The business of buying an influencer: Why demand from small business is growing
Sunday, 19 July 2026
When Amanda Fraser-Jones needed to promote her dog rescue charity, she knew she didn’t have a significant marketing budget.
Instead, the founder of not-for-profit Auckland dog rescue The Dog Rescue Project turned to a different mode of advertising - one that’s largely thought of being affiliated with big business, luxury, or glamour: influencers.
“We can't afford billboards or TV ads, so budget-wise it works out better,” says Fraser-Jones.
“For me, it's a more natural way of advertising. If we find influencers who have dogs, know what it's like to own a dog, it feels a little bit more natural rather than something plastered elsewhere, because let's be honest, who looks at TV ads or billboards these days.
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She is one of a growing number of businesses the Sunday Star-Times spoke to who have cut their traditional marketing budgets completely in favour of working solely with influencers, so much so that the algorithm appears to be replacing traditional advertising or marketing spend for many business owners.
Social media groups for business owners are awash with posts looking for influencers and their recommendations, often debating the benefits of contracted social media creators and micro influencers versus big-following personalities.
Pediatric ICU nurse Charlotte Young, founder of first aid education platform And Breathe First Aid, says in the first year of using influencers to promote her business it bought in around 20% of annual revenue - and that’s just influence she could track.
As Young describes it, influencer or creator marketing is a highly cost effective way to bring awareness to a business, product or service. And being in a down economy, stuck in a cost of living crisis, it makes sense as to why more business owners and organisations were turning to it.
“We think of it as like you're borrowing the trust that the influencer has created, and we find it very successful,” Young told the Star-Times.
“We are a baby and child first aid business, which traditionally doesn't use influencer marketing. We are probably the only one that does, and for an example of how successful it is, from one influencer campaign or collab, we got 15 inquiries that sold us out by about six weeks to two months.”
Young, who started using influencers about 18 months into her business, believes influencer marketing is so effective as society is awash with choice and consumerism everywhere you look, that these days people were seeking a connection before a transaction.
“Whether that's the actual business or a connection with the product via an influencer, people are just wanting to build connection in an increasingly connection-less world.”
And Breathe First Aid works with four micro influencers - those with less than 5000 followers - each month, and aims to work with big influencers or well known Kiwi personalities, the likes of Kim Crossman, Sharon Casey and Megan Mansell, who it has worked with previously, once every two months.
What influencers are paid depends on the person, the connection they have with a founder or brand, and how much work is involved; if it a single post, an Instagram story or ongoing collaboration made as ads.
“It could be anything from a few $100 to tens of thousands,” says Young.
“Smaller influencers typically would have a lower fee. But then again, it depends on the contract around how you’re going to use the content that they’re making; if it is for awareness, or if the business is going to be directly making a significant amount of money off this collab or off this content.
“Overall, I'd say it is extremely cost-effective compared to traditional marketing.”
Retail marketing expert Ben Goodale says influencer marketing is picking up in popularity, but most notably among smaller firms with less money to spend on marketing budgets.
“We are seeing a generational shift, the growth of social media on so many different platforms, which reaches different demographics and age groups. There's a lot of people you can see in content through those channels, and so inevitably the rise of the creator or the influencer is a really interesting thing to watch,” says Goodale.
His own marketing agency Quantum Jump was now doing much more influencer marketing for clients than it had in the past, he says.
“It's another version of word of mouth. People love it because these people are on screen talking about your product, and for a lot of these people who follow influencers, it's like a friend recommending something to you and giving you pointers; they become almost like trusted advisers.”
Goodale says influencers have been rebranded to content creators in recent years, to make them sound more legit and reflect the growing commercial significance.
More businesses were seeking influencers to promote their organisations and services, as part of their wider marketing strategy, but it still only made up less than 5% of all advertising or marketing budget for most medium to large organisations, Goodale saw within his own firm.
Generally, however, the smaller the organisation, the larger that percentage spent on influencers was.
“It would be only a niche brand with limited budget or a very distinct product set, where you might go influencer-only, but certainly using influencers for product in different campaigns makes sense,” he says.
“There's a slight handbrake in New Zealand because of our economy of scale and critical mass. In the UK, for example, you have brands that go very hard on influencer marketing, here the numbers are much smaller for all the different groups, but often the core mass channels tend to still be preferred.
“We don't see the depth in the same way in New Zealand. You might get [significant influencer marketing uptake] for brands which are global, say like Coca Cola, but a local brand would still have to factor what's the best bang for their buck, and the irony is in New Zealand, TV is still the best bang for your buck, along with billboards and radio.”
Influencer marketing was typically used for product advertising, and Goodale’s own organisation had used it to promote Fast-moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) products to great success in the past. Although it was increasingly being used for services, as well as general public relations business awareness efforts.
“There's a real value in the way that it can speak to people, and it's really great when you have people demonstrating what they're doing with your products,” says Goodale.
“If you follow one of these people and you watch their videos every week, you may have bought things that they've talked about, and you've evaluated how they compare to your lived experience with what they've said and think they are on your wave length, so when they talk about the next thing, you're going to effectively have a preconceived sense of going ‘If they like it, I'll like it.”
Many small organisations with less money to spend on advertising and marketing are exclusively using influencing marketing for its perceived high return on investment.
“If you had a smaller FMCG brand, they can't afford to go on TV or a major outdoor campaign, but they could afford a few thousand dollars for an influencer, then they could spend 50% or more of their budget on influencers,” says Goodale.
For some brands that looks like spending $20,000 on a mega influencer, and for others that could be engaging two or three micro influencesr with a smaller but reasonable following.
Goodale says influencer marketing is becoming an important channel to consider, but in this market is not taking over the masses, like it was in the under 30s demographic.
What's the going rate, and what can influencers command per post in New Zealand?
“Influencers could be paid $3000 to $5000 for doing two or three pieces of long-ish content, or a few minutes to camera, depending on the person. It's a pretty good income,” says Goodale.
The cost of living conundrum
More organisations appear to want to use influencer marketing right now amid the cost of living and economic downturn, as many don't have budgets, or the budgets they once had for the traditional ways of marketing.
That’s the view of Fraser-Jones of The Dog Rescue Project.
She says influencer marketing is seen as a cheap and effective way of advertising, something that affords people another way to get their name, product or services out there, who otherwise may not have be able to.
Fraser-Jones says there had been a couple of “big names do accidental advertising” for The Dog Rescue Project online, after saying they had adopted a dog, which had delivered an amazing response, prompting her to now look to delve into it in a formal way.
Her organisation has dabbled in influencer marketing itself, having found itself working with companies that send it products for the dogs, such as food, which it then posts about on Instagram - and so she says she is privvy to both sides of the opportunity equation.
“It's a cheaper way of doing it, but also you're going directly to your clients. With billboards and TV, you can't guarantee people are watching the TV program, and with billboards how can you guarantee anybody's going to see it?
“Our marketing budget is zero because we're a rescue, but we are willing to pay influencers for something that we feel will work. What we pay would depend on who we talk to, and what we feel like they are worth.”
What influencers are worth
Where YouTube used to dominate, Instagram has taken the crown, though TikTok has fast become a frontrunner for the platform most popular and lucrative for influencers and creators.
New Zealand’s influencer marketing industry is estimated to be worth over $50 million in brand spending annually, according to AV Consulting.
The industry is experiencing rapid growth, driven by the rise in UGC or “nano” influencers, those with smaller followings of 5000 up to 50,000 followers, those believed to post more authentic and less polished content.
Local TikTok user sabbyjeyxx aka Sabby Jey has lifted the lid on the earnings of content creators in New Zealand, saying - in a video - earnings per campaign can range from $1000 to $3000 for mid-tier creators, and creators with a larger following able to make between $5000 and $15,000 per campaign, depending on the complexity of the ‘deliverables’ and campaign duration.
As of the end of 2019, the influencer marketing industry was estimated to be worth US$6.5 billion ($11.4b). That year was said to be the industry’s second wave of exponential growth, with earnings for the average influencer marketing campaign spend said to have doubled year-on-year.
The spends by brands and businesses today is believed to be much higher.
“These big creators can command significant fees for promoting things, and there's some very rich influences,” says Goodale.
“Fundamentally, influencer marketing has always been here, just in different ways. TV stars have always been influencers in another way, and you get a TV star to come and open a supermarket or do an event, and now you can be a TV star on a phone through TikTok, and you can then commercialize that by effectively having a channel; it makes sense, people love it, and people are addicted to their phones, so it feeds that frenzy.”