If your influencer marketing tactics are limited to gifting products to creators and crossing your fingers that they post about you, it’s time for a refresh. There was a time when just getting tagged in a few unboxing videos might spike sales, but many audiences are losing trust in influencers, and it’s pushing marketers and founders to think creatively about how to work with creators.
As a small business founder, it’s likely you’ve been watching this space and thinking about what’s setting apart the brands that are using influencer marketing to build sales, brand love and community, and the influencer campaigns that don’t cut through.
Surprisingly, the most impactful brands are not necessarily running mass gifting campaigns and operating with huge budgets. A shift in influencer culture, algorithms and platforms has created more opportunity for brands with modest budgets to work with creators and still see success. This is great news for those of us who want scrappy influencer marketing campaigns that feel targeted and profitable, but who simply can’t give out thousands of products every month.
Today, creator marketing is evolving into something more relational, more strategic and—when done right—more powerful than ever. So if you’re looking for influencer marketing tactics that actually drive sales rather than just likes, it’s time to move beyond the basics. If this sounds like you, here are three influencer marketing tactics you’ve probably never used but absolutely should.
1. Target celebrities and top-tier influencers through their trusted experts
Sometimes it pays off to slide into a mass influencer’s DMs or reach out to their agent, but often you’ll be met with silence or a sponsorship proposal that’s way out of budget. Here’s the better move: bypass the talent entirely and direct message their makeup artist, hair stylist, fashion stylist or chef, depending on which expert gatekeeper makes the most sense for your product category.
Most celebrities will tag the team they work with, and it just takes a bit of scrolling and sleuthing on TikTok and Instagram to figure out who they’re working with. Then, send a friendly DM to the expert, and offer your product to them. At this stage, you’re building a relationship and it’s not helpful to be pushy, salesly or mention their celebrity clientele.
They know you’re hoping they’ll recommend your brand to their client.
Lisa Sahakian, the founder of jewelry brand Ian Charms, used this strategy to get her product in the hands (and social feeds) of Justin Bieber, Dua Lipa, Julia Fox, Emma Chamberlain and more top-tier celebrities and influencers that align perfectly with her brand.
When a stylist didn’t respond to her DM, she would set up alerts to get notified when they posted, and comment on their content. Eventually, if a stylist didn’t respond, she’d then try the assistant stylist and other gatekeepers in the celebrity’s circle. It’s been a hugely successful approach for Lisa that cost nothing more than the price to make and ship her products.
One reason Lisa’s approach resulted in sales, not just hype, is because she thought carefully about the celebrities and influencers she targeted. She didn’t look for reach or following only, but cultural relevance and brand alignment, and targeted people she knew truly embodied her brand and would communicate what it stood for to potential customers simply by wearing it.
This approach is a great example of how to gift influencers on a budget while still being strategic. Rather than going after high-cost collaborations, she focused on seeding products to stylists and creators who had authentic influence over her dream customers as well as consumers who look to experts over celebrities, making it one of the smartest influencer seeding strategy examples out there.
2. Manufacture FOMO by seeding the inner circle
In 2014, Triangl Swimwear cofounder Erin Deering wanted to get her new swimwear brand to Kendall Jenner. She felt like Kendall was a perfectly aligned ‘Triangl girl’ but couldn’t figure out how to get her attention.
So instead of sending dozens of cold emails to Kendall’s agent and team and waiting around for an answer that would likely never come, Erin gifted Kendall’s close friends who, at the time, were much less famous and easier to reach. She figured that Kendall would notice her friends wearing this distinctive new style of neoprene bikini and want one herself.
Triangl gifted the group Kendall seemed to be spending most of her time with back then, which included Bella Hadid and Hailey Baldwin (now Bieber), but did not gift Kendall.
Incredibly, it worked. A week later, Triangl’s founder woke up to an email from Kendall herself asking for bikinis. Then she tweeted about the brand to her millions of followers when the product arrived. That tweet, paired with all her friends also sharing Triangl, was the moment the brand broke into the US market.
Smaller brands are often encouraged to gift and target newer, smaller creators and to ‘be realistic’ about outcomes from influencer marketing without a budget. This story shows that it’s not budget but creative thinking that makes a successful influencer campaign. This story is also a call to think differently about the concept of influence. We tend to think of influencer marketing as a way to get mass reach, but it should also be about influencing individual gatekeepers and decision makers, by getting your brand in front of the select few people that they themselves trust or seek inspiration from.
If you want to connect with a hard-to-reach editor, investor or creator, find their crew. Gift the group, leave them out, then sit tight and let someone your target trusts make the recommendation for you. If you can’t get the biggest fish, gift the people swimming in their circle.
And as a small business, don’t be afraid to think big but creatively about who could be seen supporting your business. This kind of low-budget influencer marketing relies more on social mapping than spend. It also shows that indirect influence via someone’s friends or team can feel more authentic and effective than direct promotion.
3. Saturate one peer group to look ubiquitous
Modern algorithms on platforms like TikTok silo many of us into niches depending on our consumption preferences. It means that a song, creator, trend or piece of news could dominate the feeds of a specific niche and become ‘famous’, but a person who lives in the same zip code but consumes different content wouldn’t know any of the same music, brands or people even existed.
If you know your target customer well enough, you can use this to your advantage to create the illusion of scale by dominating one niche. Instead of targeting influencers based on reach or category (for example, skincare influencers), this might involve dominating a specific neighborhood or location or a group of creators who often attend the same events, cover the same brands and align within a small niche.
People trust what feels popular, and in 2025 you don’t need a top celebrity endorsement or huge press feature to look popular amongst a targeted subset of people. Instead, a strong presence in one niche area can trick the algorithm into thinking you’re a cultural moment.
Pick a physical space or digital microcosm, like one spin studio, one college club or one friendship group of creators. Gift 10 people inside that group. Use notes, codes and personalisation to make it feel exclusive. To a specific corner of the internet, your brand suddenly looks like it’s everywhere.
None of these strategies require a giant budget, but they do require creativity, guts and a willingness to try something different.
What makes an influencer marketing strategy work in 2025?
What’s changing in influencer marketing today goes beyond trends. The focus is increasingly on trust. Many consumers have become more skeptical of overly polished ads, so authenticity, specificity and personal recommendation now carry more weight than ever. That’s why brands are doubling down on creator marketing that prioritises relationships over reach.
Micro- and nano-influencers often outperform macro-creators in terms of engagement, especially when they have a tight-knit audience. And thanks to tools like influencer seeding and social listening, small businesses can build campaigns that feel organic and connected without overextending themselves.
A strong influencer marketing strategy in 2025 doesn’t need a massive budget, but it does need clarity. Know your audience and who influences them, then use social maps, gifting campaigns and creative tactics like seeding inner circles or reaching celebrity stylists to build visibility. Whether you’re figuring out how to gift influencers without a budget or looking to break into niche circles, the key is to trade scale for specifics.
