Mind?

When planning your offline influencer features, keep these in mind:

• Pick influencers with recognizable faces or styles that your target audience will know
• Negotiate usage rights for physical advertising upfront, including duration and locations
• Make it easy for influencers to share their offline features. Inform them about the location and timings.

By thoughtfully extending your influencer partnerships into the physical world, you create a seamless experience for consumers who encounter your brand both online and offline.

4— Influencer Content For Social Media

This is the most obvious way to use influencer marketing, and it doesn't have to cost a lot of money.

You can simply re-share the content influencers created featuring your products. This gives you authentic content for your feed without having to create everything in-house.

Why Is This Approach Effective?

This approach works well because:

1. It saves you time and resources on content creation
2. It feels more authentic since it comes from a real user
3. It shows potential customers how your product solves real problems
4. It helps build stronger relationships with your influencers when you highlight their content

Sometimes, all it takes is asking the creator if you can re-share their post:

If you've not bought the rights to the content, make sure you always properly credit the creator.

Look at how Loop Earplugs does this perfectly.

Loop Earplugs shared @sydneyveloz's content on their own account while clearly tagging her. This recognition creates a win-win relationship—the brand gets authentic content while the influencer gains exposure to the brand's audience.

Here's the original post from the creator:

When evaluating which influencer content to repurpose across your marketing channels, it's important to know what qualities make certain pieces more versatile than others.

Aditya shares what his team specifically looks for:

"Few main things we look for:

A clear audio where we can hear the creators tone^. A clean shot of the product, clearly showing things like ingredients or product benefitsEngaging, visually dynamic content with frequently changing frames that can effectively capture and retain audience attention.

Note that this greatly depends on the aim of the campaign. Certain types of content are great for awareness, but not for driving conversions, so it's important to be wary of the differences: conversion driven content is clearly focussed on benefits and showing a tangible before and after."*

5— Using Influencer Content in Emails

Email marketing is a great way to stay in touch with your customers, but company-written emails can sometimes feel too salesy. Adding real stories and photos from influencers can make your emails more interesting and trustworthy.

You can use influencer content you already have in your emails to make them more effective.

For example, look at the content and image that are featured in an email from Fetching Fields, a dog treat company. Instead of just saying "Our treats are healthy," they've included personal quotes from a dog owner about her experience with her dog Henry.

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These authentic testimonials make the email feel more like a recommendation from a friend rather than an advertisement. Notice how the quotes tell a story about Henry and his owner's relationship and their everyday activities, making an emotional connection before mentioning the product's benefits.

Simple ways to use influencer content in your emails:

1. Add real photos of people using your products instead of professional product photos
2. Include direct quotes that tell a story about how they use your products in their daily lives
3. Feature different influencers in different emails to appeal to various customer types
4. Add these testimonials to automated emails like welcome messages or reminder emails

When putting influencer content in your emails, make sure you've asked permission first. Your agreement with influencers should clearly state that you may use their content in emails.

Final Thought

Managing influencer content across multiple marketing channels might seem overwhelming, but it doesn't have to be.

SARAL's all-in-one platform brings your entire influencer marketing workflow together—from discovering creators to tracking ROI on influencer spend. With built-in educational resources and responsive support, you can quickly master integrated influencer marketing strategies.

Book a demo today and join the brands achieving an average 5.12x return on their influencer investments.

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