How do you scale your existing influencer program?

You have an influencer program and you are looking to scale it and you want to

Expand your roster with a list of influencers that have a compounding effect, allowing you to decrease your CAC and grow your margin.

Proof

This post will walk you through how the heavyweights like

• Neuro Gum being mentioned on Joe Rogan,
• Chris Williamson with Neutonic.
• AG1 / Athletic Greens: the same podcast hosts, the same reads and the same discount codes running for years.
• Alani Nu and Bloom: influencer-led from day one rather than influencer-adjacent.
• Gymshark: Ben Francis began sending free product to small fitness YouTubers in 2013 and retained many of the same athletes for the better part of a decade.

expanded their influencer marketing to get the lowest possible CAC and have a plethora of returning customers and compounding influencers.

Their success has very little to do with negotiating influencers down to the lowest possible rate or simply finding more of them.

Rather, it was a multi-strategy: build, scale and retain influencers by nurturing real relationships and developing a genuine influencer community, all without throwing money at the wall and seeing what sticks.

So have we run these campaigns? No, we haven't, because we found some of the best campaigns in the world which we haven’t participated in yet, that’s what we want to create for you.

Most agencies will get you a few extra influencers, put a 20% markup on it, and that's it. You may or may not get a return. That's not a reliable path to success.

Or they'll run a campaign: you'll get some increase in sales, then it'll trickle down, and that's the end of the story.

So to give you an example

Before: brand X was using influencer marketing with three times higher CPMs, higher CAC and unreliable results.

After: brand X was getting reliable results, bringing 5 to 10x ROAS, without having to try a completely new strategy.

And we didn't even have to take a big risk, and it took under 8 months.

The difference was that they actually started building relationships with the right influencers, and keeping them.

Breaking belief

Influencers are just one to three month activations. Wrong, because the most successful ones are like Chris.

He partnered at 10K subs and has since grown to 4 million. Guess what? He doesn't raise the price every time he grows.

It stays the same. Partner as a scout, maybe give him some royalties; he's going to do it on commission. That's how you scale.

And he continues to promote it, and the audience knows he's actually authentic because he's done it his whole career.

Example

Airline loyalty: the first flight costs the airline money; the status member is where they make a profit.

Who we are

Most people just think: hey, who are you guys? A small team in Canada and the United States. You guys are not a fancy-office agency.

We started as a YouTube agency, then wanted to help bigger clients with bigger problems, so we moved to brands.

We have now helped a lot of clients. We found health and wellness is where we bring the best results, because of the trust-based need and the extreme scalability of the products, and I've since made a four-step playbook.

1. Celebrity endorsement
2. PR box
3. Community
4. Whitelisting

This is for

• Enterprises that want to save time, money and effort, and want to install the systems so that in 6 to 18 months they can fully scale it internally.
• Brands who want to be leaders in their space with influencer marketing.
• Brands with a long-term mindset (the next three to five years) that want to become an established brand.

So everyone actually does these things, or most of them, but it's not whether you do it, it's how it's done.

Celebrity endorsements

Problem: Imagine you're a fitness creator choosing between two similar brands. One offers a standard sponsorship. The other offers a chance to join a team associated with someone you've followed for years, with opportunities to create content and build relationships within that team.

The BUM example shows how one person can make the rest of your influencer efforts feel 10× easier (that’s why we put it first).

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.

Why?

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.

We help craft that pull by headhunting the perfect celebrity(s) for your group, a multi-step strategic process. This can be a multi-million investment and has to be done wisely.

PR boxes

Imagine a creator receiving 50 packages in a week. Most contain a product, branded packaging and a note saying, “We love your content.”

Once you've identified the right creators, you still need to get their attention.

People hear “PR box” and think of putting a product inside branded packaging. But the detail you put into it matters.

Imagine a creator receiving 50 boxes a week. Most look similar: corporate packaging, a product and a standard note.

Yours needs to stand out before they even open it.

SugarBearHair took this further with elaborate boxes, personalized products and gifts based on things creators had mentioned liking in their own content.

A good signal is when creators see each other's PR boxes and wish they'd received one too.

We help you actually do the research, find the influencers, send them, accommodate them, make sure they join the community. This is a whole process.

We identify people who fit the product and audience, find a relevant reason to approach them, coordinate the gifting, and invite interested creators into the program.

We track what happens after the package arrives, too.

Did they respond? Did they try the product? Did they want to work together?

A gift can open the conversation. It doesn't guarantee a post or a long-term relationship.

That's why the next step matters. Once someone is interested, there needs to be something worth joining.

Building a community

Nurture these communities and set up actually valuable and financially viable deal structures with them.

Private group, monthly creator calls, dinners at events, early access to product, tiers with named perks.

Getting someone interested is only the first step. What do they actually get once they're inside?

Neuro Gum put real perks into its community.

Its Discord originally had around 500 creators, with the head of growth and brand manager directly involved. Creators had a minimum sales target to stay, and the program had different tiers with a visible path to move up.

The benefits included:

• Trips and dinners with other creators.
• Opportunities to meet major celebrity influencers.
• Content coaches, consultants, videographers and photographers.
• Access to production studios.
• 100% commission on a customer's first purchase.
• Exclusive experiences and rewards for top performers.
• Neuro Gum's CEO held quarterly calls with creators. The team sent birthday notes, holiday gifts and personal messages.
• Every new creator also went through a three-hour orientation, which was recorded and tracked in Notion.

That's what running an influencer community involves: taking care of people, bringing them together, getting to know them and investing in their growth.

There were creators with millions of subscribers who still wanted to stay because those perks were valuable to them.

We help you organize the trips, what goes into it, consultants, how to structure it, keep it engaged. We have a community manager. We do all of this, and we remind them that they can post and have the flexibility.

This is one of the ways you build immense goodwill. If you don't do it correctly, you'll just get a bunch of people who will be taking advantage of you. If you do it correctly, you're going to get literally free deliverables and posts out of this.

When creators get value from the relationships, resources and opportunities inside the community, you have more room to discuss:

• Commission-based deals.
• Hybrid deals combining an upfront fee with commission.
• Performance incentives and rewards.

Whitelisting System that Scales

Now this is how you actually scale the entire program: put gas on the little fire and turn it into a roaring fire. Use the influencer organic content to find ideas you can scale through paid ads.

Most brands do whitelisting, but don’t scale it as they have a lack of content, clarity and connection with their influencers.

Now you've built a group of influencers whose audiences are growing. But there's another problem: the organic posts themselves might not generate an amazing return.

The bigger opportunity is using creator content to find what works, then putting paid media behind the winners.

Our offer

So, if you're a health and wellness brand doing over $100 million a year and you want to scale your existing influencer program, here's how we can help.

Give us one goal:

• a product launch,
• a new market,
• a new audience,
• or lowering your customer acquisition cost.

We'll build a 90-day program around and how to use our 4 step system to solve it.

You might be thinking: why not do it in-house? And you will be able to scale this in-house. We will simply be installing the system over 6 to 18 months.

“This isn't going to 10x you in a week. If someone promises that, ask which of their clients from last year is still with them.”

Questions you may be asking

“We already have an influencer team. Where do you fit?”

Your team controls the priorities, budget and approvals. We handle the agreed recruitment, community and content work. Your paid-media team runs the ads, with us coordinating creators, permissions and new content.

“Why wouldn't we build this in-house?”

You can. We add the people and processes to get it running while your team manages the existing program. The first 90 days test the approach.

If we continue, the broader plan is a 6-18-month build and handover, with documentation and training so your team can run it independently.

“How much does it cost?”

The audit is free. Implementation is priced around the scope. Before you commit, we show our fee alongside creator payments, gifting, community activities and ad spend, so you can see the full budget.

This is in fact going to become your biggest customer acquisition channel. So yes, it will cost a lot and you will make a lot from it.

“Do we need a celebrity?”

No. We can start with existing creators, customers and respected people in your category. A bigger name is a separate investment decision.

“How do we measure success?”

We agree on that before starting. For customer acquisition, we include the relevant program costs when calculating CAC and compare attributed results with wider sales data. We also track active creators, usable content and paid-test results.

“How much work does our team need to do?”

We need a point of contact, relevant data and timely approvals. We handle the agreed day-to-day work and bring your team the decisions that need their input.

“What if the first tests don't work?”

We review the creators, content and offer before spending more. We change what the evidence supports and stop approaches that don't justify further investment.

We’re offering this to qualified brands planning their Q4 growth. Click the link below, apply for your free audit, and tell us the one thing you want your influencer program to accomplish next.