I’ve been a Rihanna fan since her “Pon de Replay” days (yep, from the very beginning). I even got the iconic bob cut from her “Umbrella” era. So you can bet that I was excited about the launch of Fenty Beauty. And the inclusive foundation shades told me everything I needed to know about the brand – it was going to be a revolutionary in the beauty industry.
But the brand’s inclusive product lineup wasn’t the only thing that led to its success. A strategic influencer marketing plan was what solidified Fenty Beauty’s standing in the market.
In this guide, I break down some of the biggest lessons from Fenty Beauty’s influencer marketing strategy. I also walk you through the steps to build an influencer marketing business plan that delivers results.
Let’s start with a detailed breakdown of some of the key elements of the Fenty Beauty influencer strategy. This will give you a better understanding of what worked and why it worked, so you can use it as inspiration for your own influencer marketing plan.
From the start, Fenty Beauty was big on inclusivity. It launched with 40 shades of the ProFiltr foundation, addressing a huge gap in the beauty industry, which had long failed to meet the needs of women of color.
So even their influencer marketing plan was inclusive. The brand banked on a diverse lineup of influencers to reach an equally diverse audience base. With products designed for people from different communities and ethnicities, the brand needed to maximize their reach to instantly engage a wide variety of consumers. So they came up with a marketing plan that involved influencers from different nationalities and having distinct skin tones.
Influencers like Jackie Aina played a central role in the brand’s success, sharing detailed reviews of the Fenty Beauty product lineup soon after the launch. This was particularly impactful since the influencer had previously been vocal about the lack of shade inclusivity in the beauty industry.
When Fenty Beauty initially launched in 2017, the market was already dominated by other beauty brands with loyal customer bases. This meant that the brand needed to drive anticipation immediately after launch, which would encourage adoption and help them earn market share.
Product seeding during the early stages of launch became vital to achieve this. Fenty Beauty started selling their first products on September 8, 2017. Within a few days of launch, many leading influencers were already sharing first impressions and detailed reviews of the brand’s products.
The brand invited several key beauty influencers to the launch event and gifted them free products to try. This encouraged the influencers to create content sharing their first impressions and honest reviews of Fenty Beauty.
With most of the content raving about the brand’s products, it helped to build anticipation and encouraged people to give them a try.
One thing that’s been central to the Fenty Beauty influencer strategy is long-term partnerships. Instead of running one-off campaigns to build short-term hype, the brand has been focusing on sustaining its relationships with leading influencers for the long term.
They nurture their existing relationships with influencers who already love the brand, turning them into loyal brand ambassadors. Their approach includes giving them exclusive perks like inviting them to launch events and gifting them free products to try. This has helped them to build sustainable, long-term growth, further strengthening their position in the market.
For instance, YouTuber Nyma Tang was one of the first influencers to share her honest review of Fenty Beauty products back in 2017.
The brand continues to foster this relationship by including her in influencer events and gifting her free products. In exchange, the influencer continues to share honest and detailed reviews whenever Fenty Beauty comes out with a new product.
Part of the brand’s success can be attributed to a structured marketing plan consisting of clear goals and timelines. The brand took a step-by-step approach to gradually strengthen its market standing, which some of the main tactics including:
Almost a decade since the brand’s initial launch,launch and it has become a globally renowned makeup brand, popular among Millennials and Gen-Zs alike. Its inclusive product lines add to the mass market appeal as it caters to a wide variety of customers with diverse skin tones and needs.
But the results were already impressive almost immediately after its launch. Within just the first month, it had generated $72 million in earned media value. During the same month, Fenty tutorials had seen over 132 million views, which speaks volumes about the brand’s marketing success and influencer impact.
This Fenty Beauty case study should give you a pretty good idea of how to create your own influencer marketing business plan. Before you get started, I suggest taking an organized approach by laying out your plan in a written document. You can even create an influencer marketing business plan template to reuse for different campaigns.
Here’s what you should cover in the template.
What are the main goals for this specific campaign? Are you looking to raise awareness, drive conversions, or boost loyalty?
Make sure to broadly highlight the objectives of your plan. Then break it down into more specific goals that are measurable and time bound. For instance, if brand awareness is your main objective, you may want to list your goals as:
You’ll also want to include details about what’s expected of influencers. This will largely depend on factors like the goal you’re looking to achieve. Specify details like:
Lay out the timeline of your influencer marketing campaigns so you can time your efforts accordingly. For starters, have a clear idea of how long you plan on running the campaign. You should also establish timelines for different phases of the campaign, such as:
Make sure to plan out your publishing strategy in a content calendar. This will make it easier to stay on track with your campaign schedule and publish the right content at the right time. For instance, you may want to time your influencer content for specific events and celebrations like Valentine’s Day, Women’s Day, Easter, Mother’s Day, Halloween, and so on.
Your influencer marketing business plan should also include budgeting details. Plan out how much you’re willing to spend for the campaign as a whole and how much you want to spend per influencer. If you’re running your campaign in multiple phases, this part of the template should also specify phase-wise budgeting.
You may even include details about payment terms. Are you paying influencers per post or based on commissions? Perhaps you may also be offering freebies and other exclusive perks as a part of your partnership agreement.
Finally, your plan should get very specific about how to vet influencers to streamline your influencer search process. What does your ideal influencer look like? Make sure to list out your influencer vetting criteria, covering some of the most essential details like:
Executing your influencer marketing plan involves a lot of moving parts. So it’s easy to miss a few things. This can be risky, creating problems further down the line. For instance, maybe you forgot to give your brief a final review, resulting in misaligned influencer content.
So to make it easier for you, let me share a campaign readiness checklist that you can use alongside your influencer marketing checklist. Ask yourself the following questions to make sure you’re ready to launch your campaign.
To get an even better understanding of how to put together your influencer marketing business plan, I’m going to share a sample plan for a fictional beauty brand. The campaign will focus on promoting the brand’s new spring skincare line. For the purpose of this example, let’s name the brand JUST Beauty.
This is just a sample plan that I put together to show you how you can create your own influencer marketing business plan. As you can see, I’ve made it slightly generic so it’s easy to customize for different industries. You can use the same layout and tailor the fields in the right-hand panel to fit the unique needs of your industry and business. Here are a few ideas:
Food and beverage industries will want to focus on recipe integrations, allowing influencers to create unique dishes based on your product.