Influencer Advisory™
Goal 1
You just landed a major retailer
Boxes and Scale leadSeed hard around the launch window, then whitelist the best content to the areas where you are on shelf.
For Retail and D2C Brands
Layer Origin
We Help Enterprises Scale Their Existing Influencer Programs
Our four-step system attracts creators through celebrity partnerships and product gifting, keeps them posting through your brand’s private creator community, and reaches more customers by amplifying their best content with paid media.
Steal the playbook behind the leading influencer-led brands
See how these billion-dollar brands are using influencer marketing as their primary marketing channel.
NeuroGum
Grew to a $1B company, with an influencer Discord community
SugarBearHair
Achieved worldwide recognition through its PR boxes
Bum Energy
Leveraged celebrity endorsements to negotiate 75% lower influencer fees
HexClad
How it scaled one ad format to millions in spend without diminishing returns
For most brands, influencer marketing is a nice to have channel on the side
Most marketing budgets go to Meta and Google ads. Influencer gets a very small percent, because most brands find it highly volatile and unreliable.
2.5-3%of the marketing budget goes to influencer
That means out of every 100 marketing dollars a brand spends, only about 3 go to influencer.
That’s a small share, despite this being one of the most effective channels, bringing the highest conversions and perpetual brand value.
Source: eMarketer
We asked 50+ brands why they can’t scale their influencer program
“We keep paying more for the same results”
Why it happensYou pay a flat fee for videos and then have to find a new influencer as you see diminishing returns.
“A few creators bring in almost all our sales”
Why it happensThey have already saturated the creators they know, the new ones are overpriced or don’t perform, and every campaign feels like starting from zero.
“Influencer is not as reliable as ads”
Why it happensYou’re trying to spend more on influencer, but it’s so volatile that you can hardly afford to risk putting a lot of budget behind it.
“Every new round of creators performs worse”
Why it happensYou’ve taken the good influencers, and now you start outreaching influencers who are more pricey, they’re less relevant, and they become harder and harder to reach.
“We never stop hunting for new influencers”
Why it happensNothing brings creators to you, so every campaign starts again with cold outreach.
“We can’t tell who will work until we’ve paid them”
Why it happensYou have to guess if a creator is going to work before you sign them, pay them upfront, and most creators actually never even break even.
What most influencer programs look like today
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Cold outreach to thousands of creators to find a handful who say yes.
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80% of the creators you onboard don’t even break even, and you only find out after paying them.
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You have to find new creators every 3 months.
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So you end up relying on the top few creators, and that’s why influencer really never ends up being a significant marketing channel.
Why we started
We realized this old system was not the way that the most successful companies were doing things. We learned this first hand.
We ran an influencer agency first, then a talent agency. Neither one worked for the brands we served, so we built something new.
First Didn’t work
We were an influencer agency
When we ran as an influencer agency, we would reach out to a thousand creators, hear back from about 50, and end up with three influencers who were actually good.
Then Didn’t work
We were a talent agency
When we ran as a talent agency, we managed our own roster, but every time a client handed us a really niche avatar, we were stuck choosing from the same 50 people.
Now What works
So we built our new method, the ABCs of Influence
The foundation of this boils down to building connections at scale with influencers and keeping them, and then scaling them without an operational nightmare.
The ABCs of Influence
How it fits together
- Start by bringing the right creators into your community and giving them reasons to keep posting.
- When other influencers see creators they respect in the group, they want to join too.
- More creators means more content to test, so you can find more winning videos and scale them as ads.
- Those ads reach more customers and help creators earn more, making the community more attractive and bringing in the next round of creators.
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AAnchor
A celebrity endorsement helps amplify every single influencer marketing effort
When influencers see your brand with celebrities, they want to be a part of the collective.
Influencers were asking $10,000+ a month, and after building a celebrity connection they were receiving $2,500 a month quotes from the same influencers.
Bum Energy signed Chris Bumstead, and creators who had asked for $10,000+ a month came back asking for $2,500.
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BBoxes
Sending personalized gifts which get 50%+ post rates
Creators get 50-plus packages a week, and most are just cardboard boxes that go unnoticed.
Learn how Sugar Bear Hair sent some of the best PR boxes in the industry and had influencers jealous of each other’s PR boxes.
If you were part of the Sugar Bear Hair group, you felt really special, but you had to earn your way in there.
Kent Yoshimura, co-founder of NeuroGum, on SugarBearHair’s creator group -
CCommunity
Nurture all your influencer relationships through an influencer community
This has tons of perks, which incentivizes influencers to keep posting on a much lower flat fee or affiliate structure.
NeuroGum’s Discord began with 500 creators and grew to about 25,000, with trips, dinners, content coaches and calls with the CEO.
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SScale
Take all the new volume of creative that you’re acquiring and run it as ads
You’re able to find winning creators, winning formats, and amplify their reach through ads.
HexClad spends 10% of its budget on influencer and then 90% amplifying it with paid ads.
This program adds on to your existing influencer team
We only work with brands that already have an influencer team.
- 1
We run it with you
We work alongside your creative and paid teams, and handle the logistics, fulfillment, negotiations, contracts and creator management.
- 2
We teach it as we go
We train your team on every system and join your quarterly meetings to report on the KPIs.
- 3
Your team takes it over
After 6 to 18 months, your team runs it without us.
We have specialized consultants across supplements, health & wearables, and beauty.
When brands usually call us
Goal 2
A repositioning or a new audience
Anchor leadsAthletic Greens becoming AG1 and widening from athletes to everyday wellness.
Goal 3
You are about to sign a celebrity
Anchor leads, tested firstNike & Michael Jordan created billions in value, while Adidas & Yeezy lost billions after improper vetting. We test with Sapiens before anyone signs.
Goal 4
Expanding into Europe or Asia
All four, rebuilt locallyA local anchor, local creators and a local community.
Goal 5
Winning one city at a time
Local influencer events, creator dinners, partnerships with clubs and groups, and PR stunts.
Goal 6
Holidays and Black Friday
More hands for the busy weeks, without hiring a stack of people and letting them go after. We’ve helped brands 2 to 3x their Black Friday launches.
Examples
Campaigns we ran, and the step of the system each one shows.
What you get
- Make influencer your main acquisition channel, with the lowest CAC
- Get creators coming to you, and asking for less money
- Keep creators posting all year, without a flat fee every time
- Stop paying $100+ CPMs, by building real relationships with creators
- Put ad money behind the creator content that already works
- Find winning messages faster by testing more creators, hooks and content
- Reduce your team’s workload by handling outreach, gifting, negotiations and community management
- Keep the system in-house with relationships, processes and training your team can use after our engagement ends
Is this you?
Who it’s not for
Who it’s for
Size
Under $100 million a year
Over $100 million a year, spending $1M+ a month on marketing
Product
You solely sell one-time purchase products
You sell a subscription, consumable or repeat-purchase product
Program
This would be your first influencer campaign
You already have an influencer program and a team running it
KPIs
You look solely at 30-day ROAS
You look at all the enterprise marketing KPIs: blended CAC, LTV, payback, brand lift and earned media value
Focus
You’re solely focused on performance marketing
You want PR, earned media value and a household brand
If that isn’t you yet and you still like where this is going, message us and we’ll refer you to another agency or tool.
How it works
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1
We learn about your objectives and your brand
We sit down with your creative team to learn your product and your goal, whether that is a launch into a new market, a mandate to lower CAC or whatever it may be.
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2
We conduct an audit
We look at where your influencer program is at, what you’ve tried, what’s worked and what hasn’t.
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3
We implement a test period
With the data from the audit, we’ll have a clear understanding of what strategies are most effective for scaling your influencer program based on your objectives, and we’ll be able to start implementing it.
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4
Once we reach our short-term KPIs, we’ll be able to continually scale it
We train your team on every system and join your quarterly meetings to report on the KPIs, adjusting as we go until your team runs it without us.
If in doubt, check our free resources
Based on a database of 720,000 analyzed sponsored videos, 6,230 interviews with CMOs and firsthand campaign experience.
Our mission is to let fast-growing, multi-billion dollar brands put a million dollars a month into influencer with the same confidence they already put into paid media
Who we are
We originally started in the media space helping YouTubers improve their content. We know firsthand exactly what it takes to make good content.
YouTubers we helped include Football Fundamental, Ground Glory and Kevin Aquatics, and we helped them implement systems that allow them to earn more.
We started Influencer Advisory around a pretty simple observation that influencer marketing is a fragmented industry.
After being in the influencer agency space, we noticed that it’s fragmented, unreliable and inconsistent, which is why it doesn’t actually become a staple marketing channel for most brands.
That’s what led us down the rabbit hole of looking through 6,200 plus interviews with CMOs, running campaigns for 55 plus brands, and learning what actually works in the influencer space.
Get a free audit of your influencer program
FAQs
We already have an influencer team and a paid team. Where do you fit in?
That’s who we work with. We help your existing team remove the bottlenecks stopping your program from growing, whether that’s attracting creators, keeping them posting or getting enough strong content into your paid ads. We build and run the systems alongside your team, then train them to take over.
How are you different from other influencer agencies?
We build a program that gets stronger with every campaign. You keep the creators who perform, give them reasons to keep posting and use their best content to reach more customers. We also transfer the relationships and systems to your team so you can keep scaling internally.
How much does it cost?
There are two parts: our fee and the budget for creators, gifting, community activities and paid amplification. The amount depends on what you already have and what you want to achieve. After the audit, we give you a proposal with the scope, costs and KPIs before you commit.
Why does the whole program take 6 to 18 months?
Each step starts with a first term of 3 to 6 months, and the whole program takes 6 to 18 months before your team runs it without us. Launching a campaign is quicker than building a channel your team can keep growing. We need time to recruit creators, find the strongest performers, keep them engaged and build a repeatable content and advertising pipeline. We train your team throughout, with the goal of handing the program over.
Do we need every step of the ABCs system?
No. We start with the gaps in your existing program. If you already attract strong creators but struggle to keep them posting, we may focus on Community. If you have plenty of content but aren’t using it in ads, we may focus on Scale. The audit helps us decide which steps will support your goal.
How do you work with us, step by step?
We learn your objectives, audit your program and propose an initial test with clear KPIs. We use the results to decide what to scale, then build and run the systems alongside your team. As the program develops, we document the processes and train your team to manage it internally.
Who has creative control?
Your team keeps creative direction and approval. We work within your brand guidelines while helping creators make content that feels natural to their audience. We handle the coordination, briefs, negotiations and logistics, with your team involved in key decisions.
How do you handle health claims and FTC compliance?
We build briefs around claims your brand can support, set clear disclosure requirements and review content before it goes live or runs as an ad. We coordinate with your legal and compliance team on approvals and update the guidance as requirements change.
Which KPIs do you measure?
We agree on the KPIs before the test begins. Depending on your goal, these can include blended CAC, payback, sales from creators, repeat purchases, active creators, content output and partnership ad performance. For brand campaigns, we also assess reach and brand lift.
I’m interested, but not ready for an audit. How can I learn more?
Subscribe for our latest videos, read the playbooks on our blog or follow Alice Ksendzova on LinkedIn. You can explore the system and see how it could fit your program before booking a call.