How we make revenue with influencers

Who we are

A small team that treats you like more than a number

We are a small team, with members in Canada, Spain, South Africa, and Australia. We cover multiple continents across multiple time zones. Because we are small, you get a lot of care. You are never just a number to us.

Our primary customers are Direct-to-Consumer and e-commerce brands that sell regulated products, many based in the United States and Europe, including:

• ✓Cannabis & cannabinoids: dispensaries, hemp, CBD, Delta-8/9, THC-A.
• ✓Sexual & hormonal health: sexual wellness, ED, TRT, hormone therapy/testing, peptides.
• ✓Telehealth & online pharmacy: online prescriptions, pharmacy services, weight-loss/GLP-1 programs.
• ✓Supplements: nutraceuticals, supplements, nootropics.
• ✓Age-gated products: alcohol/wine/spirits, vape, nicotine pouches.

Some of our clients include Bluechew, XIX vodka, Resbiotic, and more.

By the numbers

The roster and track record behind every campaign

You get the care of a small team with the reach of a large one. Here is the scale we draw from when we build your roster.

Source: From our own roster, client records, and partner agencies in Toronto and the US.

1. Advertise in regulated markets

Reach audiences in regulated markets with influencers

Reach audiences in regulated markets. One non-compliant influencer post can mean a fine, a banned account, and reputation loss. Our job, 8 hours a day for 2+ years, has been ensuring that every platform policy, government policy, and state policy is adhered to, so you never risk any compliance issues.

We have been very creative with how we create sponsored videos, especially for extremely regulated products. Examples:

2. Get found and convert

Get found by customers and get more conversions

Influencers are one of the warmest touchpoints and can help convert many people who have seen and heard about you but have not yet bought any products.

Example of how influencers can fit into the funnel:

• 1.TikTok video: they see an influencer use the product in a video.
• 2.Instagram ad: a few days later, they see an ad showing before/after results or reviews.
• 3.Google search: they search the brand name because they are curious.
• 4.Website visit: they click the site, read the product page, but do not buy yet.
• 5.Retargeting ad: later, they see another ad with that same influencer.
• 6.Email/SMS offer: they get 10% off after signing up.
• 7.Review/social proof: they see the influencer UGC on the product page.
• 8.Purchase: they finally buy.

3. Grow repeat revenue

Grow repeat revenue from existing customers

Persuade your existing clientele to buy more of your products and buy them more often. It is easier to sell more to your existing customers than it is to acquire customers from scratch.

Example: Gorilla Mind x More Plates More Dates. This is the same company sponsoring the same creator with different products. Some people buy off the first video, but many will not actually need that first product, they will need another one. That is where repeat sponsorships come in especially handy, particularly if you have more than one product.

Note: they also use different creatives and different value propositions in different sponsored videos to resonate with different parts of this creator's audience.

3. Grow repeat revenue

Gorilla Mind, the same creator, different products

4. Expand to new countries

Expand product lines to new countries and overseas

We help brands use influencers in different regions when expanding their product lines, following the rules in every new market. We specialize in North American, European, and Asian markets. When using influencers, it is a way to fast-track your product's growth in the new region.

Example: NordVPN runs the same offer through local-language creators, market by market.

What we have seen

The cost of getting compliance wrong

• ✓84% of brands in regulated categories fail FTC compliance, and they only realize when they get audited.
• ✓$53,088 per violation is the FTC civil penalty cap for a single non-compliant endorsement, and it rises every year as regulations become stricter. If there are multiple violations in one campaign with different influencers, this could create a seven, eight, or nine-figure liability.

Even if you think you are complying with every requirement, you can still run into issues, just like these brands did:

What we have seen

Brands that ran into issues anyway

• ✓Teami, a weight loss tea brand, faced a $15.2 million judgment from the FTC. They claimed their tea fights cancer and they paid Cardi B to post about it without a clear ad label. The FTC even warned the influencers directly. The rule is that "#ad" has to be visible at the top, not buried, and both the brand and the creator can be held responsible.
• ✓JUUL, the vape company, paid a $462 million settlement in 2023, part of more than a billion dollars total, for accidentally marketing addictive nicotine that fell into the eyes of young people. They are now banned from using influencers at all.
• ✓Curaleaf, a CBD company, got a public FDA warning in 2019 for claiming its products treat cancer and Alzheimer's. There was no fine, but the stock still dropped about 7 percent and has since seen a downfall. Certain words could indicate that you are claiming a treatment, which must be avoided.
• ✓GoodRx, a prescription discount company, was fined $1.5 million by the FTC in 2023. The problem was not what they said in an ad, it was tracking. Custom landing pages from the influencers contained Facebook and Google pixels that unknowingly leaked customer health data to advertisers. The rule is that the tracking code behind your post is a compliance risk too, even if your caption is clean.
• ✓Health Formulas (Simple Pure), a male-enhancement and supplement seller, forfeited about $9.2 million in assets, including a Ferrari, to settle an FTC court action over unsupported product claims and charging customers without their consent through hidden recurring billing. The rule is that the offer and the checkout flow behind a sponsored post are part of compliance too.

The challenge

Why influencer marketing is tricky in regulated markets

• ✓Influencers have to use very specific language and avoid claims that seem harmless. Many influencers will say things that sound fine but could still end up getting your company into legal trouble down the line. As specialists, we handle the process of creating the advert from end to end and ensure it complies with all regulations.
• ✓Many influencers do not want to promote regulated products, even if they like using the product, because they are scared of getting their accounts banned. We have a system that finds and nurtures creators, and identifies which are already using your product.
• ✓Many influencers go off-script accidentally or work from a weak creative brief. The consequences do not always show up now, and fines can land years later, and they compound.

Note: these challenges actually work in your favour. The harder the market is to advertise in, the less competition you will face, which makes it easier to reach unsaturated markets.

Our approach

We found that the typical way of doing influencer marketing is not very efficient

So instead, we developed two approaches to make influencers as consistent and predictable as ads and as profitable as organic content:

• 1.By using top of funnel, middle, and bottom of funnel influencers.
• 2.By finding influencer ambassadors instead of regular influencers.

The next sections explain them.

Approach #1

Many brands miss a huge share of influencers by only using bottom-of-funnel influencers

Let us explain. This is a common concept of influencers, but most people do not apply it. Most marketers only focus on bottom-funnel influencers. For example, a hair loss brand will only sponsor influencers who talk about hair loss and they are losing a huge percentage of the market by doing this.

We break it down into three different levels. As you go up the funnel, the volume will increase, and the conversion rate will decrease. And vice versa, as you go down the funnel, you will get lower volume but conversion rate will increase. A combination of both is the best way to capture as many consumers as possible.

Funnel levels

Example: a DTC brand selling a hair loss serum to people who want to prevent their own hair loss

Here is how we would sponsor influencers at each level, and the advantages and disadvantages of each.

A combination of all is typically an effective strategy.

Funnel levels

The creator funnel at a glance

Top, middle and bottom of funnel creators mapped to volume and conversion. A combination of all is typically an effective strategy.

Approach #2

Why most influencer partnerships are built to fail, and how we avoid it with influencer ambassadors

This concept is very important. We have saved lots of dollars with these principles. We learned it the hard way through trial and error, so now you do not have to.

Why upmarket wins

Going bottom-of-funnel usually means competing head-to-head with your competitors

Depending on the space, going bottom-of-funnel usually means fighting your competitors for the same audience. We consistently find that moving upmarket to mid-funnel creators reaches people who have not heard of your brand yet, so you are not fighting your competitors for the same audience.

How it works

A high-level overview of how we run your campaign

The first half: getting set up and choosing the right creators.

• 1.We learn your value propositions and the exact outcome you want for this campaign.
• 2.We confirm which states and countries you are licensed to sell and ship in, and which to exclude.
• 3.We map the local rules and regulatory landscape, using each influencer's audience-location data, especially on Instagram and TikTok.
• 4.We present a vetted list of influencers from our premium roster and adjacent partners.

How it works

How we run your campaign, continued

The second half: building the ads, tracking results, and scaling the winners.

• 5.We collaborate with your team to emphasize your value propositions while we build compliance with all platform and government regulations into every creative brief. We review every single ad before it goes live to avoid any compliance issues.
• 6.We make sure attribution is set up accurately via coupon code or UTM link, which lets us directly see how many customers come in through which exact influencers and how many keep buying.
• 7.After the test campaign, we analyze whether the KPIs were met. For example: was CPA reduced, what was the CPM of the influencers, which ones brought the best results?
• 8.We follow the 85/15 rule: we re-use the top 85% of influencers and try 15% new ones month over month. For the top performers we acquire whitelisting rights and run their integrations as Meta/TikTok advertisements. This tends to work really well for scaling a product that is already good.

The 5-C System

We built the 5-C System around advertising with influencers for brands, to avoid this 100% of the time

Chart, Cast, Comply, Convert, Compound

• ✓Chart. Map your licensed states and countries, your audience, and the regulatory landscape before a single creator is chosen.
• ✓Cast. Select ambassadors on audience-fit data, not gut feel, and confirm they already reach the people who buy what you sell.
• ✓Comply. Review every script against federal, state, and platform rules, and check every ad before it goes live.
• ✓Convert. Set up coupon-code and UTM tracking so every sale ties back to the exact creator that drove it.
• ✓Compound. Keep the winners, whitelist their best content as ads, and reinvest month over month so results build on themselves.

See the 5-C System applied end to end in the Mood influencer campaign analysis.

Why the model works

The results our brands see

These come straight from our own campaigns and the brands we run them for. Influencer ambassadors are the closest paid version of a personal recommendation, and the numbers show why that matters.

Across our own ambassador programs we have also seen return on ad spend lift 2 to 3 times, and a recent program drove 2.2 times the customers in 30 days for a San Francisco brand.

Source: From our own campaigns, client records, and partner agencies in Toronto and the US. Past results vary by brand, offer, and category.

Lower CAC

A lower CAC, and an audience your ads cannot buy

Paid ads plateau: as you spend more, CAC climbs until the math breaks. A TRT clinic at $170 CAC on a $150 AOV cannot scale, it costs more to win a customer than they are worth. Lowering CAC is the only fix.

Influencers do two things ads cannot: convert warm traffic better, and reach people your targeting never touches. Churn drops too, a trusted recommendation buys patience, so customers stay long enough to see results.

The phenomenon when you scale your ad spend is that every single lead and customer you get costs more, causing your CAC to increase. Our influencer ambassadors help mitigate this.

Lower CAC

What rising ad spend does to your CAC

As paid ad spend climbs, your cost to acquire a customer climbs with it; influencer reach pulls in audiences those ads cannot.

Whitelisting

Lower CAC than ads by whitelisting

Once a creator performs, double down:

• ✓Whitelist the winners. Run top-performing creator content as ads under their handle, warm, trusted creative at a lower CAC than your standard ads.
• ✓Retarget with influencer creative. Re-serve that content to people who have already engaged, and conversions climb again.

Whitelisting example

A creator who promoted C4 Energy

Whitelisting example of an influencer who promoted C4 Energy. The organic video did really well, so they got usage rights and ran it from their handle. As well as the influencers, they ran it as a dark ad on Instagram. The ad as it ran is on the left; click the video on the right to play it:

More examples

More examples of whitelisting

Here are some more examples of organic content that was converted into ads. It lets you scale and reach more people, especially when a video does well and it's got good average view retention:

Evergreen reach

Increase conversions

Most channels make you pay for traffic every time. An evergreen YouTube video is different, you pay once, and it keeps pulling organic views for months.

This only works with evergreen creators, and only on YouTube, not Instagram or TikTok. This is because these platforms show content on a scroll basis, which is random, versus YouTube, which is intent and question focused.

It is also the reason conversions are better on YouTube: consumers have a problem they are searching for. YouTube is a search engine, after all. That is why YouTube integrations tend to be more expensive.

Note: this is a math game. As with most marketing, we simply use the data to make the decisions.

Evergreen reach

One YouTube video keeps earning views

You pay once, and an evergreen YouTube video keeps pulling organic views for months.

Market share

Take market share, and create new market share

You are probably running the same channels as your competitors, and some of them are already using influencers. The difference-maker is going full-funnel, including top, middle, and bottom, instead of fighting over bottom-of-funnel like everyone else. That is how you become the go-to brand in your category.

In a regulated industry

Create a sponsored video that will not get taken down, fined, or warned

Create a sponsored video that will not get taken down and that will not end up in huge fines and warning letters. We do this with a variety of techniques we have developed, such as:

• ✓Reviewing the script against federal and local regulations, as well as platform rules, to ensure no part breaks any laws.
• ✓Thorough data vetting to make sure all the influencers have the target location(s) and the target age.
• ✓Bringing on ambassadors we are connected to, and using our gifting program to make them loyal to the brand before promoting it.
• ✓And much more. It has been our job 8 hours a day for 2+ years :)

Talent

Our collection of top performing talent

Note: when we are pairing your brand with influencers, we choose from a much bigger list. We may find that none of these influencers match your criteria, and that is okay, because we have a much bigger roster that is not shown here.

We line up the inputs

Any influencer agency that guarantees views and conversions is lying to you

No one can predict the social media algorithms. Instead, we focus on lining up the inputs, such as:

• ✓Finding influencers who have your target audience: the people who would genuinely find your product useful, and who have the purchasing power to buy it.
• ✓How many influencers have received repeat sponsorships from brands, both from our own clients and from influencers across every platform.
• ✓When the channels leaving comments were created, so we can confirm they are authentic, not just bought fake followers.
• ✓How many people ask questions in the comments and turn to the channel for education. This signals an audience with typically higher purchasing power that is willing to invest in premium products.
• ✓Which influencers have performed well for brands in the past.
• ✓And much more.

We take the risk

We take the risk for the things we control

• ✓Rules promise: if an ad we okayed gets taken down for a rule we missed, we redo it free.
• ✓Swap promise: each month, we keep the creators who work and swap out the ones who do not, at no extra cost.
• ✓Quality promise: we check every script against the rules in the US, Canada, and Europe, plus the rules on Facebook, YouTube, and TikTok. We check every ad before it goes live.

Contract template

General contract