Creators who sell, not just post.

Four things, in order: casting, contracting, creative and measurement. Casting is research into whose audience matches your buyer. Contracting secures deliverables and, crucially, usage rights. Creative means briefing the claim and the proof while leaving voice and format to the creator. Measurement is codes, links, survey questions and, where budgets justify it, a geo test. A good engagement leaves you with content you own, relationships in your name, and a clear read on which partnerships pay — and it should make your in-house team more capable, not more dependent.

Enough to run a cohort rather than a single post, because one partnership is a lottery ticket and five is a test. Rates depend far more on deliverables and usage rights than on follower count: a nano creator with a genuinely local audience can cost a few hundred dollars, while exclusivity and twelve months of paid usage on a mid-tier creator will run into thousands. We build the plan against your acquisition targets and show the numbers before you commit, and we would rather start with a smaller, well-measured round than spend a quarter's budget on one unrepeatable campaign.

Often, though the honest answer is that it depends on the job. Smaller creators tend to have closer relationships with their following, cost less per piece of content, and are more willing to make something specific to your product — which is why they usually win on cost per acquisition. Large accounts still earn their place when the goal is reach in a short window, or when the association itself is the point. Our default is a portfolio: a base of smaller creators producing volume you can test, plus selective bigger partnerships when there is something to launch.

With several imperfect lenses read together, because no single one is reliable. Every partner gets a unique code and link. Where you can, a post-purchase survey asks buyers where they heard about you, which catches the demand a code never sees. Platform figures are treated as directional. When the spend is large enough, we run a geo holdout so the question of incrementality gets an actual answer. That discipline matters because measurement and attribution remain the biggest reported obstacle after sourcing itself, and it is what turns a creator programme into a budget line that survives review.

You do, on the terms we negotiate up front. We buy usage rights with a stated term, territory and platform list at the point of contracting, when your leverage is highest, plus whitelisting permissions so top posts can run as ads from their own handle. That is deliberately different from the common pattern of paying for a post, discovering it works, and then renegotiating a licence at a premium. Contracts sit in your name, so if we stop working together the relationships and the footage stay with you.

Usually it is the highest-return part of the programme. Influencer footage already looks native to the feed, carries a real person's endorsement, and has been validated by an organic following before any media goes behind it. Run through partnership ad formats it keeps the creator's handle, which holds the credibility that makes it work. We test it against your existing ad creative on cost per acquisition rather than assuming it wins, and scale the pieces that beat the control.

It is written into every brief and every contract: paid partnership labels enabled, clear sponsored or ad language in the caption, and no claim a partner makes that your brand could not make itself. Regulated categories get an extra review step, and we keep records of approvals. Beyond the legal position, disclosure is simply better marketing — audiences already assume a partnership, and the creators whose recommendations carry weight are the ones who have never hidden one.

Give it one full round plus a repeat, which usually means eight to twelve weeks. The first round tells you which audiences respond and which angles land; the repeat tells you whether that was signal or luck. Individual posts can spike inside 48 hours, but a spike is not a programme, and creator content frequently keeps converting for months once it is running as media. We report from week one so nothing is a surprise, while being straight that the decision-grade read arrives after the second cohort.

Yes, and it is a good place to start — existing relationships are an asset and we would rather build on them than replace them. We will review the current terms, fill in the gaps that tend to be missing (paid usage, whitelisting, tracking), and fold them into the same measurement as new partners so you can compare like with like. Where a relationship is not paying its way, we will show the numbers and suggest a different brief before suggesting a different partner.

We can, and the loop closes faster when the same team does both: the people reading the performance data are the ones commissioning the next round of content. Our paid social and analytics teams work from the same definitions, so influencer work is judged on the same cost per acquisition as everything else in the account. It is equally fine to buy influencer campaigns alone while another agency runs your media — we will share the tracking setup with them so the numbers still reconcile.