Who Are the Best Influencers for Marketing Auto Parts and Accessories?

The conventional wisdom in influencer marketing says:

1. Only work with influencers who are aligned with your brand
2. Avoid one-off placements and reviews; Focus on building relationships
3. Don’t do anything with influencers who aren’t a perfect fit and/or who aren’t interested in a long-term relationship

We’d call this the “brand alignment” approach to influencer marketing, and it’s great advice for most industries. But when it comes to parts or accessories marketing, it’s wrong.

Influencer Marketing For Parts and Accessories Is Different

Most influencer marketing strategies are built on brand alignment because most products – like sunglasses or skincare products or shoes – are “universal.” Nearly every influencer could review a pair of sunglasses, for example, but only a few of them have the right audience/values/etc. For these types of products, brands must be discerning.

But when your product is a set of fender flares for a 2025 Ford F-150 (or the like), fitment often trumps lifestyle:

1. Consumers are more likely to buy if they can see photos and video of a product on their specific vehicle
2. DIY’ers are more likely to buy if they can watch someone install a product on their specific vehicle
3. Most companies don’t have the photos and videos consumers want to see

So, if you want to sell those 2025 F-150 fender flares (or whatever), any influencer who has the right vehicle – and who has proven that they can make a decent part or accessory review video* – is a worthwhile opportunity.

*A proven ability to make a decent review video for a part or accessory is a low threshold, but it’s still a threshold. If an influencer has never made a part or accessory review video – or if the review videos they’ve made are hard to hear, poorly lit, confusing, or poorly organized – proceed with caution.

One-Off Product Reviews Are Actually Pretty Great

One-off reviews bring a lot of value:

1. More often than not, the review video will feature a unique fitment that your company doesn’t have photos or videos for, which means it will help at least someone buy your product.
2. Consumers often search for year-make-model specific install videos and reviews; The more specific the search, the more likely the review will appear in search results.
3. Every review video is “social proof” and potentially influential.
4. Every review video is content for the blog, the newsletter, the social media channels, etc.

At Spork, we coach all of our clients to think of influencer videos as outsourced video production first, search engine content second, and “everything else” third.

Sometimes, the “everything else” drives a LOT of value. But even if all a video does is a) give your brand more assets that help potential customers visualize and b) raise your brand’s visibility in search, it’s a good investment.

Install Videos Also Help Customer Service

A huge percentage of part and accessory buyers are DIY’ers. They’re on YouTube, searching for install videos that show them how to get the job done. If your product shows up in a clear, helpful install video – especially one tied to their exact vehicle – it builds trust and confidence that can lead to sales.

But even if an install video does not drive sales, it can help customer service. A DIY’er who bought your product and gets “stuck” during the install process will immediately go to YouTube. One-off review video(s) are going to surface in YouTube searches, and odds are good they’ll help the customer solve the problem on their own. No contacting customer support, no leaving angry reviews about bad instructions, and fewer returns.

Social Media Influencer Part and Accessory Marketing Best Practices

To reiterate: We’re not saying that long-term relationships with brand aligned influencers are bad. They’re obviously good. But anyone who coaches a part or accessory brand to ‘avoid one-off reviews’ or ‘only work with brand-aligned influencers’ is giving bad advice.

Influencer video ROI should be based on more than trackable revenue. A lot of brands expect influencer videos to generate sales. Sales are obviously important, but a “generate sales or go away” approach to influencers is short-sighted. Consider:

1. If your company wanted to make the same video, could you get the vehicle shown in the video? What would it cost?
2. After you obtain the vehicle, how much would it cost to have someone on your team shoot and edit the video? How much would you pay a contractor or agency to shoot and edit?
3. If you made this video in-house, how much time would it cost your video generation team, and what could they do with that time instead?
4. How many people will watch the video and buy, but forget to use the code or click on the affiliate link in the description?
5. How many people will find this video on YouTube search months or years from now? How many of those people will buy, and can you track those sales if the discount code is expired and the affiliate link is removed from the video description?
6. How many existing customers will reference the video instead of calling customer service, and how much time will that save your customer service team? How many product returns or bad reviews will the video prevent?
7. How many years will the video be visible in YouTube search results? How many customers will buy because they found a video for their exact year make and model?

If you do the math, influencer video is incredibly cost effective.

Remember that Google and YouTube search is a thing. A lot of part and accessory consumers will research a product on YouTube and Google extensively before buying. If the consumer searches extensively, what are they going to find? Videos from the same 2 or 3 YouTubers, or a dozen different reviews from a dozen diffierent channels? Or maybe all of the above?

Or will they find videos for a competitor’s product because the competitor isn’t focused on “brand alignment” and casts a really wide net, dominating YouTube search results?

Also, influencer relationships come and go. We’ve heard countless stories from brands about finding a great influencer, having a lot of success with them, and then something changes:

• The influencer starts promoting a competitor
• The influencer quits social media
• The influencer gets irrationally mad and drops the brand
• The influencer completely shifts focus and starts making completely unrelated content
• The influencer starts asking for more and more money, to the point where it’s not feasible to work with them any longer
• The influencer says and does something that offends most of their audience, and then doubles-down in the comments and burns it all down…and your brand catches strays for months because of it (true story)

Assuming that all influencer relationships will eventually end, there’s an argument for being open minded about placements.

So, Who Are the Best Influencers for Auto Parts Marketing?

At Spork our criteria are pretty simple:

1. They need to be on YouTube. YouTube is where most DIY part and accessory buyers search. An influencer can have Instagram or TikTok of course, but a YouTube channel is required.
2. They need to be focused on creating automotive content relevant to the product. An influencer for a replacement part brand is typically making repair how-to videos, or at least getting their hands dirty every now and then. An influencer for an off-road accessory makes off-road videos at least once in a while. Etc.
3. They need to be actively creating and promoting videos. We want to see videos being churned out on a weekly or monthly basis, and we want to see evidence of the creator promoting their content and trying to grow the channel (posting videos to forums or reddit, engaging with commenters, etc.)
4. They need to be able to create a decent quality video. Hollywood production quality is not necessary (or even desirable – it often comes across as overtly promotional), but audio should be clear, lighting should be used, the information should be shared in a way that makes sense, etc.

That’s it. We don’t really care about subscriber counts (we have a minimum but it’s very low), we don’t stress out about video views (we can drive those ourselves), and we don’t worry too much about how an influencer’s values or audience aligns with the brand (within reason of course) because most placements are one-and-done.

Summing Up

The best influencer campaigns in the auto parts and accessories industry don’t look like influencer campaigns at all. They look like helpful videos, install guides, and search-optimized content created by a bunch of real vehicle owners.

NOTE: I wouldn’t be doing my job if I didn’t mention that we do influencer marketing as part of our SEO services. Learn more about our services here.