Influencer Advisory™What does an influencer marketing consultant do?
An influencer marketing consultant should build a system that keeps your best creators posting. Here's what that takes, what it costs, and what goes wrong.
Founder · November 10, 2026 · 3 min read
Hire a consultant who builds you a system. Seed product at scale, turn the winners into affiliates, and put your top performers on long term retainers. Single campaigns are rent, like Meta ads. (Operators Podcast)
Instead of treating creators as media placements, you're taking care of them, bringing them together, getting to know them and investing in their growth.
Bloom as a brand over the last 6 years cumulatively has spent 150 million plus on influencer marketing which by the way the value that would cost today on a CPM basis is like easily double that.
Bloom Nutrition
What work does an influencer marketing specialist handle?
Build a program that runs all year.
The traditional route is pretty straightforward: mass outreach, onboard a few influencers, run the campaigns, then repeat the process.
This is how most brands do influencer marketing, and that's why it stays a side channel for them and not a main channel. A nice to have rather than a great customer acquisition system.
Upon looking further, we found that for most companies, influencer was a really small channel. It was a nice to have. It brought in a few percent extra in revenue. But if turned off tomorrow, it would make no tangible difference in the company.
Teami Blends has seven full time staff on influencer alone. They find creators, reach out, manage what gets delivered and schedule the posts. (Teami Blends)
- For mid market Shopify Plus brands, one operator says seed heavily whatever the product costs. Even with a $600 product, send one a month. (eCommerce Fastlane)
Once you know the work, the next question is what to spend on it.
How much should I spend on influencer marketing?
Commit a real budget for at least a year.
Out of every 100 marketing dollars a brand spends, only about 3 go to influencer.
Net influencer suggests testing with 3% to 6% of your full marketing budget for a year. Then move to 8% to 15% to keep it steady. (Net influencer)
VENDO has a simple rule. If you will not commit to at least three posts with a creator, do not work with them. (VENDO, a PLTFRM Company)
- Ridge puts 10% to 20% of its marketing budget into influencer, mostly on YouTube. (The Bottom Line)
The Marketing Operators podcast discussed a model where roughly 10% of the investment goes toward the organic creator content and 90% goes toward amplifying that content through paid ads.
Money alone will not fix it if the same creators wear out their audience.
Why do influencer campaigns stop working?
Keep the top performers and bring creators together.
80% of the creators you onboard don't perform, and you only find out after paying them.
Alexander Frolov says to drop creators who post late and underperform. Build long term deals with the top 10 to 20%. (Alexander Frolov)
Turn the winners into paid UGC creators. Keep a roster of the best performers.
- To get free posts and run a campaign with 20 plus influencers. Just invite them out to dinner. Typically, you can just do this in hotspot cities, Toronto, New York City, LA, Miami.
Do this every quarter and creators start coming to you.
Can an agency run this for my brand?
This takes people, time and steady work, and that is the part we take off your plate.
Keep creators posting all year, without a flat fee every time.
If you have some of the steps in place, we audit what's missing in each and how to take it further.