The Role of Influencers in
Brand Awareness and Perception
Influencers build brand awareness by putting a brand in front of audiences that already trust them, and they shape brand perception by showing the product in a real context, in their own words. That is why brand awareness is the most selected KPI in Influencer Marketing Hub's 2026 Benchmark Report. This guide explains how the effect works, which creators and formats build it, and how to measure both awareness and perception, with examples from campaigns run by TANKE, an influencer marketing agency based in Paris.
Like our insights? Add TANKE as a preferred source on Google
- Influencers create awareness through borrowed trust: their audience already listens to them, so the brand reaches people who skip traditional ads.
- Awareness and perception are two different goals: the first is measured in reach and recall, the second in sentiment and brand associations.
- Measure both with reach and frequency, brand lift studies, branded search, direct traffic and comment analysis, against targets set before launch.
How influencers build brand awareness
Influencers work on awareness in four ways:
- Borrowed trust: a creator's audience chose to follow them, so a brand mention is received as a recommendation rather than an interruption.
- New audiences: creators reach people who do not follow the brand and often avoid its ads.
- Repetition: several creators talking about the same product create the repeated exposure that memory needs.
- Native content: posts made in the codes of each platform are watched rather than skipped.
The effect reaches buying behaviour too. According to Sprout Social's 2025 Influencer Marketing Report, 86% of consumers make a purchase inspired by an influencer at least once a year, and 69% of marketers say influencer-generated content outperforms brand-directed content.
At scale, the reach is comparable to paid media. On La Poste's influencer programme, TANKE reached 8.9 million people and generated 11 million impressions in the first half of 2024, at a combined CPM of €11.60. For the IKKS collaboration capsule, influencer content generated more than 12.4 million impressions.
Brand awareness vs brand perception
Awareness and perception are often mixed up, but they answer different questions and need different measurements:
| Goal | Question it answers | What influencers do | How to measure it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Brand awareness | Do people know the brand? | Reach new audiences and repeat the exposure | Reach, impressions, frequency, ad recall, branded search |
| Brand perception | What do people think of the brand? | Link the brand to uses, values and expertise | Sentiment, comment themes, favourability and consideration lift |
Perception is where content choices matter most. On VELUX's 2024 home improvement programme, influencer content generated 92% positive sentiment. For the BFGoodrich KO3 tyre launch, videos showing real-world failures, such as getting stuck off-road and recovering, drove the highest trust scores. For La Poste, human, local "proximité" content reached the highest engagement rate, at 5.1%, and behind-the-scenes stories outperformed polished, ad-like content.
Which creators and formats build awareness
Reach and relevance pull in different directions, so most awareness campaigns combine tiers: a few large creators for reach, and a group of smaller creators whose audiences match the target closely. Our comparison of macro vs micro influencers details the trade-offs.
- Short-form video carries awareness best. For BFGoodrich, Reels and YouTube Shorts outperformed static posts by three times in shareability.
- TikTok leads investment plans: it is included in 31% of brands' platform plans in Influencer Marketing Hub's Benchmark Report 2026, the highest of any platform.
- Long-term partnerships build recall better than one-off posts, because the audience sees the brand several times through a voice it trusts.
- Honesty protects perception: 67% of consumers think the key to the best brand and influencer collaborations is being honest and unbiased, according to Sprout Social.
How to measure the brand awareness impact of influencer campaigns
Awareness is harder to measure than sales, which is why many brands stop at likes. In Sprout Social's report, marketers mostly measure influencer success through engagement metrics (68%), link traffic from posts (50%) and website traffic during campaigns (45%). These are useful, but awareness needs its own indicators:
- Reach, impressions and frequency: unique people reached and how often, taken from creators' platform insights rather than estimates.
- Brand lift studies: when creator content is also run as ads, Meta, TikTok and YouTube can compare exposed and control groups on ad recall and awareness.
- Branded search: the volume of searches for the brand name before, during and after the campaign, in Google Search Console or Google Trends.
- Direct and referral traffic: visits from creators' links, tagged with UTM parameters, and direct visits during the campaign.
- Mentions and share of voice: how often the brand is mentioned on social media compared with its competitors.
- Recall surveys: aided and unaided recall questions asked to the target audience after the campaign.
Set a target for each indicator before launch. Without one, awareness results are impossible to judge.
How to measure and attribute changes in brand perception
- Comment analysis: classify comments per creator as positive, neutral or negative, and note the words people associate with the brand.
- Brand lift questions: add favourability and consideration questions to brand lift studies or post-campaign surveys.
- Creator-level attribution: analyse each creator's posts separately, stagger publication dates, and compare sentiment and associations by creator.
- Before and after: run the same measurement before the campaign so you can compare.
Use the results to improve the next brief. Keep the angles, formats and creators that produced positive associations, and drop the messages that triggered doubt or indifference. Perception data is one of the most useful inputs for a better influencer brief.
Mistakes that waste an awareness budget
- Judging an awareness campaign on direct sales alone.
- Choosing creators on follower count without checking that their audience matches the target.
- Publishing a single burst of posts and expecting lasting recall.
- Writing a brief so strict that the content looks like an ad and loses the creator's trust advantage.
- Measuring nothing before the campaign, which makes lift impossible to prove.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the role of influencers in brand awareness?
Influencers put a brand in front of audiences that already trust them, often people who skip traditional ads. Their content feels like a recommendation, appears in the codes of each platform and, when several creators speak about the same product, creates the repeated exposure that memory needs. That is why brand awareness is the most selected KPI in Influencer Marketing Hub's 2026 report.
How do brands measure the brand awareness impact of influencer campaigns?
Combine several indicators: reach, impressions and frequency from creators' insights, brand lift studies on ad recall when creator content is amplified as ads, branded search volume before and after the campaign, direct and referral traffic tagged with UTM parameters, and share of voice in social mentions. Set a target for each indicator before launch so the results can be judged.
How do influencers shape brand perception?
They link the brand to real uses, values and expertise, shown in their own words. Honest, human content works best: for La Poste, TANKE's behind-the-scenes and local stories outperformed polished, ad-like content, and VELUX's influencer programme reached 92% positive sentiment. Content that looks like an ad loses the trust that makes influencers effective for perception.
How do you attribute changes in brand perception to specific influencers?
Analyse each creator's posts separately: classify their comments by sentiment, note the words people associate with the brand, and compare creators. Stagger publication dates so changes can be linked to a wave of content, and add favourability questions to brand lift studies or surveys. Measuring the same indicators before the campaign makes the comparison reliable.
Which influencers are best for brand awareness?
Usually a mix. Large creators bring reach in a short time, while smaller creators whose audiences match the target closely bring relevance and trust. Choose short-form video formats, check audience data for country, age and interests, and favour long-term partnerships, because the audience needs to see the brand several times through a voice it trusts.
How can brand perception data improve influencer briefs?
It shows which angles, formats and creators create positive associations. Keep the messages that generated favourable comments and drop the ones that triggered doubt or indifference. Share the words your audience already uses about the product with the next creators, and leave them free to express it in their own tone, so the content stays credible.
Brand awareness
Grow awareness with the right creators
TANKE selects the creators who put your brand in front of the audiences that matter.
Award-winning agency: Grand Prix Stratégies du Luxe (Gold, 2018) and Grand Prix de l’Influence (Silver, 2025).
- 01Review of your current campaigns
- 02Recommendations ranked by impact
- 03Debrief with a TANKE expert
