What Is Influencer Marketing? Steps to Run an Influencer Campaign

Do you still think celebrity advertising is just an expensive game for big players? In fact, Influencer Marketing is becoming the "ace" for startups and corporations alike: a single authentic review video from a micro-influencer can be enough to bring in thousands of orders. This article by MONA Media will help you understand what Influencer Marketing is, why it dominates communications budgets in 2025, and most importantly how to run a proper Influencer Marketing campaign with measurable ROI instead of "throwing money out the window".

What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer Marketing, or marketing through "people of influence", is when a brand works with individuals who have built credibility and a loyal audience to present its products, services or values. These individuals are called Influencers. Instead of hearing a business talk about itself, consumers are persuaded by the voice of someone they already trust: a beauty blogger suggesting a lipstick, a streamer unboxing a phone, a doctor sharing healthy-living tips.

In Vietnam, the "Đi cà phê chất lừ" campaign ("a cool coffee outing") by Highlands Coffee with a line-up of Gen Z TikTokers is a familiar example: within one week the hashtag #highlandsgenz passed 70 million views, and sales of the new drink set rose by double digits.

Today, the formats of Influencer Marketing campaigns are more varied than ever. Besides TV, these campaigns Marketing online also appear widely on social networks such as Facebook, TikTok and YouTube, or are promoted directly on a company's website.

Types of influencers today

There are many ways to group influencers, but the simplest is by number of followers on social media: the bigger the number, the wider the reach, though the engagement rate (ER) also rises:

Raise brand awareness and reach

Most influencers on social media have thousands to millions of viewers every day. According to a survey, the 50 most-followed influencers on Instagram have 2.5 billion followers across their accounts.

On that basis, when a business works with an influencer, it can enter a niche market that suits its products and services. This is a good chance to raise brand awareness and widen the reach to target customers.

Marketing through influencers makes it possible to talk to customers in a feasible, unobtrusive way. It lets marketers reach Millennials and Gen Z effectively, groups known for being very open to information received through social media.

Build credibility and trust

Influencers are people whom others already recognize as experts in their fields. They have built trusting, respectful relationships with their fans, so people trust the opinions, advice and recommendations they give.

Khi Influencer product video, services or brand, followers will not see it as pure advertising. As a result, people are more open to using the business's brand.

Drive purchase decisions

Influencers drive customers' purchase decisions in several ways. It can be the respect and trust people have for the products and services they recommend, or the fact that the influencer has actually used them where followers can see.

According to the research and data analytics firm Digital Marketing Institute, 49% of respondents said they had made a purchase decision based on a recommendation from a well-known person. Among teenagers the figure is 70%. After seeing a product or service on Facebook, YouTube or Instagram, about 40% of those surveyed bought it.

Almost unlimited sharing potential across social platforms

Influencers interact with their followers every day and are skilled at using social media to spread a message. They have many ways multi-channel advertising to bring a product, service or brand to their fans. It could be a Facebook post, an inspiring Instagram story, or video marketing trial or product review formats on YouTube, or handing out promo codes.

When influencers are active on a platform, their fans also engage with them actively there and on the other platforms they use. A multi-channel audience means a message spreads quickly and has almost unlimited potential to be shared.

Suitable for every business

Influencers exist in every field: health, fitness, beauty, technology, science, business, marketing and more. Whatever your product or service, and whatever the size of your business, you can find influencers and an Influencer Marketing strategy that fit.

For example, if your small business operates in northern Vietnam, you can look for influencers in that region to keep costs down. A global business, on the other hand, may consider global celebrities such as Taylor Swift to promote its brand.

Challenges of Influencer Marketing

Influencer Marketing brings big benefits to a business's communications campaign, but the downside of "borrowing" a KOL's credibility can arrive very fast if the brand does not keep tight control:

• A PR crisis can erupt within hours: An unverified message, or an offensive remark from a KOL, is enough to wreck a campaign and force the brand to apologize publicly. In 2024, several US brands lost millions of dollars when influencers did not tag #ad as required, which set off a wave of criticism and refunds of pre-orders.
• The wrong person and the wrong audience mean wasted money: If a KOL's followers do not match your target customer profile, even creative content will not convert. A Tracksuit report found that 47% of the KOLs brands hired in 2024 were actually "off-audience", which doubled CPA compared with the budget.
• Fake followers and fake engagement: Shopify's 2025 statistics show that one in four influencers has bought fake followers, and 9.5% of Instagram accounts are bots. Without a True Reach check, brands can easily pay for "ghost" impressions.
• Stricter legal requirements: New guidance from the FTC (USA) and many advertising regulators in Asia requires all paid content to be clearly labeled (#ad, #sponsored). Violations can be fined up to 50,000 USD per post and banned from advertising for 5 years.
• The risk of deepfakes and virtual influencers: With the wave of AI-generated influencers such as "Mia Zelu", 82% of users doubt authenticity. If a brand is not transparent, trust may fall instead of rising.
• Measurement and analysis take strong skills: To know whether a campaign pays off, marketers have to add UTMs and read EMV, CPV and ROAS reports in GA4 or Brandwatch. Without staff who are good with numbers, decisions go by feel and budget is wasted.

These challenges are not barriers that cannot be overcome, but they are a reminder to choose KOLs carefully, sign clear contracts, use tools to screen for bots and follow advertising law before you "press the button" on a campaign.

How to run an Influencer Marketing campaign

A successful Influencer Marketing campaign always starts with a clear roadmap: set goals, find the right influencers, manage content and measure continuously. Research from Sprout Social and HubSpot shows that the more detailed a celebrity marketing campaign is at the preparation stage, the higher the ROI, especially in 2025, when the cost of booking KOLs is up 18% on two years ago. Below are the detailed steps for running an effective Influencer Marketing campaign:

Set campaign goals and KPIs

Setting goals is the first step in any form of communication with users. What is the business's overall goal? Raise sales within 7 days, build brand awareness, or increase service sign-ups? Usually the overall goal a campaign needs to reach is a combination of several smaller goals.

Once the goals are set, you need KPIs to measure how far you have got. KPIs must be clear numbers. The campaign's performance will be measured and adjusted against them.

Example: In the OPPO Reno7 "Unlimited Me, in Portrait" campaign in Vietnam, OPPO's marketing team wanted to make a splash for the new portrait camera, so it set a goal of 30,000 pre-orders and EMV of 3 times the budget. Detailed KPIs included orders, livestream views at the sales launch and the rate of hashtag challenge participation.

Identify your target customers

Before choosing an influencer, a business needs to define its target customer profile. Once that is built, it needs to check whether the profile fits the influencer's fans. Criteria can combine age, behavior, mindset, gender, income level, location and so on.

Example: Reno7 targeted Gen Z customers who love selfies, live on TikTok and Instagram and like vivid colors. From these insights OPPO chose Sơn Tùng M-TP, a style icon for young people, as its brand ambassador.

Plan the campaign rollout

The rollout plan should cover:

• Message: it must be consistent with the brand and used to promote it in every post.
• Activities: what is done and how, the timing of each activity, the cost, and the KPIs used to judge results.

Example: OPPO's marketing team made a clear plan and split the campaign into 8 weeks: 2 weeks of "teasing" with 7 colored posters, 1 week of 3D billboards, 1 week of a product launch livestream, and 4 weeks of UGC content to keep momentum.

Choose the type of Influencer Marketing campaign

Some types of campaign used in Influencer Marketing:

• Affiliate marketing – Affiliate Marketing or discount codes: the business provides a link or discount code for the influencer to create content around and post.
• Product reviews or gifts: the business gives the influencer free products to try or to give away.
• Sponsored content: the influencer is paid to create content and then posts it on their own social media platforms.

Example: OPPO's celebrity marketing campaign combined a livestream with the #UnlimitedMe hashtag challenge on TikTok, and gave affiliate links to tech KOLs so orders could be measured directly.

Define the campaign's main brand assets, creative guidelines and contract

After deciding which type of influencer campaign to run, the next step is to decide which brand assets to emphasize in the plan. They could be the logo, the slogan, a new product or a flagship product.

You also need to decide how to reach customers: with tutorial videos or with photos and captions. Depending on the brand, you can give creative guidelines or let the influencer develop the content freely.

Example: OPPO required KOLs to always mention the "Unlimited Me" message, highlight the bokeh effect on the camera, and show the "Rainbow Spectrum" color in at least 30% of the frame.

Choose the right influencers

By completing all seven steps below for finding influencers, a brand finds not only the right "face" but also builds a lasting working relationship, reducing risk and maximizing ROI for every Influencer Marketing campaign.

Step 1: "Hunt" for KOLs

First, list the channels (TikTok, Instagram, YouTube and so on) that match your customers' buying journey, then scan the trending hashtags, videos and the influencers your competitors work with. Manual searching should be combined with dedicated influencer evaluation tools such as CreatorIQ, Aspire and Upfluence. These platforms suggest KOL profiles, report engagement and track contracts automatically, saving many hours of manual filtering.

Step 2: Screen with the 4R framework

Sprout Social suggests four key criteria for evaluating a quality influencer: Reach (reach), Relevance (whether the content fits the brand), Resonance (real engagement) and Relationship (long-term commitment). If a food blogger has 40K followers but often posts fast food while you promote healthy eating, the Relevance score is close to zero and they should be dropped early.

Step 3: Check how "clean" the audience is

Statistics for 2025 show that 1 in 4 influencers has bought followers, and on Instagram alone 9.5% of accounts are bots. Use the "fake-follower audit" features of HypeAuditor or SparkToro to determine True Reach the number of real people who can see a post. Profiles with more than 15% suspicious followers should be reconsidered or negotiated down in price.

Step 4: Read engagement metrics in the context of the industry

A travel account with 100K followers but only 0.3% engagement (ER), below the 2025 Instagram average of 0.50 to 0.55%, shows the content has gone "cold". On the other hand, a nano-influencer with a 3 to 5% ER, even with small reach, is a gold mine when the goal is conversion rate.

You may also be interested in: What is conversion advertising? How to run Facebook conversion ads

Step 5: Calculate value with Earned Media Value (EMV)

After cutting most of the low-quality or poorly matched influencers from the list, compare the booking cost with EMV, the estimated media value if you had to pay for ads delivering the same number of impressions. If the expected EMV is lower than the booking price, negotiate or look for another KOL.

Step 6: Make sure legal requirements and brand safety are covered

The FTC's 2023 Endorsement Guides require clear #ad or #sponsored hashtags, and brands must monitor KOL content. Violations can be fined up to tens of thousands of USD per post. Also review the influencer's political views and any improper conduct to avoid negative spillover.

Step 7: Move on to negotiation and a long-term relationship

When the shortlist is down to 5 to 10 names, send brief them a brief stating the goals, message, KPIs and rights to reuse the content. The detailed contract must include: the posting schedule, requirements for hashtags and the #ad label, compensation clauses if the KOL breaches the terms, and periodic reports. The key is to respect creativity: let the influencer adapt their style while staying within the brand framework, because that is why their audience trusts them.

Example: In OPPO's Influencer Marketing campaign, besides Sơn Tùng M-TP, OPPO invited 150 more KOLs, from macro to nano reviewers, to cover multiple platforms and raise credibility.

Launch the campaign

Once you have found the right influencers, it is time to start the Influencer Marketing campaign. During launch, keep close contact with the influencer and settle the type of content they produce and when they post. This helps the business control the promotional content and limit as far as possible any communications crisis that may arise.

Example: OPPO launched its Influencer Marketing campaign with a 3D Sơn Tùng billboard on Pham Ngoc Thach street, which produced thousands of check-in clips. Right after, the singer livestreamed on TikTok, drew more than 1 M views and pre-orders surged.

Track and measure your campaign

Tracking and measuring an Influencer Marketing campaign lets a business see how it is going and how successful it is. The metric ROI will be one of the criteria for judging effectiveness. You also need to refer to the KPIs set earlier. These metrics help the business adjust so it stays in line with the overall plan.

Example: OPPO's real-time dashboard reported 33,000 pre-orders (10% over target) and EMV of 3.6 times the cost. It hit the desired ROI and confirmed the outstanding success of the Influencer Marketing campaign.

Mona Media has shared detailed content about Influencer Marketing what it is, how to choose influencers that fit your business, and how to run an effective Influencer Marketing campaign. We hope the information above adds useful knowledge about this form of communication. If you need a detailed roadmap or a KOL selection checklist, feel free to contact advertising film companies a leading, reputable agency, Mona Media, through HOTLINE 1900 636 648, and we are always ready to work with you to turn influencers' voices into real benefits for your business.