By C200 member Jennifer Quigley-Jones
Influencer marketing is driving impact at every stage of the marketing funnel .
Digital voices
A decade ago, Influencer Marketing was an experimental tactic, with one-off partnerships and short-term gains. Now the channel is driving impact at every stage of the marketing funnel – from awareness to sales. Senior leaders now recognize its lasting impact on the bottom line.
The Creator Economy is set to grow from $250 billion in 2023 to $600 billion by 2030, and the average return on investment (ROI) for influencer campaigns is $5.78 for every $1 spent, offering a huge opportunity for brands.
Influencer programs drive business growth at scale. The brands investing big are the market leaders. Leaning into influencer marketing shows vision—an understanding of where consumers spend their time and what impacts their purchasing decisions.
Reaching scale means rethinking how teams, budgets, and technology work together.
Executive Decisions to Support Scaling Effectively
Scaling an influencer program isn’t just about running bigger campaigns or working with more creators. It requires both a new strategy and enhanced infrastructure.
CMOs must allocate budgets for long-term results, such as expanding internal influencer teams, adding new agencies, or investing in new tools.
This isn’t just a financial decision. Measurement frameworks are key to ensuring that scaled influencer partnerships are on-brand, demonstrate impact, include clear brand guidelines, approval processes, and risk management protocols.
Finally, and most importantly, leadership must standardize how success is defined and reported so teams know where to focus efforts.
True scalability comes from building the structure, alignment, and systems to protect quality as you grow.
A huge amount of behind-the-scenes work goes into executing a successful strategy that spans the entire marketing funnel. Despite advances in AI, this industry relies on human heavy lifting.
Gabrielė Palepšaitė, Head of Influencer Marketing at Surfshark VPN, has built one of the largest influencer marketing programs in the world. Surfshark has spent 6 years partnering with 24,000 creators across 110 countries, producing over 60,000 content pieces. A small team of four managed this at first, before recently scaling to ten in-house regional specialists.
Gabrielė’s team created an eight-step process guide on how to build a successful influencer campaign to demonstrate and educate leadership on why a larger team was critical.
STEP ONE | Test and Scale creator selection
The ability to scale often starts with creator selection. Dozens of tools help teams quickly identify and evaluate creators based on engagement, demographics, and performance data.
But true scale comes from an advanced creator strategy. Partnering with only the obvious creators in a brand’s direct product category is limiting. A “test and scale” approach opens new verticals beyond obvious fits. For example, a tech brand found unexpected success with woodwork content creators on YouTube—one of their highest-converting categories.
Adobe has also expanded its creator partnerships to include voices from beauty, food, and interiors, a strategic shift from previously focusing solely on design creators. Jared Carneson, Head of Global Social at Adobe, said, “We weren’t always at the scale we’re at now, and the scale has grown over a period of time. But it started with one or two pieces of creator-led content in the conversion funnel, and when we saw that those worked, the percentage of creator-led content in conversion started to grow substantially over a period of time.”
Companies need to broaden their reach (and impact) by focusing on audience overlap and communities rather than surface-level brand alignment.
STEP TWO | Creator Vetting
Selecting creators comes with its own risks. Brand safety checks are business-critical but time-consuming for teams to conduct manually, and even more so for teams working across multiple languages and markets. We have seen clients delaying campaigns by 12 weeks waiting for complete creator background and brand safety checks.
AI has proven transformative here. Tools can analyze internet history, mentions, and a creator’s historic content. Scripts can flag sensitive topics or themes. Sentiment analysis tools evaluate authority and trustworthiness. What would have taken a team hours or days of manual review now happens in seconds. Of course, human oversight is required as an added filter, but tools save significant time.
Sarah Adam, Head of Marketing Partnerships and Influencer Marketing at Wix, shared, “We use AI and automation tools to improve creator discovery, streamline workflows, and automate briefing. However, while AI enhances efficiency, it never replaces our direct communication with creators. The foundation of our work is built on genuine human connection and trust.” This approach allows marketing teams to focus on strategy and driving performance and spend less time on manual, monotonous tasks.
STEP THREE | Setting prices
Negotiating fees between brands, agencies, and talent managers takes many back-and-forth emails before decisions are confirmed. Leaders should empower brand teams to develop pricing models that are formula-based on creator reach and performance metrics to offer guidance. While not perfect, often missing vital information on the type of content and the effort put in, it benchmarks a baseline for fair negotiation, whether managed in-house or via external agencies. Contracting also adds complexity, so standard templates for creators are essential for speed.
Much of the art of negotiations can be automated. The introduction of AI talent agents, such as Retrograde by creator Grace Beverley, means that the negotiation stage can be done through AI. Brands can customize communications by teaching the system’s strategies and tone of voice.
STEP FOUR | Content Approvals
Content approvals are a notorious bottleneck in influencer programs, and set back marketing campaigns by weeks, and even months, at a time. Here again, AI can drive efficiency.
Tools like Google Gemini can scan video drafts for brand name mentions, coupon codes, or campaign pillars in multiple languages. AI accelerates the compliance side of the process, freeing human teams to focus on messaging quality and resonance, while local market specialists remain essential for cultural nuance.
STEP FIVE | Reporting and Re-Strategizing
Leaders need visibility into what drives conversions to reinvest. That means building infrastructure for performance tracking.
These insights don’t just optimize campaigns but help justify budgets. When leaders can trace sales directly back to an influencer program, scaling investment becomes a boardroom decision supported by hard evidence.
Most brands use Marketing Mix Modelling (MMM) and econometrics as core components of their marketing measurement strategies. However, 80% of these brands admitted that they do not incorporate Influencer Marketing into their MMM frameworks.
It’s because Influencer Marketing is hard to compare to other media channels, as spend doesn’t directly align with other media, such as TV or Paid Ads. The fees typically cover a mix of production, talent, content usage, exclusivity, and distribution, making it difficult to isolate the true media value. Therefore, measurement for influencer marketing needs to be clearly assessed with or against other channels, for example, measuring the impact of influencer assets in driving better paid results.
It’s a marketer’s role to educate leadership on measurement to get buy-in on a framework upfront.
Even the most robust in-house programs need external support.
Leaders should look at supplementing internal teams with agencies that have subject-matter and/or local expertise to build cultural resonance and develop a long-term strategy. By testing new creators and platforms, brands scale more effectively.
Key Actions for Leaders:
Align influencer budgets with the people and tools needed to deliver quality at scale.
- Identify where AI enhances efficiency, and where human insight must stay central.
- Testing unexpected creator categories to drive bigger results
- Encourage faster approvals and empower teams to create guidelines
- Invest in both tools and teams to truly scale this channel
Influencer marketing has evolved into a growth driver that demands executive oversight and long-term strategy. Scaling these programs successfully depends on leaders who invest in the right infrastructure, technology, and talent. As AI streamlines execution, the most forward-thinking executives will treat the channel as a strategic lever for sustainable business growth and competitive advantage.
C200 member Jennifer Quigley-Jones is the entrepreneurial force behind the Influencer Marketing agency, Digital Voices. Since founding the agency in 2017, she has set the standard for Influencer Marketing, launching global offices, releasing innovative technology, and building an international team that drives award-winning campaigns for brands like Adobe, DoorDash, and PepsiCo.
Her latest venture is the launch of the Global Influencer Council, a select group of brand marketers focused on advancing the Creator Economy.
A sought-after speaker, Jennifer has shared her expertise at international conferences such as TEDx, SXSW, and Cannes. As a leader in female entrepreneurship, she actively supports the mission of C200 to inspire, educate, and advance female professionals.
