Influencer AdvisoryHow do health and wellness brands make influencer their main acquisition channel?
Founder · September 26, 2026 · 34 min read
NeuroGum built a community of 500 influencers who kept posting about the brand without being paid for every single post.
Which brands made influencer their main channel?
SugarBearHair didn't need thousands of cold outreaches.
Creators outside the program were asking the ones inside to help them get in.
Bum Energy watched the same influencers who had been quoting them premium rates come back and drop those quotes by 75%.
HexClad's head of influencer, Jason Panzer, said running whitelisted ads with Gordon Ramsay has been successful in driving up their sales.
HexClad puts 90% of its influencer budget into running creator content as ads, and only 10% into the creator's fee.
Those ads convert better than their other ads, which is what put multiples on their sales.
What these three brands have in common is that influencer marketing became one of their biggest and most profitable ways of acquiring customers, instead of a side project they tested once a quarter.
Most programs look like the chart on the left, where the same handful of creators post every month until the whole thing stalls.
Theirs looked like the chart on the right, where every round brought in more creators than the last one and the results kept compounding.
Who is this for?
If you want to make influencer their primary customer acquisition channel, and the one with the lowest CAC, this is where we show you what the most successful brands are doing in 2026 and into 2027.
The end state we are building toward is simple to describe, which is that you can put a million dollars a month into influencer with the same confidence you already put into paid media.
To be clear about who this is for, it is built for health and wellness brands doing over $100 million a year and spending $1 million or more a month on marketing, who already run an influencer program and want to scale it.
If that isn't you yet, stay anyway, because about 90% of what follows will still apply to your brand.
Why does influencer stay a side channel?
Blog post: https://influenceradvisory.com/blog/how-to-scale-an-existing-influencer-program/
For most brands influencer marketing is a side channel: influencer marketing gets roughly 2.5-3% of the marketing budget (from emarketer), despite its ability to bring the best conversions, the best leads, and build perpetual brand value.
Unilever is moving 50% of its media spend into social and working with 20 times more creators (PRWeek, March 2025), and XYXX now puts 45% of its marketing budget into creators, up from 20% a year earlier (Storyboard18).
So we asked 50+ health and wellness brands and found these to be reasons they can’t scale:
- The first answer is that they keep paying more for the same results, because every post needs a flat fee and creators only post when they are paid.
- The second answer is that a few creators drive almost all of their sales, since they have already saturated the creators they know, the new ones are either overpriced or don't perform, and every campaign feels like starting from zero.
- The third answer is that influencer is still a side channel sitting next to Meta, and even though they want it to become a main acquisition channel with a lower CAC, it never gets big enough to matter.
- Thousands of cold outreaches.
- Onboarding creators only to find 80% don't perform.
- Churning onto the next influencers after three months of saturating their audience.
- The relationship never gets past a transaction, and that's why influencer stays a side channel.
Who are we?
- I'm Dennis, and I handle partnerships at Influencer Advisory, the influencer ambassador agency Alice founded in 2020.
- What we do is bring on influencers who work as a hybrid of short-term media buying and long-term affiliates.
Falicia leads creator sourcing, and around the four of us sits a group of specialized consultants across supplements, health and wearables, and beauty, which makes us a small, hyper-specialized team working across Canada and the United States.
How did we find out the hard way?
We are not a traditional talent agency or influencer agency, and the reason we can say that with so much confidence is that we used to be both.
We ran both models for real, and both of them hit the same wall.
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.
The creators who said yes usually had one of two problems, because either their CPM was far too high to make the math work, or they were happy to do it but their views were too small to be worth the effort.
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.
Many of them weren't even interested in the product, so the results were inconsistent from one campaign to the next.
We've run campaigns for more than 50 brands, and more than 70% of them stayed with us past 90 days.
What all those campaigns taught us is that one great campaign is easy to get, and it still leaves you starting from zero next quarter.
So instead of selling more one-off campaigns, we took the pieces we had already proven in our own work and started putting them together into one system.
We ran those pieces across fintech, SaaS and consumer brands, and we chose health and wellness because subscription and repeat-purchase products are where this pays back the most.
To build it properly, we needed to see how the biggest brands run it from the inside.
Where did the playbook come from?
So we went looking for how the best brands actually do it, and we got deep in the weeds with the CMO of AG1, the CEO of Onnit and the CMO of Feastables.
Then we built the data to back up what they told us, and today we track more than 160,000 top-performing creators across millions of data points.
That data is what lets you make far fewer wrong choices, and it is the foundation of the system you are about to see.
Does what worked ten years ago still work?
- Myth busting: you can do the same thing you used to do five years ago.
- We saw this worked for brands like AG1, who were early to YouTube sponsorships and started in 2016.
- Starting now, though, requires a different strategy.
- A lot of people have yet to realize this because they're still getting some results, but they are diminishing year over year.
- Hey, now you can still see them sponsoring videos, so you might think, okay, great, it's working out.
- But that's because they built the relationships five years ago, so they're not paying the same rates that you would today.
The ABCs of Influence: Anchor (celebrity), Boxes, Community, Scale (whitelisting)
- We're not replacing your team because we only work with people who already have teams.
- In fact, we help install the systems, teach you the systems, so that way after 6 to 18 months, you can scale this internally to the moon.
- First, we bring on one big name in your space. Once other creators see someone they admire working with you, they want in, and they often ask for less money to do it.
- Second, we send standout, personalized gifts to the right creators, so they notice you and want to be part of what you're building.
- Third, we invite those creators into a private community with real perks, so they keep posting all year instead of charging you a flat fee every time.
- Fourth, because you now have far more creator content than before, we run it as paid ads, find the winners and put more budget behind them.
- Put together, the anchor gets creators interested, the boxes get their attention, the community keeps them posting, and scale puts ad money behind what is already working.
- Each step also answers one of the three problems from earlier, since the anchor and the community stop you paying more for the same results, the boxes and the community end your dependence on a few creators, and scale makes influencer big enough to sit next to Meta.
At this point you are probably thinking that you already do some of this, and for most brands that is true.
The real question is how much of it you do and how well you do it, which is why every engagement starts with an audit of how far you already go on each step.
If you are wondering whether you can do just one step, the answer is yes, and the audit is what tells us whether one step makes sense and which one it should be.
The system also works well alongside strategies you may already be running, like TikTok Shop.
A is for Anchor: why sign a celebrity first?
Blog post: https://influenceradvisory.com/blog/celebrity-endorsement-partnerships-guide/
- a lot of influencers don't know who you are, most of them won't want to work with you, and the real problem underneath that is that you haven't built big brand associations yet.
- You might already be running celebrities, and there are many more celebrities you could partner with.
What happened at Bum Energy after Chris Bumstead?
- Before securing Chris Bumstead, who had more than 25 million followers, the team was getting quotes of $10,000+ a month from influencers.
- After Chris came on board, some of those same influencers came back offering to take $2,500.
"If you have a good face for the brand, other influencers want to be a part of it for way less money. When we were trying to go get influencers before Chris, they were asking for all kinds of crazy numbers. I want 6,000 a month. I want 7,000 a month. I want 10,000 a month." Dom Iacovone, CEO of The Quality Group Americas, at 38:25, on Open Residency.
- That's what an anchor buys you: leverage a rate card can't give you.
Why does it work?
- That's because influencers take inspiration from other influencers.
- They want to work alongside people they admire and be part of a bigger team.
- A brand mission alone doesn't always create that same pull.
How do we pick the celebrity?
- We help craft that pull by headhunting the perfect celebrities for your group, a multi-step strategic process.
- This can be a multi-million investment and has to be done wisely.
- Nike and Michael Jordan created billions in value with a royalty deal.
- Adidas and Yeezy destroyed billions.
The difference was the vetting done before anyone signed.
Get the vetting right, and the next name is easier to sign for less money.
Get it wrong, and it costs you the brand.
We are specialists in this based on LA, NYC, miami to talent agent hotspots
Great.
Now that you have more leverage in every part of influencer, we're able to go and start nurturing some of the influencer leads.
The problem is reaching two hundred people without it reading like a cold pitch.
That is what the boxes are for.
B is for Boxes: why do most PR boxes get ignored?
- Most brands are doing seeding, so content creators on average are receiving 50-plus packages per week.
- Most just contain a bunch of products.
- Some might be limited edition.
- Creators don't really pay attention (at least the good creators that you want posting).
What does a box that gets noticed hold?
- So we need a system to send better PR boxes.
- One of the best things to do is not personalize it just with exclusive products, but with actual gifts that relate to what the influencer said in a video five years ago.
What did SugarBearHair do?
Blog post: https://influenceradvisory.com/blog/sugarbearhair-influencer-marketing-strategy/
- SugarBearHair sent the nicest box in the pile.
"He made the influencers almost jealous of each other because he would send the nicest box to them. 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 Neuro Gum, on Open Residency.
- One creator outside the program had to ask another member to get them in.
- What he wanted was passes to Coachella.
- The brand said yes.
- A good signal is when creators see each other's PR boxes and wish they'd received one too.
How do we do it at scale?
- It's a lot of research, and doing these personalized gifts at scale can be very taxing.
- That's why we coordinate the whole process: finding the influencer, finding their interest, getting the information, crafting the box, and sending it.
- We send it in a way that also creates PR publicity.
- And we have systems which have allowed this to scale really well, especially for health and wellness products.
- And when you have a system that scales, this will greatly increase the chance of creators getting back to you.
- It will build stronger relationships with creators.
- Now you have a shortlist of people who like you for free, and nowhere to put them yet.
- That is the community.
C is for Community: what happens after the box lands?
"People come to me and say, dude, I sent 5,000 samples out to all these creators and I got five responses and five videos. It didn't work. I made $20,000 on TikTok and I don't know how to scale this. It's not just sending them product and hoping." Kent Yoshimura, co-founder of Neuro Gum, at 9:15, on Open Residency.
- Sending product and hoping was never a community.
- What happens after the box lands is the whole job.
Why not flat fees or affiliate deals?
Blog post: https://influenceradvisory.com/blog/influencer-ambassador-program-vs-flat-fees/
- Okay, so now that you're getting a lot of attention, what do you do?
- If you pay influencers flat fees, you're going to go through a lot of risk.
- Especially for macro influencers charging 50k per post, how many posts can you really get out?
- And if you propose affiliate deals, well, you're gonna get turned down by every good influencer, because they're always getting affiliate deals.
How do you warm creators up?
- So you need a way of warming up influencers.
- You need a way of getting them to like your brand first before even making them an offer.
- If you've done a good job with the PR boxes and you have good brand association, you will get a lot of influencers who want to join the community.
- Now this will have a snowball effect because when more and more influencers join, more influencers want to be a part of it.
What did NeuroGum's community look like?
- If you do a good job putting really good perks in your community, like NeuroGum, you'll actually have creators who go out of their way, really good creators, to post for free.
- You can negotiate hybrid deals more comfortably, and there's a lot more flexibility.
- One creator email in our own inbox shows exactly that gap: a flat fee sitting right next to an affiliate link doing real work.
- The head of growth and brand manager were directly involved.
- Creators had a minimum sales target to stay, and the program had different tiers with a visible path to move up.
- The team sent birthday notes, holiday gifts and personal messages.
- It was recorded and tracked in Notion.
Who keeps it alive?
We help you organize the trips, what goes into them, the consultants, how to structure it and how to keep it engaged.
We have a community manager.
Now, most communities are just dead, with people inside and no one communicating.
That's why it's really important to have a community manager who actively understands how to create engagement.
That's how you get influential voices to stay and be a part of it.
This is one of the ways you build immense goodwill.
If you do it correctly, you're going to get literally free deliverables and posts out of this.
That is the community working without anyone being paid to say a word.
Okay, great.
So you have a good source of influencers.
You're now confident.
You're able to scale a lot of it.
Now, what it comes down to is putting gas on the fire and amplifying everything.
That is whitelisting.
S is for Scale: why does whitelisting stall for most brands?
Blog post: https://influenceradvisory.com/blog/influencer-paid-amplification-tips/
- Most brands have done whitelisting with influencers, but they haven't had nearly enough volume, as well as consistent creative, to use.
Why does HexClad put 90% into whitelisting?
- The head of growth at HexClad, a multi-hundred-million-dollar company, puts 90% of the influencer budget into the whitelisted content and 10% into the organic fee, paying the influencer.
- So if they spend 10K on an influencer, they spend 100K on whitelisting, and that's because that stretches so much further.
- The goal is just to break even on organic content.
- Whitelisting is what really put multiples on their sales, because your conversion rate is so much higher than other ads.
- That's how you put gas on the fire and really scale to millions on influencer-led ads.
"We typically see higher incrementality factors from something like partnership ads than we do our brand page ads." Conor MacDonald, CMO of Ridge, on Marketing Operators.
Why does it fail?
The catch is that only about 1 in 5 creator ads becomes a winner, and winners fatigue after about 36 days (Agentio, 65,000 ads).
Since Meta's Andromeda update, advertisers are running 15 to 25 or more genuinely different creatives per ad set, and near-duplicates get treated as a single ad.
Most brands simply don't have that volume, so they either take the one organic post or pay for usage rights that can double or triple a creator's base rate (Gigapay 2026 rate benchmarks).
How do steps 1 to 3 fix it?
With the first three steps in place, you have the relationships to get whitelisting rights at a heavy discount and enough hooks, variations and volume for Meta's Andromeda to find the winners.
We hand that pipeline straight to your paid team, so your Meta ads get more efficient at the same time.
Which step leads for your goal?
The four steps themselves never change, and what changes from brand to brand is which step leads, depending on what you need next.
If you have just landed a major retailer, Boxes and Scale lead, which means you seed hard around the launch window and then whitelist the best content to the areas where you are on shelf, because new retail placements have to prove sell-through fast or you risk losing the shelf.
If you are repositioning, the Anchor leads, because a new face tells a new audience that the brand is now for them.
That is the kind of shift AG1 made when Athletic Greens became AG1 and widened from athletes to everyday wellness.
If you are about to sign a celebrity, the Anchor still leads, but it gets tested first, which means taking the Jordan versus Yeezy decision from Step 1 and running it past your audience through Sapiens before anyone signs anything.
If you are expanding into Europe or Asia, you rebuild all four steps locally, with a local anchor, local creators and a local community.
Who is it for, and who is it not for?
- We focus only on health and wellness enterprises, because that's where we bring the most value.
- The people who usually say yes are the brand director, head of social or partnerships manager running the influencer program day to day.
- This is for you if you are a health and wellness brand doing over $100 million a year with $1 million or more a month in marketing spend, and you sell a subscription, consumable or repeat-purchase product, so a customer is worth far more than one order.
- It is also for you if you already have an influencer program with a team running it, you have found Meta ad formats that work and want whitelisted creator content to make them more efficient, and you measure blended CAC, LTV and a 365-day payback rather than just the first order.
This is not for you if you are under $100 million a year or this would be your first influencer campaign, if you judge influencer purely on 7-day ROAS, or if you sell one-time purchase products or sit outside health and wellness.
If that describes you and you still like where this is going, message us and we will happily refer you to another agency or tool.
Why us?
Every part of how we work maps to one of the four steps.
- For the Anchor, we have relationships with talent teams at agencies like CAA and WME, built through time on the ground in LA, New York and Toronto, which is how we negotiate better rates and exclusive partnerships.
- For the Boxes, we have more than 160,000 tracked creators and an ecosystem built only in health and wellness, so the boxes reach the right people.
- For the Community, we bring a dedicated community manager and a playbook for trips, perks and local events, and for Scale, we build a whitelisting pipeline designed to plug straight into your paid team.
Behind all four sit our specialized consultants across supplements, health and wearables, and beauty.
How does it work?
- Before any money changes hands, we sit down with your creative team to learn your product, your story and your goal, whether that is a launch, a new market, a new audience or a lower CAC.
- Then we audit how far you already go on each of the four steps and find the gaps. For big plays like a celebrity signing, we test with Sapiens before you commit.
- Next we install the relationships and systems alongside your creative and paid teams, and we handle the logistics, fulfillment, negotiations, contracts and creator management.
- Finally, 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.
The systems work best together, because if you leave one out, something breaks, and you either overpay for influencers, lose their trust, or waste the content they make.
How much does it cost?
The golden question is: how much will it cost?
And we tell clients or prospects: to get a new acquisition channel bringing in tens and hundreds of millions of dollars: to invest into more celebrity partnerships, send and develop the system for sending mass personalized PR boxes, build, foster and maintain a community of loyal influencers, and put budget in paid ads with influencer content that bring you a ROAS that puts multiples on your existing one.
At minimum, it will cost you $250,000 - in the actual marketing expenses
- You can do the math.
- Now, it's hard for us to give numbers before the audit.
- However, our campaigns are for enterprises.
What do brands ask us?
What if we already have a team?
- Great, that's the only kind of client we take.
- We come in where you've hit bottlenecks: creative, systems, or relationships.
How is this different from another influencer agency?
Most agencies run campaigns for you forever, whereas we install the system and hand it to your team, and we only work in health and wellness, across all four steps rather than just creator outreach.
What about health claims and the FTC?
- Every brief carries the claims you can back up, and we review content before it posts and before it runs as an ad.
- That's how our team caught a line on a Rumble video the FTC could have come after, and had it re-filmed before it went out.
What if our performance team judges everything on ROAS?
If that is your performance team, Step 4 was built for them, because partnership ads beat the same creator content run from a brand account on click-through, conversion rate and cost per acquisition (Agentio).
We also agree on blended CAC and LTV up front, so the long-term value of the program actually gets counted.
What is creative control like?
- You keep creative direction.
- We work alongside your creative team.
Do we need every step?
- Not always.
- The audit tells you which steps you need.
Which KPIs?
- It depends on your goal: brand valuation, cash flow, CAC or otherwise.
- We set them together in the audit.
What is the next step?
We are offering this to qualified brands that are planning their next quarter of growth.
On the audit, we will map how far you already go on each of the four steps and which goal to point the system at first, so click the link below, apply for your free audit, and tell us the one thing you want your influencer program to accomplish next.