Does this sound familiar? Your brand finds a great influencer, partner’s with them on an influencer marketing campaign and it fails miserably so now what? This happens all too often as brands get stuck feeling like influencer marketing is a total waste. Most of all they steadfastly decide to not utilize influencers as part of their marketing initiatives.

Influencer marketing is coming to a point of maturity and we’re seeing brands starting to find other creative strategies for building brand awareness. We’ve seen an uptick in brands implementing employee-influencer marketing.

For example, Equinox Fitness, which owns Equinox gyms Pure Yoga, SoulCycle, and Blink Fitness recently launched a new talent management agency for employees. Following in its footsteps are other big box brands such as Everlane, Kate Space and Macy’s which have all created a dedicated influencer program that sources from their employees.

So why exactly are brands starting to embrace this approach?

1. Cost-cutting

It’s much more cost effective to hire employees who are easily available than working with influencers who can charge up to thousands of dollars per post, review, or video.

2. Employee Loyalty

This is also a way for brands to form long-term loyalty with employees while showing appreciation for their affiliation with the brand.

3. Quality Control of Content

Employees who are currently on your team are already familiar with the brand and its marketing initiative. Therefore creating content that aligns with the brand will be much easier while sending out a cohesive message.

Two distinct strategies of employee-influencer marketing are currently used, either creating a dedicated program such as Equinox or using Macy’s Style Crew program. The second strategy is featuring employees on social media like Everlane and Kate Spade.

Macy’s model allows over 300 employees to create video clips that are developed around employees’ interests while featuring related products which are carried at Macy’s. While Everlane’s model features their head of social media modeling new styles or making announcements on Instagram.