Influencer Marketing for Small Business Owners

Influencer marketing involves working with influencers to promote your brand. It’s an increasingly popular strategy that businesses of all sizes are using to build brand awareness and increase sales. For small businesses without huge ad spend, this is becoming a particularly effective way to build authentic relationships with their target audience.

Influencer marketing spend is growing; a 2026 Aspire study found that brands allocated an average of 23% of their marketing budget to the strategy in 2025, and 74% plan to allocate more in 2026. 

Here’s what you need to know to build your own influencer marketing program, from goal-setting to influencer outreach to tracking performance. 

What is influencer marketing for small businesses?

Influencer marketing is a marketing strategy in which brands partner with content creators to promote products, services, or events. Businesses of all sizes are investing in this field: an EMARKETER forecast predicts that US brands will spend approximately $13.7 billion in influencer marketing in 2027, up from $12.1 billion in 2026. 

That said, for a small business owner, influencer marketing likely looks a bit different from the splashy celebrity partnerships often associated with larger brands. Typically, this means working with nano-influencers or micro-influencers, who have less than 100,000 followers, and whose authentic content and relationships with their communities can help you promote your brand to niche audiences. Expectedly, an IAB 2025 report found that large brands are more likely to work with macro creators (62% versus 49% for small brands), and small brands are more likely to use nano-creators (54% versus 38% for large brands).

How to build an influencer marketing program for your business

• Build your influencer marketing program in-house
• Post your own content
• Define your goals
• Choose the right type of influencer
• Reach out directly with a clear request
• Work out the details
• Track conversions

Here’s a step-by-step process for getting your own influencer marketing program off the ground:

Build your influencer marketing program in-house

To keep costs down, consider building out your influencer marketing programs in-house, rather than outsourcing the work to a PR agency. Julianne Fraser, president and CEO of consulting agency Dialogue, tells Shopify that she actually encourages early-stage brands not to work with her company. “I believe at the very beginning, so much can be done authentically in-house,” she says. “I don’t think you need fancy software. You do not need an expensive agency.”

Post your own content

Before reaching out to influencers, post some of your own content across social media platforms. This gives potential partners a chance to get to know your brand, product, and point of view. 

On an episode of the Shopify Masters podcast, Leah Marcus, cofounder of Good Girl Snacks, says that posting frequently helped strengthen the brand’s outreach efforts. “A lot of it is really through having posted every single day on TikTok and Reels,” Leah says. “We show up pretty much daily on a lot of For You pages or Explore pages. So a lot of the creators we reach out to through DMs or email have probably seen us before. They’d be like, ‘Oh my God, I love your product. I’ve seen X have it,’ or ‘I’ve seen it in this store, and I’d love to try it.’ And they’re really excited about it.”

Define your goals

A 2025 Sprout Social study found that 66% of marketers use influencer marketing with the goal of increasing brand awareness, 59% do it to boost engagement, and 55% use it to boost trust and therefore sales. Define what your goals are and communicate these with the creators you partner with so they can tailor their messaging accordingly. Specifying this also tells you what metrics you need to track to measure the success of your campaigns. 

Different goals lend themselves to different kinds of campaigns: 

Brand awareness

Gifting free products, also known as seeding, generates buzz around your company and can build brand awareness. Leah of Good Girl Snacks says, “We had Alix Earle, Hallie Batchelder, Kit Keenan, and a bunch of other creators post about us, which has created a lot of buzz around us and allowed for a lot of sales while still maintaining a zero-dollar [customer acquisition cost] CAC because we just gift, we don’t pay anybody.” 

If you don’t have a product that’s well-suited to gifting several units, either due to size or cost, Becca Millstein, cofounder and CEO of Fishwife, suggests making scalable versions solely for seeding: “I had a friend who had a tequila company and [had to be more conscious about] sending full bottles of tequila all over the place. So they invested in making sample sizes of their tequila bottle,” she says on an episode of Shopify Masters. “I would definitely encourage folks to think about [creating] a smaller version of your product.”

Conversions

Campaigns focused on conversions can promote exclusive sales events, with influencers sharing discount codes with their followers. This also lets you track how many people converted into customers as a result of your influencer campaign.

Follower growth

Creating a sustained brand ambassador program allows your partner influencers to answer questions, engage with customers, and consistently share your product with their audience, helping you grow your follower count over time.

Choose the right type of influencer 

To choose the right creators, focus on whose audience, style, and values align with your brand.

For small businesses, working with nano-influencers or those with relatively modest follower counts can be a winning formula. The Aspire study found that small creators drive the highest engagement rates: nano-influencers had an engagement rate of 6.29% versus 3.71% for macro-influencers and 1.8% for mega influencers. The study also reported that 54% of marketers work primarily with nano- and micro-influencers, though an increasing number are investing in mid-tier creators. 

If you’re operating a brick-and-mortar business, consider working with local influencers who can help drive foot traffic. Search local hashtags on social media or survey your existing customers about which influencers they follow and trust. 

Platforms like Shopify Collabs and Superfiliate offer tools to help you research and recruit influencer partners, giving you insights into their audience demographics and conversion performance. You can also glean information by observing average post engagement, content style, and audience sentiment in the comments. 

Reach out directly with a clear request

Keep your influencer outreach message brief and personal. “Influencers are getting so many emails and so many pitches on a daily basis,” says Dialogue’s Julianne. “Take your time to research them. Why do you want to align with them? Send a note personalized to them.” Outline the nature of the partnership you’re proposing, and offer a clear next step. Ask for an address to send product samples to or a time to chat further. 

Personalization matters—but so does who’s reaching out. Fishwife’s Becca Millstein says there’s value in reaching out to the press and influencers yourself when you’re just starting out. “Your business is probably tiny or nonexistent to begin with, but just the fact that you are the person building it puts you in a much better position to get journalists interested,” she says. “I did [all of our influencer outreach] solo for the first year to two years. And it was because we didn’t have resources to have more of a team, but it was also because I knew that if you build the relationship from the core of the business, from the founder, they’re going to feel a more genuine connection.”

Work out the details

Once a creator has agreed to work with your brand, create and send an influencer campaign brief. This written agreement contains important information that lays the foundation for your partnership, including:

• The goals of the campaign
• Target audience
• influencer deliverables
• Key talking points
• Brand assets and guidelines
• Information about the content approval process
• Payment details

Track conversions 

If your goal is to drive sales and you’ve chosen a discount code model, review the performance of the unique UTM link shared with the influencer. If you plan on working with multiple influencers at once, a management platform like Shopify Collabs, Superfiliate, or GRIN can make tracking easier. However, if you’re starting small, you can monitor performance yourself using Google Analytics. 

In addition to measuring the hard data, set aside time to read through the comments on the influencers’ branded posts, or review hashtagged posts associated with the campaign, to get a sense of the campaign’s reception. Note recurring objections, product questions, or sentiment patterns that could inform brief writing or influencer selection in the next campaign. 

Good Girl Snacks’ Leah admits that tracking influencer marketing return on investment (ROI) can be challenging with a seeding model. However, she says, “Because we sell on Shopify, we can see how many customers are recurring or who are the most loyal customers. We also look at views and follower growth a lot, but we have to make a lot of inferences, like, Oh, if this influencer posted on this day and we have an X percent increase that day in sales, it’s probably because of them.”