Submitted by The Shelf Influencer Marketing AgencyAgency IPI Score 43/100

How Engine Turned Influencer Content Into a Full-Funnel Growth Engine

Influencer Marketing

The Shelf ran a full-funnel influencer campaign for business travel platform Engine across Instagram, TikTok and LinkedIn, reporting 510,742 total impressions at 2.3x projected reach.

2.49%CTR on paid ads
91.7KReels views
3.24%TikTok engagement rate
4.22%average paid CTR

Case in 60 seconds

Engine, formerly Hotel Engine, needed awareness and adoption for a rebrand and for new flight and car rental offerings, in a category the page describes as crowded with legacy booking platforms.

The campaign appears to turn on friction business travelers complain about, because frazzled booking, lost receipts and clunky group logistics are shared grievances a creator can stage as comedy rather than explain as product benefit.

Position Engine as the stress-free alternative to traditional travel platforms by building each piece of content around one value proposition, told as a story about a real booking problem rather than as a product demonstration.

The Shelf worked with 10 micro and mid tier creators across business, sales, travel, wedding and tech, each assigned one Engine benefit such as Flex insurance, group travel, points programs or one-click booking. Content ran as skits, day-in-the-life storytelling and creator-led tutorials across Instagram Reels, Stories and carousels, TikTok video and LinkedIn posts, with top-performing assets allowlisted into Engine's paid media.

The Shelf reports 510,742 total impressions (2.3x projected reach), 377,072 impressions from Reels alone and 8,808 total engagements, with 602 total mid-funnel actions across link clicks, sticker taps and profile visits. Paid delivery built from the same creative is reported at 11.7M Impressions, 773 Signups at $51.75 CPA and a 2.49% CTR on paid ads using influencer content.

Strategy Breakdown

Business travelers, office managers, small business owners, event coordinators, and frequent flyers in industries like tech, sales, and events, described as decision-makers looking for efficient, flexible, and user-friendly corporate travel tools.
Business travel booking sits closer to workplace complaint than to aspiration, so the campaign appears to trade on shared irritation with frazzled booking processes, lost receipts and clunky group logistics rather than on travel imagery.
The page describes a market crowded with legacy platforms and reports comments favoring Engine over Concur, which suggests the harder task was displacing a tool already installed in company process rather than explaining a new category.
Engine reads as the practical resolution inside each creator's story, since every asset was built around one value proposition such as Flex insurance, one-click booking or streamlined invoicing, so the product arrives as the fix rather than the subject.
The page reports 206 sticker taps and 117 link clicks against 279 profile visits, which suggests audiences used the tappable Stories format as the place to act while feed content did the persuading.

Creative & Execution System

Assets & channels

  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • TikTok
  • Carousels
  • LinkedIn Posts
  • LinkedIn Videos
  • Reels
  • Stories
  • TikTok Video
  • UGC

Partners

  • The Shelf

Creator role

  • Fenti Fried Chicken — creator
  • Roxy Couse — creator
  • Shannon Fiedler — creator
  • thefinancebrides — creator
  • 10 creators spanning business, sales, travel, wedding, and tech
  • 10 micro- and mid-tier creators

Results & Evidence

MetricValue
CTR on Paid Ads2.49% CTR on paid ads using influencer content
Reels Views91.7K Reels views (Shannon Fiedler)
TikTok Engagement RateTikTok delivered top ER at 3.24% - highest engagement of the campaign
Average Paid CTR4.22% Avg. CTR
Comments136 comments with overwhelmingly positive sentiment
Highest Instagram ER3.2% Highest IG ER (FentiFriedChicken)
Impressions From Reels377,072 impressions from Reels alone - 74% of total reach
Landing Page Visits35.2K Landing Page Visits
Link Clicks117 link clicks
Paid CTR vs Industry Benchmark3.5x higher than industry benchmark for home improvement (0.70%)
Paid Impressions11.7M Impressions
Profile Visits279 profile visits
Shares and Saves1,532 shares and 509 saves - users found content worth revisiting
Signups773 Signups at $51.75 CPA
Sticker Taps206 sticker taps
Total Engagements8,808 total engagements across platforms
Total Impressions510,742 total impressions (2.3x projected reach)
Total Mid-Funnel Actions602 total mid-funnel actions - clear user intent and platform exploration

Why The Shelf Influencer Marketing Agency's strategy worked

  1. 1

    Comedy carries B2B product messaging when the joke is the buyer's own workflow, because a skit about lost receipts shows the pain point and the fix in the same beat an explainer has to narrate.

  2. 2

    Casting outside the obvious vertical extends a product claim, because wedding and event creators already talk about coordinating groups, which is the behaviour Engine's group booking feature addresses.

  3. 3

    Assigning one benefit per creator keeps a multi-feature launch legible, since each asset argues a single claim while the roster covers the product without any one post carrying all of it.

  4. 4

    Organic results double as paid creative selection, because assets that earned engagement without spend reach the media buy already tested against the audience they will be bought against.

  5. 5

    Platform roles can be split rather than duplicated, with Reels reported as the reach driver at 377,072 impressions, TikTok as the engagement driver at 3.24%, and Stories as the surface that produced action.

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