Spotlight on UK influencers: Industry trends and icons

Is your brand looking to expand across the U.K. or strengthen its presence in a particular region? Or perhaps you’re an international brand planning to enter the UK market? UK influencers may help get your offer in front of the right people.

These social media stars know the ins and outs, have the trust of their followers and have a proven track record of creating engaging content. Plus, with their established credibility and extensive networks, aligning with a UK influencer will give your brand the localized social proof it needs to thrive.

This guide will give you an overview of the UK influencer market, from the costs to the different influencer niches. Plus, we’ve put together a step-by-step plan for developing your UK influencer marketing strategy.

Influencer marketing in the UK

If you’re a brand looking to reach Gen Z and millennial consumers in the UK, influencers should be part of your marketing strategy. A 2022 survey found that influencers do influence purchasing decisions. On average, one in four UK-based adults admitted to being impacted by influencer recommendations, with the share exceeding 50% for Gen Z. A 2023 survey of UK consumers also found that 84% of Gen Z and 68% of Millennials followed influencers.

According to Sprout’s 2024 Influencer Marketing Report, which surveyed 2,000 respondents across the U.S. and UK, consumers most favor food and drink and beauty content from influencers. Preferences also vary by age. For example, Gen X consumers prefer movies, TV and sports content, while younger consumers prefer fitness, gaming and lifestyle.

The networks consumers use to engage with influencers also vary by age. Our report found that 50% of Baby Boomers are likely to engage on Facebook. In contrast, Gen X and Millennials are almost twice as likely as Boomers to engage on Instagram, with 27% engaging with influencers on the platform, compared to 15% overall.

How much do UK influencers charge?

According to the 2024 Influencer Marketing Report, almost half (47%) of influencers charge between $250 and $1,000 per post, depending on the platform and audience size.

That said, most influencers (71%) offer discounts when partnering with brands on multiple posts, while another 25% would consider it in the future. This indicates that influencers highly value long-term partnerships with brands.

How to find UK influencers for your brand

It’s possible to find the right influencers by manually searching or getting recommendations from your network. But the most efficient method would be to use an influencer marketing platform.

For example, Sprout’s influencer marketing tool, Tagger, Sprout Social’s influencer marketing platform, has an extensive influencer database with over 40 search filters to help you find your perfect match. Our Content Health capability lets you vet a potential partner based on their content, engagement and platform-specific metrics. Also, the Sync feature enables users to build a custom landing page to attract, qualify and capture prospective influencers for partnership.

When you find the influencer of your brand’s dreams, ensure they comply with local regulations. According to UK regulations and European consumer law, influencers must disclose when they've been paid to endorse or recommend a brand and identify when a post is an advertisement. They must also not mislead consumers with false or untruthful claims about the products or services they promote.

UK influencers by category

Almost every influencer has some focus for their content. Some might be more broad, like food or fashion, while others may specialize in niche areas, like vegan food in Scotland.

When looking for an influencer, remember that they don’t need to be in the same niche as your business. For example, if you’re a travel company promoting yoga retreats, you may opt to work with fitness influencers instead of travel creators. Don’t be afraid to think outside the box.

To kickstart your research, here’s a brief overview of the top influencer categories in the UK.

UK fitness influencers

From Olympic medalists and reality stars to everyday people, there’s a wide variety of UK fitness influencers. There’s also variety in the type of content they post. While many share the expected exercise tips and workout videos, others post more experiential content. Many use Instagram for shorter videos and YouTube for more in-depth content.

For example, Eddie Hall (@eddiehallwsm), a UK influencer with 2.93 million YouTube subscribers, posts sparring videos with other famous sportspeople and eating challenges alongside his workouts.

UK fashion influencers

UK fashion influencers are known for their creativity and diversity. Popular influencers come in all shapes, sizes and skin tones. For example, Efe Efeturi (@efe.efeturi) specializes in senior men’s style, whereas Koleen Diaz (@koleendz) is known for her blend of masculine street style with feminine aesthetics.

In terms of content, you’ll find plenty of #GRWM videos, try-on hauls and lifestyle vlogs. You’ll also find some unique series, like fashion blogger Claudia Berresford’s (@claudia_berresford) outfit formula and layer tutorials.

UK beauty influencers

Beauty is a broad category, but UK beauty influencers illustrate how there are many ways to put your spin on it. While some creators, like Atarah Mayhew (@atarah), specialize in makeup transformations and special effects, others, like Lydia Fowler (@lydiafowler), are known for their sophisticated, natural glam makeup.

The UK beauty influencer market is also very inclusive, with a wide range of mature creators and male influencers showcasing their makeup, skincare and hair care skills. You’ll also find many rising micro-influencers with more specific niches, like Lex Gillies (@talontedlex), who advocates rosacea awareness and skin positivity.

UK food influencers

Our Influencer Marketing Report shows that food content is the most popular with consumers, making partnerships with UK food influencers particularly lucrative. Like the other categories, there is a creator for every niche and subcategory.

For example, Melissa Hemsley (@melissa.hemsley) specializes in sustainable recipes that use leftovers and reduce waste. In comparison, Yasmine (@thechefmine) is a Muslim TikTok creator, most known for her Ramadan series, in which she shares a month of halal recipes.

How to create a UK influencer marketing strategy

There are a lot of choices out there, so you might be wondering about the next steps. To make the most of an influencer partnership, you need a plan.

Here are the steps to building an influencer marketing strategy from the ground up.

1. Set campaign goals

First, determine the goal of your influencer marketing campaign. Do you want to increase brand awareness, generate leads, or grow sales? Once you have an overarching goal, you must define influencer marketing metrics to track your progress.

For example, if you want to track brand awareness, you could measure audience growth, reach, impressions and brand mentions. If conversions are top of mind, you might track email list sign-ups, lead generation or purchases.

Lastly, your influencer marketing goals should align with your overall marketing strategy. Doing so will keep your message clear, make it easier for you to collaborate with other teams and help communicate your ROI.

2. Identify your target audience

Once you have solid goals, you need to define your target audience. To do so, consider your target customer’s demographics, interests and behaviors. From there, determine what platforms they use to guide your strategy.

For example, according to our Influencer Marketing Report, TikTok is your best bet if you want to reach a Gen Z audience, so you should consider working with UK TikTok influencers. For Gen X and Millennials, you should look into UK Instagram influencers. Apart from the platform, look for popular influencers among your demographic and align with your brand values.

3. Set a budget and management strategy

An influencer’s rate increases with their follower count and engagement, so keep that in mind when setting a budget. Tools like our influencer marketing budget templates will help you control costs by setting clear spending limits across your team and allocating resources to the most valuable partnerships.

Additionally, a lot goes into an influencer campaign, such as campaign project management, contracts, content approvals and performance tracking. To maximize influencer marketing ROI, factor all of these different responsibilities into the equation. If your business relies heavily on influencers to hit marketing goals, you might even consider hiring a dedicated influencer marketing manager.

Investing in an influencer marketing management tool like Sprout Social’s influencer marketing platform will also boost productivity by consolidating strategy development, influencer discovery and campaign management into one streamlined workspace.

4. Build relationships

Like any creative partnership, building and nurturing an ongoing relationship with an influencer has many benefits. Repeated endorsements build trust and credibility and allow for deeper brand familiarity, which can lead to more nuanced storytelling.

Influencer management tools help make this relationship-building process easy and efficient. For example, Sprout has Creator and Collaborator portals for easy onboarding, collaboration and real-time communication.

Of course, you can still build meaningful, mutually beneficial relationships with influencers even if you don't have an influencer marketing tool. It just takes some more effort. For example, you could make your outreach to possible content partners more personal by mentioning specific things from their influencer media kit and content. This shows that you are familiar with and appreciate their work.

5. Create compelling content

One of the biggest benefits of partnering with an influencer is the authenticity they bring to their content. They know how to communicate in a way that resonates with their audience, so promotions feel more like a personal recommendation than a sales pitch.

That’s why it’s so important to give your influencers the creative freedom to produce content that feels true to them. At the same time, provide clear direction to ensure their work aligns with your brand’s messaging and values. Our influencer marketing brief template will help you clearly define expectations and establish guidelines for mutual success.

For example, Ashleigh Mogford (@cardiff.mum) is a food influencer known for her budget-friendly meal plans. So partnering with vegetarian and vegan food company Quorn to highlight the product’s affordability is a perfect fit. Besides the product placement, the video is pretty similar to her other non-branded posts.

6. Measure and optimize

Last but certainly not least, it’s important to regularly review influencer analytics to measure your campaigns’ success against your original goals and optimize accordingly. Doing so will keep your campaign on the right track, in order to maximize ROI by doubling down on what’s working.

For example, let’s say your goal is to boost sales by 20%. If you notice that one influencer’s post performed better than the others, use it as a guide to offer recommendations to the other creators.

Demonstrating results with business impact will help grow your influencer marketing program). When you have data to back up your success, it's easier to justify investing more in your influencer program and giving influencers more creative freedom.

How to make the most of your next UK influencer campaign

With such a diverse range of interests and demographics, it doesn’t matter how broad or niche of an audience you’re trying to reach. There’s likely to be a UK influencer out there who’d be the perfect fit for your next campaign.

To maximize success, you need a plan to track your performance. Gauging the effectiveness of your strategy is easier when you know who you’re trying to reach and what you’re trying to achieve.

Fortunately, influencer marketing tools make it way easier to hit your goals. They eliminate much of the manual work of finding influencers, running campaigns and measuring results. To streamline your end-to-end campaign management process, check out our list of top influencer marketing tools.