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Sometimes, it’s a “perfectly misfit” piece that makes the puzzle complete. We’ve already talked about storyfit influencers – the creators who aren’t The Obvious Choice, but who can tell your brand’s story in a unique way.
For this article, I went deeper. In a recent survey, I asked marketers to tell me about a time they hired a creator who outperformed despite not matching the brand’s criteria – and instead of offering multiple choice answers, I asked everybody to write in their responses. They gave me GOLD. Here’s what I uncovered:
- Why the unconventional collaboration worked
- How marketers decide who to take a chance on
- How you can replicate their results – especially if you’re hitting a wall with your influencer searches
Here are five groups of perfectly misfit influencers who can still get you a positive ROI.
1. Influencers who have a different content style or aesthetic
The top reason marketers feel an influencer is a mismatch is because their content style or aesthetic differs from what the brand usually goes for.
And while it is fair to want your brand aesthetic to remain consistent, experimenting (every so often) with different content types can lead to surprising results. Producing content outside your norm can make your brand stand out and create a lasting impression.
In fact, one of the reasons why an aesthetic mismatch collab works so well is because it doesn’t feel like an ad – it’s unexpected and fresh.
Take the case of Andreea Ceausu – she usually partners with influencers who have a very specific vibe. But when her company partnered with a creator whose aesthetic was the opposite, they generated 300 sales from a single post. That same (imperfect) influencer still converts very well. Talk about a high-performing mismatch!
Why did Andreea hire someone who didn’t match the brand’s usual content style? Because the influencer had a tight-knit community.
I noticed how engaged her community was – she had lots of comments of appreciation, and people seemed to trust whatever she said.
Andreea is far from alone: having A+ engagement metrics is the number one reason marketers take a chance on (seemingly) misfit creators.
And unsurprisingly, that strong community connection is also the top reason mismatch collabs outperform.
A similar case happened with Brenda Levy Daniel when a misfit Instagram influencer signed up for her client’s brand affiliate program. The creator’s main channel was an old-school blog, and her aesthetic wasn’t polished. But she quickly became the highest-grossing influencer of the program out of more than 4,000 affiliates. 🤯
The reason? A loyal community that trusted the creator’s recommendations. Her team nurtured and sold to her community using emails and blog posts with shopping lists.
Joshita Dodani also saw positive results by partnering with a creator whose audience had a strong connection with her – even though her content wasn’t curated, polished, or picture-perfect.
A skin care brand wanted more upscale influencers with curated feeds. One creator, however, had no curated content – it was all very direct, friendly, and “messy.” But her audience loved her! She was garnering a lot of views compared to the “picture perfect” influencers and already had experience doing skin care collabs.
These examples prove that you can’t let a different content style or aesthetic hold you back from working with a misfit influencer. If they create great content in their category and have top-notch engagement metrics, they’re worth testing.
It’s also worth remembering that, as marketers, we’re sometimes too close to the brand’s style guide. Remember, audiences don’t know the nuances of your company’s aesthetic. What feels “off brand” to you might not be to your ideal customers.
2. Influencers who are outside your immediate niche
Over the years, it’s become standard practice that skin care brands partner with skin care influencers, food brands with food creators, and fitness companies with fitness influencers. And it makes sense to want industry experts to promote your brand.
But because it’s so common, it has also become too obvious. Slightly boring. Extremely easy to tune out. Personally, when I stumble upon a hair care influencer promoting yet another shampoo, I usually just scroll right by.
How do you get people to pay attention again? To inject freshness into your influencer collaborations, it’s worth finding creators in adjacent niches.
Alexander Sabucido partnered with a creator from a different niche who also didn’t meet the brand’s requirement for influencer demographics. However, the creator still generated 3x ROAS in one of their campaigns.
Kristyna Birinyi also collaborated outside her niche successfully. To promote a hair care brand, she chose a creator whose content focused solely on… animal farming. But since the creator had a loyal group of followers, she performed exceptionally. The unexpected results made Kristyna search for even more misfit creators:
I found another name like hers whose content is totally the opposite of what we expect and want from an influencer. But again, she has an amazing and loyal fanbase.
For Beth Cortez, the shift was intentional. In an effort to deviate from her usual influencer niches in food and lifestyle, she partnered with an interview and photography creator to promote an ice cream brand.
We didn’t expect much from this collaboration – we just wanted to test other types of influencers. Surprisingly, the video garnered hundreds of thousands of views, resulting in a follow-up collaboration with that creator.
It can feel risky to deviate from your core category. But if you’ve been collaborating with creators in the same niche since forever, experiment with one creator in an adjacent category – it’ll ignite some unexpected magic.
3. Influencers who don’t match your ideal demographic
Influencer search is a lot like dating. You’re swiping to find that one creator – in your location, same age range as your customers’, interests tally with your niche perfectly. But sometimes, it holds you back to limit yourself to influencers in your ideal demographic.
Alice Arruda learned this when a 27-year-old creator outperformed her expectations (for similar campaigns, she usually collaborates with influencers in their 40s or 50s). Alice attributes the success of the partnership to creative freedom paired with a strong audience.
I truly believe this influencer has an incredible level of synergy and trust with her audience. How she incorporated the campaign into her content in such a genuine and natural way made all the difference.
Athira Aravind experienced the same when she partnered with creators outside of her usual zone to promote a premium product.
Since the product is premium-priced, we usually collaborate with urban elite creators or influencers from Tier 1 cities. For this campaign, however, we deviated from our usual guardrails and partnered with creators from Tier 2 and Tier 3 cities. This campaign delivered one of our highest ROIs to date and remains unmatched.
Kat LaFata also found success by extending the geographical boundaries for one of her campaigns. She wanted to partner with creators with an active audience in Utah, but some leftover budget prompted her to partner with a creator who didn’t meet that requirement to a T.
The partnership worked because the content was so engaging that even the audience members who lived out of state wound up pinging their Utah contacts and sharing the video with their networks. We had more sign-ups from that piece of content than from any other creator in the campaign.
Influencer demographics is one of those blind spots that’s easy to miss even when you’re in a mindset of experimentation. So if you’ve been adding the influencer age, location, and gender filters on autopilot, it’s time to see if you can stretch the boundaries a little.
4. Influencers who don’t create content related to your industry
We’ve already discussed how influencers in adjacent niches can create fresh, creative brand content. But what if you not only colored outside the lines, but also outside the page?
Michael Todner did just that when he collaborated with a comedy creator to promote musical equipment and software. The influencer had no ties to music whatsoever, so why did Michael hire him? Because:
His content was very creative, and he actually works in marketing at his day job. Both gave me a lot of confidence in our ability to put something together that would interest his audience and still feel natural.
And this collaboration, despite seeming wrong on paper, just ✨clicked ✨.
In yet another example, Regina Regos decided to partner with influencers in entirely different niches (interior design, cuisine, gaming, etc.) for an online fashion retailer as an experiment. The only criterion was that the influencers already had to be creating brilliant content in their own niche.
We selected the creators based on how they mastered their own niche, including content quality, engagement, etc. The idea was to find creators who were already great at what they do – ironically, as long as it was not fashion.
The best part is that Regina got a discount because her brand was not one of the influencers’ usual collab partners. Talk about a negotiation tactic!
Flora Macher also found her best performer in the most unexpected niche:
I collaborated with a neo-goth creator to promote a dental hygiene product. While beauty and personal care wasn’t her primary focus, her distinctive style and highly engaged niche audience made her a strong candidate. The risk was minimal, so I decided to proceed – and she not only genuinely loved the product but also became my top-performing partner.
Sometimes though, partnering with creators miles away from your usual niche isn’t great for sales… but it is exceptional for brand awareness and for learning what messaging resonates with different audience segments.
Antonia Buneta partnered with a creator whose engagement and reach were through the roof, but whose aspirational content was outside of the brand’s category. Though the collaboration didn’t lead to conversions, it was still a successful partnership.
The creator helped us expand our reach and visibility far beyond our core audience. While it didn’t translate into direct sales, it positioned the brand within a more aspirational lifestyle space and provided valuable insight into how different audiences respond to our messaging.
Marketers often overlook creators from wildly different niches than their own, but influencers in other industries can have a fresh take on your products and can make your brand truly memorable. If a creator makes exceptional content, matches your audience demographics, and is within budget, it’s worth testing them out.
5. Influencers who don’t match your ideal audience needs
I know, I know – most advice in this article is to take a bet on different creators as long as they match your ideal audience. And now I’m suggesting the exact opposite.
But hear me out: you can test creators who share your basic ideal audience demographics, even if their audience interest differs from your desired choices. Let me explain with an example.
Abdullah Khan partnered with a creator who focused on affordable lifestyle tips and budget-friendly shopping… to market a luxury perfume. You’d assume the audience would be accustomed to low-cost recommendations, and this collab would fall flat. You’d be wrong.
Her audience trusted her, so when she shared about our perfume in her own voice, it didn’t come across as an ad. On top of that, her knack for creating viral videos gave the campaign a reach we wouldn’t have achieved through our usual influencer pool. It was the mix of trust, creativity, and surprise that made it a success.
Tamara Torrecillas Gutiérrez had a similar experience when she worked with a Gen Z creator specifically to reach a new audience outside of middle-aged mothers. The success in this case came down to choosing the right products to promote, and it worked so well, the brand even signed a long-term contract with this influencer.
We chose the right products for his audience. A friend and his mum participated in this misfit creator’s Stories, which made the content very fun and credible.
Partnering with creators outside your audience bubble can help you break into new markets, too. If you have leftover budget and the freedom to experiment, consider partnering with influencers who don’t match your ideal audience criteria perfectly.
As we’ve seen, the unexpectedness of such collaborations is what makes them successful. When content doesn’t feel like an ad, people are more likely to engage with it – as opposed to tuning out an advertisement.
Pro tips to partner with misfit creators
When you’re doing something ostensibly wrong, do it right. Here are three pro tips (curated from the examples above) to help you ace your collabs with misfit influencers:
1. Test misfit creators using an affiliate program
An affiliate program is a low-stakes way to test new creators. You only pay them a cut of the sales (or clicks, depending on your model), so it’s a win-win. Use affiliate programs to experiment with influencers who don’t match your aesthetic, have different demographics, or are outside your usual niche.
Bonus: If you’re open to more risk but not ready for paid partnerships, you can also explore influencer gifting to test new creators.
2. Find lookalike influencers to validate multiple misfit types
If you successfully partner with a misfit creator, try to replicate the results by finding similar influencers. Remember Michael, who promoted music equipment with a comedy creator? He started using Modash’s lookalike tool to find influencers in a similar vein.
If another collaboration works well, you’ve just unlocked a whole new category of influencers your brand can partner with. Here’s how Brenda makes this strategy work:
Once a new category has been unlocked, we try to validate it by onboarding 5–10 creators with the same focus and checking their performance. If they convert well too, we go ham. We find more via audience match or manual prospecting. We also keep track of all inbounds and dig into creators we previously deemed “not a fit.”
3. Offer creative freedom to misfit influencers
It can be tempting to offer creators a lot of guidelines to ace the assignment, especially if you’re experimenting with someone new. While well-intended, it can have counterproductive results.
An anonymous marketer collaborated with a travel creator to promote a tech product, they learned offering creative freedom to influencers is crucial if you want their content to perform well.
We provided the influencer with a brief, but she didn’t follow it completely. Instead, she created content that matched her usual artistic direction. It’s okay to have some requirements about what to say, but it’s worth letting the influencer keep their personal touch in the content itself.
To capitalize on misfit creators’ unique strengths, be more flexible with your guidelines and avoid boxing them into your mold. You’re hiring them for their impact, their fresh perspective, their fanbase – and all of that remains intact when you let them remain true to who they are. Lee Drysdale says it best:
These influencers have made it because of what they’re putting out to their audience. There is nothing worse than watching an influencer completely erase all personality because they have been prompted to read a script.
It feels risky to partner with creators who don’t check all your boxes. But if the examples above are proof of anything, it’s that the creator who looks wrong on paper can perform oh-so-right in practice. You’d be surprised at how often the misfits can deliver your best wins.
Want to learn more about how to find and work with misfit creators who outperform? Check out our guide about storyfit influencers.
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