Recent studies indicate that over 90% of brands plan to boost their creator budgets in the coming year, with 41% already allocating at least half of their digital marketing budget to creators—a 14% increase from the previous year.
However, as budgets increase, so do the challenges associated with making these investments truly impactful.
The following insights from industry professionals explore the biggest challenges brands face when scaling up their creator marketing budgets and offer actionable strategies.
With more brands recognizing the power of creator partnerships, strategic budget increases can indeed lead to significant returns—but only if applied thoughtfully.
In my view, the biggest challenge brands face when increasing creator marketing budgets is balancing investment with impact. One common pitfall is focusing solely on reach metrics rather than true engagement. While it’s tempting to partner with creators who have large followings, without a strong alignment in values and messaging, these campaigns risk feeling inauthentic and missing the mark with audiences. Today’s consumers can quickly spot forced collaborations, and if they sense a lack of authenticity, the impact of the campaign can suffer significantly. Spending just to see if influencer marketing works vs looking at use cases isn’t ideal.
To ensure additional funds lead to successful, impactful campaigns, I recommend brands take a two-pronged approach:
1. Prioritize Creator Selection and Relationship-Building
Instead of focusing exclusively on follower count, brands should invest time in finding creators whose values, content style, and audience engagement align closely with the brand’s message. Long-term partnerships are also critical, as they give creators the opportunity to integrate the brand’s message naturally over time, allowing audiences to connect with the story in a more organic way. This approach not only enhances credibility but also builds a community of loyal advocates around the brand.
2. Empower Creators with Data and Creative Freedom
Successful campaigns today are built on collaboration. By providing creators with performance insights and campaign goals, brands can empower them to shape content that’s both strategically aligned and creatively authentic. When creators feel trusted and have the freedom to express the brand in their unique voice, the result is content that resonates more deeply with their audience and drives greater engagement. In our experience at Diffraction, this collaborative approach creates a feedback loop where both the creator and brand can iterate and optimize based on real-time audience responses.
Ultimately, brands should consider increased creator budgets as an investment in relationship-building rather than just ad spend. By aligning with creators whose stories align with the brand and enabling them with the right resources, brands can foster the kind of deep, long-lasting connections with audiences that are essential for sustained success.
As brands invest more in creator marketing the shift from campaign planning to annual planning is the first step to ensuring investments lead to trackable, meaningful outcomes.
Build a framework for planning and spending that allows you to evaluate each aspect of the work based on specific campaign objectives. At gen.video, we think of it as a continuous effort that starts by building brand trust and awareness. This then opens up the ability to drive trial and engagement and encouraging social proof. Over time this can lead to true community building advocacy and brand loyalty.
When you define KPIs and success criteria for each: creator led advertising, traditional influencer marketing and scaled UGC/performance marketing efforts you will be better able to dial the knobs and optimize results over time.
Brands are always looking to increase spend in areas that drive the greatest impact. As we’ve seen a drastic shift away from traditional marketing tactics and more towards creator marketing, marketers are always looking to find the metrics that matter the most.
In order to allocate funds into creator marketing correctly, brand marketers must know what goals they’re trying to achieve. Whether it be brand awareness, new partnerships, social growth opportunities, or ROI – there are right-fit creators to reach these goals and right-fit tools to track them.
Ensuring that you’re working directly with an influencer marketing platform (like Glewee), you can find the right-fit creators for your campaign and can track each data point in real time. This way, you’ll be able to see your success metrics in real time and optimize accordingly.
One of the biggest challenges brands face when increasing their creator marketing budgets is that, ultimately, it all comes down to sales. In any business, sales are the primary driver behind budget allocations and strategic decisions. When sales are strong, everyone is usually willing to invest in growth, which naturally includes initiatives like creator marketing. If a brand is facing pressure on sales, that impact trickles down to marketing budgets, no matter how effective a creator campaign may be.
With that in mind, the key for brands is to make sure that every creator campaign is directly aligned with sales goals. This means focusing on solving real problems for the client, because when you prioritize what’s driving sales, you can alleviate a majority of other pain points in a business. I often say that, at its core, a company really only has two roles: those who sell, and those who help those who sell. Creator marketing has the potential to be both—it can drive sales directly through engaging campaigns while also serving as a support mechanism to build brand equity and customer loyalty.
However, it’s worth noting that increased performance in creator marketing doesn’t necessarily have to come from simply increasing budgets. There are numerous ways to boost performance within existing budgets by creating a true win-win scenario for both the brand and the creator. When brands think beyond just a paycheck for creators and ask, “What does a win look like for the creator besides payment?” they open the door to new incentives and value-driven partnerships.
For example, brands can explore affiliate marketing, product exchanges, co-branded campaigns, or even bonus structures tied to performance metrics. By tapping into what motivates creators beyond monetary compensation, such as exclusivity, recognition, or opportunities for audience growth, brands can craft partnerships that are more rewarding for the creator. This approach not only builds loyalty but also often leads to more authentic and effective content, which, in turn, drives better results. Thus, these strategies allow brands to expand their creator marketing reach without necessarily increasing their upfront investment, creating a scalable approach to growth.
So, to sum it up: brands can maximize the impact of their creator marketing efforts by staying laser-focused on sales-driven objectives and by being strategic with their resources. Increasing budgets can certainly correlate with growth, but fostering genuine, mutually beneficial partnerships is what ultimately drives long-term success. By doing so, brands can ensure they’re making the most out of every dollar spent, while building an ecosystem where creators are motivated to genuinely support the brand’s mission.
Brands who are performing only face a challenge in increasing their budgets because they don’t have a good way to measure the other components of influencer marketing that contribute to the funnel. Most only have a way to attribute direct sales via a CID link or a discount code. What about the value of the content, the brand awareness, the PR and earned value if the influencer shows up to an event or participates in an interview, the data value for using their audience to target in paid. A lack of measurement of the full spectrum value of influencer marketing will keep brands trapped in quant hell.
The biggest challenge brands face when boosting their creator marketing budgets is identifying which specific strategy will work out. The media landscape is constantly shifting—trends, algorithms, and audience behaviors are always in movement. This makes it hard to predict what’s going to work, adding an element of risk to influencer marketing.
Despite all the uncertainty, influencer marketing indeed works. Creator-driven content delivers 12x higher engagement and 14x higher effectiveness than brand-generated content, with double the likes and comments. The payoff is huge, but so is the challenge of getting it right.
So, how to tackle this big issue? The answer is to choose the right influencers. By “right” I mean that their authenticity and values need to align with your brand to create content that feels natural and resonates with their audience. When you get that match right, the results can be much more effective. You will be able to strike a balance between influencer marketing’s risks and results.
But here’s another hurdle—influencer marketing is not a universal pill. It doesn’t solve every marketing challenge. You’ve got to be strategic, planning not just where influencer marketing fits in but where other tools might work better. It’s about knowing when to take risks and when to rely on proven methods. The key to success? Thoughtful, calculated planning—and a solid mix of strategies to get the best results.
As creator social feeds increasingly become a primary channel for news and product information, authenticity will be the biggest challenge for brands. Consumers are becoming more savvy to sponsored posts and product placements, so brands that work earnestly with creators to produce authentic content that highlights their products will come out on top.
Brands are increasing creator marketing budgets because they understand the immense power creators have to influence their fans, but they have to be discerning in how they do it. It is easy to be wowed by large follower counts, but in many instances, smaller creators can be more influential in selling to their fans. Brands should dive into a creator’s type of content, engagement rates, and previous brand partnerships, as these metrics can help determine if the creator has the power to drive meaningful leads or sales. Additionally, brands should consider deal structures where the creator is incentivized to drive revenue.
The biggest challenge brands face when increasing creator marketing budgets is ensuring that their investment drives genuine brand impact—not just surface-level engagement. Here’s why: the creator economy is booming, but without clear metrics and alignment, larger budgets can quickly translate to diminishing returns.
One of the biggest challenges brands face when increasing creator marketing budgets is ensuring a genuine connection between creators and audiences. Allocating more funds doesn’t automatically mean increased impact—brands must focus on choosing creators whose audiences trust them and align with the brand’s values and voice.
Another challenge is the need for measurable ROI on creator campaigns, especially as budgets grow. Brands can overcome this by investing in analytics platforms and setting clear KPIs to track engagement, conversions, and brand sentiment. At Crowdsurf, we see the value in partnering with creators who truly resonate with their audiences and have established trust and authenticity.
To drive impactful campaigns, brands should treat creator partnerships as long- term investments rather than one-off transactions. This approach strengthens the brand-creator relationship and helps creators produce content that resonates authentically with their audience, leading to better engagement and ultimately higher ROI.
The biggest challenge brands face when increasing their creator marketing budgets is navigating the inherent uncertainty of ROI in this space. Unlike other marketing channels, there’s no guaranteed formula that ensures additional funds will directly translate into impactful campaigns.
That’s why brands should take a “risk management” approach, similar to how an investment advisor would help you think about how to invest your retirement savings – when considering budget increases. First think about, what is your brands’ risk tolerance?
If you are an established brand with a mature business, your risk is probably more associated with partnering with the wrong macro-celebrity creators. If you’re a small-local business or startup with limited funds, your risk tolerance is partnering with creators who don’t perform well, so you need to make sure to allocate enough of your budget for whitelisting your paid partnerships. It really all depends on your circumstances.
FYPM can help brands manage this process in a few ways, (1) our 2024 Creator PRicing Benchmark Report offers a deep dive in the four factors that determine creator prices in today’s market along with precise benchmark rates for deliverables on Instagram and Tiktok for different follower buckets, and premiums for usage, whitelisting, exclusivity and other common terms in creator contracts – to help you get a reliable floor for the amount of budget you’ll need for creators today. We also offer help sourcing/finding creators, 1:1 consulting and custom pricing solutions.
In my opinion, the biggest challenge for brands increasing their creator budgets is to continue finding creators who authentically align with the brand. Without this, efforts can dilute impact.
To ensure budgets lead to impactful campaigns, brands should:
Focus on authentic partnerships: Start with creators who already engage with the brand, building on existing loyalty.
Balance creative freedom for the creators with brand messaging: As you start scaling the budget it’s going to be harder to let creators to bring their voice while ensuring the brand message remains clear. But providing that freedom is key to having a successful partnership with creators as it will make the collab more enjoyable and creators usually know best what resonates with their audience and how they can retain the attention, also during an ad.
Track conversion metrics: Obvious, but sometimes not done with care is to prioritize performance tracking to identify high-impact creators who drive results to learn in an iterative process and double down on winning creators and campaign structures.
Deepen high-performing partnerships: Strengthen relationships with top creators – i.e. through exclusive events or product collaborations
Big question. My quick thoughts would be, if it’s a legacy business, it can be convincing the higher ups that they need to invest further into this media spend bucket. Even if they have the data to prove it’s a reliable place to invest, there can still be pushback. Luckily, it’s changing substantially, but this still exists.
In addition to that, if it’s a brand’s first time scaling up the program and budgets, there can be some blind spots as they allocate budget, that every creator partnership is getting executed well. Working with 10 creators is very different than 50 creators, especially as the deliverables scale with that. Tracking all of that, making sure the quality is being maintained can be challenging.
Before you increase the budget, make sure your systems and processes are solid so that there’s less risk of quality control decreasing.
If a brand isn’t thinking about their long term approach (considering all the activations they want to do, all the content they need, all of their usage requests) then they may hit a wall in which they haven’t budgeted appropriately to actually reach their goals.
Having an agency partner that specializes in this work will be able to advise on both the big-picture of it all, as well as what the more granular, day-to-day work is going to require. We see some brands with lofty wish lists for how they want to partner with creators, but a lack of understanding of the landscape, so they hit this roadblock. A good partner will always help you navigate this and plan your budget accordingly.
The biggest challenge brands face when increasing their creator marketing budgets is making sure that the extra spend actually leads to real impact. When budgets go up, there’s a tendency of focusing on bigger creators, but that doesn’t necessarily drive better results. Instead, brands should double down on authenticity and relevance over pure reach. Scaling on creators who share the brand’s values and have an engaged audience, regardless of follower size, while making data-backed decisions and continuously optimizing, will result in better ROI and deeper loyalty.
One of the biggest challenges brands face when increasing their creator marketing budgets is ensuring that the investment translates into authentic engagement rather than just increased spend. To make additional funds impactful, brands should prioritize building relationships with creators who align with their values and audience, while leveraging data-driven insights to track performance and optimize campaigns for the best results
One of the biggest challenges brands face in increasing budgets for creator marketing is defining success. Many teams struggle to identify what’s possible with influencers. They’re not sure what types of collaborations drive results or how to build effective partnerships. Since influencer marketing is still developing as a priority within many organizations, it hasn’t been as thoroughly cultivated as other disciplines, like paid media. As a result, brands often default to more traditional tactics.
The biggest challenge isn’t in increased efficacy, it’s in increased pressure and stakeholder management. Resourcing, investment and measurement is about five years behind consumer media consumption behavior. Influencer marketing professionals at brands are being pulled in every direction by every department, all of whom are increasing their requests for content to use in their channels to drive their results up. So, the challenge becomes: how do I segment this and organize it? How do I manage back and up? How do I prove that the last click that my paid media team is claiming credit for is largely driven by the strength of my influencer content?
Influencer budgets will increase 15 to 30% YoY which seems significant, but it’s a drop in the bucket. It’s not reflective of the reality that influencer leads are faced with, which is: they’re fueling the entire marketing mix, and aren’t getting enough support or credit for what that takes.
In order to make it successful
Influencer strategies need to have MULTIPLE line items. It’s a “yes, and,” not a “this or that.” That’s the main thing you get with bigger budgets—more shots on goal, more opportunities for bigger impact. This is new media, not an amplification tactic. You have to level up accordingly with a strategy that’s layered and complex. How much are you investing in relevance and entertainment-led work? Conversion? Paid assets for the whole brand and business? These are all separate needs, the same content can’t serve all of them. You have to segment these so you aren’t tanking your organic performance too.
Quality often drops as scale increases. We often see brands trying to exert too much control in some places, and nowhere near enough in other places. You have to have a segmented strategy up-front, led by a deep understanding of how your brand fits into internet culture.
You mentioned that the future of influencer marketing is performance-based, as brands seek more predictable returns on investment. How is Mavely structured to support this shift, and what impact do you see this model having on the industry as a whole?
Incentivizing Creator Performance:
Mavely emphasizes commission-based earnings for creators. How do you approach building a system that motivates creators to consistently deliver results, and what role does community play in sustaining high engagement and performance?
Scaling with Data and Technology
Given that brands rely heavily on performance data to guide their marketing budgets, what specific technologies or data analytics tools does Mavely provide to track and optimize creator performance at scale?
The biggest challenge for brands is skipping product-audience fit. Just because a creator has reach doesn’t mean their audience cares about the product. Imagine paying a creator who posts about AI tools to promote a beauty brand—it’s a mismatch, no matter how big their audience. Campaigns work when the creator’s audience already needs the product. That’s how you build trust and drive real results.
2. Relevance Drives ROI
Brands fail when they treat influencer marketing like traditional advertising. Product-audience fit isn’t optional—it’s the entire game. If a LinkedIn creator’s audience is full of HR professionals, and you’re a SaaS tool for hiring, that’s a perfect fit. But paying that same creator to promote a product irrelevant to their audience wastes everyone’s time—and budget.
3. Why Fit Outweighs Follower Count
Follower counts are misleading without product-audience fit. A LinkedIn creator with 1,000 engaged followers in your niche is infinitely more valuable than a TikToker with a million disengaged ones. For example, when I promote tools like EasyGen, my audience listens because they trust me as a creator in the AI and LinkedIn space. Brands need to find creators whose audience naturally aligns with their product. That’s where campaigns win.
When budgets increase, brands often focus on creators with the largest followings. The challenge is maintaining authenticity—if the creator isn’t a natural fit, audiences can sense it, and the partnership falls flat.
Proving ROI
Brands need to be clear on what their target KPIs are. In some cases awareness is the focus, and in other cases performance KPIs such as conversion are the priority. Too often, brands get stuck on surface-level metrics like followers instead of focusing on deeper outcomes like engagement, conversions or brand affinity.
Finding the Right Creators
With bigger budgets, brands might try to work with too many creators, leading to scattered messaging. The real challenge is finding creators who truly align with the brand’s voice and values.
Making Campaigns More Impactful
Focus on Authentic Storytelling
Campaigns work best when creators have the freedom to tell stories that feel authentic to them. The key is collaborating to make your brand part of their world in a natural way. Often, brands want to control the creative to fit their broader marketing campaign. However we find that the best results often come when collaborating with creators closely on developing creative concepts that will truly resonate with their audiences.
Set Clear Goals Together
It is important for brands to not only be clear about their objectives, but to also share those objectives with creators and their teams. Work with creators to define what success looks like, whether it’s conversions, brand sentiment, or something else. Having a shared plan helps make sure everyone is aligned.
Go for Long-Term Partnerships
Partner with the right creators in a more comprehensive way. Instead of one-off deals, invest in creators who can grow with your brand. Audiences trust creators they see consistently supporting a product or company. It is often the second or third touchpoint that leads to the best results in a creator campaign.
One of the biggest challenges brands now face in creator marketing is achieving measurable ROI. According to our latest survey of brands and agencies, 98% of industry leaders believe creator content drives more ROI than traditional and digital advertising, and they outspend their peers by 299%. 74% of organizations increased creator marketing investment over last year, and 78% of organizations expect to invest more in creator marketing over the next two years. As investment grows, the stakes rise, and so does the pressure to justify the investment by tying it back to clear, impactful business outcomes.
In our survey, measurement was designated as the top roadblock standing in the way of creator campaign success, yet 70% of brands reported that creator marketing contributed to their highest-ROI campaign. In other words, the impact of creator marketing for brands is potent, but marketers need to have the right tools and metrics to prove the value in order to expand creator marketing efforts and results.
To ensure that these additional funds lead to impactful programs, brands need to adopt a strategic approach to creator selection and measurement. Fostering long-term partnerships rather than one-off campaigns and assessing metrics by not only their impact sales but to upper-funnel activity like awareness and desirability can provide more depth to how creator programs are assessed internally and foster greater trust and authenticity externally.
The biggest challenge in influencer marketing is the lack of measurable ROI. I believe brands need to shift their focus from immediate sales to building long-term value by prioritizing brand visibility. By targeting more ‘eyeballs’ and fostering lasting brand commitment, brands can create recurring sales behavior that justifies increased influencer marketing budgets.
The biggest challenge brands face when increasing their influencer marketing budgets is ensuring a positive return on investment and measurable impact. Influencer campaigns have different objectives. Some campaigns are focused on brand awareness and impressions, while others are focused on driving bottom-funnel actions like purchases or sign-ups. Branded campaigns are more challenging to measure impact, which makes it more challenging to secure larger budgets. However, if you can compare your Influencer Marketing CPM to your Google CPM, that would allow your management team to understand that Influencer Marketing is (usually) a more affordable way to reach your ICP.
Proving ROI remains the biggest challenge brands face when it comes to budgeting for creators along with tracking performance. There is an outdated mindset when it comes to influencer campaign attribution and the burden of proof is much higher than traditional marketing methodologies. The biggest asset to marketers looking to increase their budget is using tools that can offer one to one full funnel attribution.
David Adler is an entrepreneur and freelance blog post writer who enjoys writing about business, entrepreneurship, travel and the influencer marketing space.
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Recent studies indicate that over 90% of brands plan to boost their creator budgets in the coming year, with 41% already allocating at least half of their digital marketing budget to creators—a 14% increase from the previous year.
However, as budgets increase, so do the challenges associated with making these investments truly impactful.
The following insights from industry professionals explore the biggest challenges brands face when scaling up their creator marketing budgets and offer actionable strategies.
Joseph Sottile, Co-Founder, Diffraction
With more brands recognizing the power of creator partnerships, strategic budget increases can indeed lead to significant returns—but only if applied thoughtfully.
In my view, the biggest challenge brands face when increasing creator marketing budgets is balancing investment with impact. One common pitfall is focusing solely on reach metrics rather than true engagement. While it’s tempting to partner with creators who have large followings, without a strong alignment in values and messaging, these campaigns risk feeling inauthentic and missing the mark with audiences. Today’s consumers can quickly spot forced collaborations, and if they sense a lack of authenticity, the impact of the campaign can suffer significantly. Spending just to see if influencer marketing works vs looking at use cases isn’t ideal.
To ensure additional funds lead to successful, impactful campaigns, I recommend brands take a two-pronged approach:
1. Prioritize Creator Selection and Relationship-Building
Instead of focusing exclusively on follower count, brands should invest time in finding creators whose values, content style, and audience engagement align closely with the brand’s message. Long-term partnerships are also critical, as they give creators the opportunity to integrate the brand’s message naturally over time, allowing audiences to connect with the story in a more organic way. This approach not only enhances credibility but also builds a community of loyal advocates around the brand.
2. Empower Creators with Data and Creative Freedom
Successful campaigns today are built on collaboration. By providing creators with performance insights and campaign goals, brands can empower them to shape content that’s both strategically aligned and creatively authentic. When creators feel trusted and have the freedom to express the brand in their unique voice, the result is content that resonates more deeply with their audience and drives greater engagement. In our experience at Diffraction, this collaborative approach creates a feedback loop where both the creator and brand can iterate and optimize based on real-time audience responses.
Ultimately, brands should consider increased creator budgets as an investment in relationship-building rather than just ad spend. By aligning with creators whose stories align with the brand and enabling them with the right resources, brands can foster the kind of deep, long-lasting connections with audiences that are essential for sustained success.
Jessica Thorpe, Co-Founder and CEO, gen.video
As brands invest more in creator marketing the shift from campaign planning to annual planning is the first step to ensuring investments lead to trackable, meaningful outcomes.
Build a framework for planning and spending that allows you to evaluate each aspect of the work based on specific campaign objectives. At gen.video, we think of it as a continuous effort that starts by building brand trust and awareness. This then opens up the ability to drive trial and engagement and encouraging social proof. Over time this can lead to true community building advocacy and brand loyalty.
When you define KPIs and success criteria for each: creator led advertising, traditional influencer marketing and scaled UGC/performance marketing efforts you will be better able to dial the knobs and optimize results over time.
Christian Brown, Co-Founder and CMO, Glewee
Brands are always looking to increase spend in areas that drive the greatest impact. As we’ve seen a drastic shift away from traditional marketing tactics and more towards creator marketing, marketers are always looking to find the metrics that matter the most.
In order to allocate funds into creator marketing correctly, brand marketers must know what goals they’re trying to achieve. Whether it be brand awareness, new partnerships, social growth opportunities, or ROI – there are right-fit creators to reach these goals and right-fit tools to track them.
Ensuring that you’re working directly with an influencer marketing platform (like Glewee), you can find the right-fit creators for your campaign and can track each data point in real time. This way, you’ll be able to see your success metrics in real time and optimize accordingly.
Patrick Israel, Founder & CEO, Stem Group
One of the biggest challenges brands face when increasing their creator marketing budgets is that, ultimately, it all comes down to sales. In any business, sales are the primary driver behind budget allocations and strategic decisions. When sales are strong, everyone is usually willing to invest in growth, which naturally includes initiatives like creator marketing. If a brand is facing pressure on sales, that impact trickles down to marketing budgets, no matter how effective a creator campaign may be.
With that in mind, the key for brands is to make sure that every creator campaign is directly aligned with sales goals. This means focusing on solving real problems for the client, because when you prioritize what’s driving sales, you can alleviate a majority of other pain points in a business. I often say that, at its core, a company really only has two roles: those who sell, and those who help those who sell. Creator marketing has the potential to be both—it can drive sales directly through engaging campaigns while also serving as a support mechanism to build brand equity and customer loyalty.
However, it’s worth noting that increased performance in creator marketing doesn’t necessarily have to come from simply increasing budgets. There are numerous ways to boost performance within existing budgets by creating a true win-win scenario for both the brand and the creator. When brands think beyond just a paycheck for creators and ask, “What does a win look like for the creator besides payment?” they open the door to new incentives and value-driven partnerships.
For example, brands can explore affiliate marketing, product exchanges, co-branded campaigns, or even bonus structures tied to performance metrics. By tapping into what motivates creators beyond monetary compensation, such as exclusivity, recognition, or opportunities for audience growth, brands can craft partnerships that are more rewarding for the creator. This approach not only builds loyalty but also often leads to more authentic and effective content, which, in turn, drives better results. Thus, these strategies allow brands to expand their creator marketing reach without necessarily increasing their upfront investment, creating a scalable approach to growth.
So, to sum it up: brands can maximize the impact of their creator marketing efforts by staying laser-focused on sales-driven objectives and by being strategic with their resources. Increasing budgets can certainly correlate with growth, but fostering genuine, mutually beneficial partnerships is what ultimately drives long-term success. By doing so, brands can ensure they’re making the most out of every dollar spent, while building an ecosystem where creators are motivated to genuinely support the brand’s mission.
Dylan Conroy, Strategic Partnerships, Creators Buddy
Brands who are performing only face a challenge in increasing their budgets because they don’t have a good way to measure the other components of influencer marketing that contribute to the funnel. Most only have a way to attribute direct sales via a CID link or a discount code. What about the value of the content, the brand awareness, the PR and earned value if the influencer shows up to an event or participates in an interview, the data value for using their audience to target in paid. A lack of measurement of the full spectrum value of influencer marketing will keep brands trapped in quant hell.
Tachat Igityan, CFO and Founder of destream
The biggest challenge brands face when boosting their creator marketing budgets is identifying which specific strategy will work out. The media landscape is constantly shifting—trends, algorithms, and audience behaviors are always in movement. This makes it hard to predict what’s going to work, adding an element of risk to influencer marketing.
Despite all the uncertainty, influencer marketing indeed works. Creator-driven content delivers 12x higher engagement and 14x higher effectiveness than brand-generated content, with double the likes and comments. The payoff is huge, but so is the challenge of getting it right.
So, how to tackle this big issue? The answer is to choose the right influencers. By “right” I mean that their authenticity and values need to align with your brand to create content that feels natural and resonates with their audience. When you get that match right, the results can be much more effective. You will be able to strike a balance between influencer marketing’s risks and results.
But here’s another hurdle—influencer marketing is not a universal pill. It doesn’t solve every marketing challenge. You’ve got to be strategic, planning not just where influencer marketing fits in but where other tools might work better. It’s about knowing when to take risks and when to rely on proven methods. The key to success? Thoughtful, calculated planning—and a solid mix of strategies to get the best results.
Matt Silk, CEO, COY Creator
As creator social feeds increasingly become a primary channel for news and product information, authenticity will be the biggest challenge for brands. Consumers are becoming more savvy to sponsored posts and product placements, so brands that work earnestly with creators to produce authentic content that highlights their products will come out on top.
Loren Piretra, CMO, Fanfix
Brands are increasing creator marketing budgets because they understand the immense power creators have to influence their fans, but they have to be discerning in how they do it. It is easy to be wowed by large follower counts, but in many instances, smaller creators can be more influential in selling to their fans. Brands should dive into a creator’s type of content, engagement rates, and previous brand partnerships, as these metrics can help determine if the creator has the power to drive meaningful leads or sales. Additionally, brands should consider deal structures where the creator is incentivized to drive revenue.
Tom Logan, Co-Founder and CEO, Cohley
The biggest challenge brands face when increasing creator marketing budgets is ensuring that their investment drives genuine brand impact—not just surface-level engagement. Here’s why: the creator economy is booming, but without clear metrics and alignment, larger budgets can quickly translate to diminishing returns.
Alan Guerrieri, Operations, Crowdsurf
One of the biggest challenges brands face when increasing creator marketing budgets is ensuring a genuine connection between creators and audiences. Allocating more funds doesn’t automatically mean increased impact—brands must focus on choosing creators whose audiences trust them and align with the brand’s values and voice.
Another challenge is the need for measurable ROI on creator campaigns, especially as budgets grow. Brands can overcome this by investing in analytics platforms and setting clear KPIs to track engagement, conversions, and brand sentiment. At Crowdsurf, we see the value in partnering with creators who truly resonate with their audiences and have established trust and authenticity.
To drive impactful campaigns, brands should treat creator partnerships as long- term investments rather than one-off transactions. This approach strengthens the brand-creator relationship and helps creators produce content that resonates authentically with their audience, leading to better engagement and ultimately higher ROI.
Lindsey Lugrin, Founder & CEO,FYPM App
The biggest challenge brands face when increasing their creator marketing budgets is navigating the inherent uncertainty of ROI in this space. Unlike other marketing channels, there’s no guaranteed formula that ensures additional funds will directly translate into impactful campaigns.
That’s why brands should take a “risk management” approach, similar to how an investment advisor would help you think about how to invest your retirement savings – when considering budget increases. First think about, what is your brands’ risk tolerance?
If you are an established brand with a mature business, your risk is probably more associated with partnering with the wrong macro-celebrity creators. If you’re a small-local business or startup with limited funds, your risk tolerance is partnering with creators who don’t perform well, so you need to make sure to allocate enough of your budget for whitelisting your paid partnerships. It really all depends on your circumstances.
FYPM can help brands manage this process in a few ways, (1) our 2024 Creator PRicing Benchmark Report offers a deep dive in the four factors that determine creator prices in today’s market along with precise benchmark rates for deliverables on Instagram and Tiktok for different follower buckets, and premiums for usage, whitelisting, exclusivity and other common terms in creator contracts – to help you get a reliable floor for the amount of budget you’ll need for creators today. We also offer help sourcing/finding creators, 1:1 consulting and custom pricing solutions.
Lukas Runte, CEO and Co-Founder, Everbloom
In my opinion, the biggest challenge for brands increasing their creator budgets is to continue finding creators who authentically align with the brand. Without this, efforts can dilute impact.
To ensure budgets lead to impactful campaigns, brands should:
Focus on authentic partnerships: Start with creators who already engage with the brand, building on existing loyalty.
Balance creative freedom for the creators with brand messaging: As you start scaling the budget it’s going to be harder to let creators to bring their voice while ensuring the brand message remains clear. But providing that freedom is key to having a successful partnership with creators as it will make the collab more enjoyable and creators usually know best what resonates with their audience and how they can retain the attention, also during an ad.
Track conversion metrics: Obvious, but sometimes not done with care is to prioritize performance tracking to identify high-impact creators who drive results to learn in an iterative process and double down on winning creators and campaign structures.
Deepen high-performing partnerships: Strengthen relationships with top creators – i.e. through exclusive events or product collaborations
Wes Elder, Founder, Creatorspace
Big question. My quick thoughts would be, if it’s a legacy business, it can be convincing the higher ups that they need to invest further into this media spend bucket. Even if they have the data to prove it’s a reliable place to invest, there can still be pushback. Luckily, it’s changing substantially, but this still exists.
In addition to that, if it’s a brand’s first time scaling up the program and budgets, there can be some blind spots as they allocate budget, that every creator partnership is getting executed well. Working with 10 creators is very different than 50 creators, especially as the deliverables scale with that. Tracking all of that, making sure the quality is being maintained can be challenging.
Before you increase the budget, make sure your systems and processes are solid so that there’s less risk of quality control decreasing.
Ashlie Finch, VP of Brand Strategy, The Digital Dept.
If a brand isn’t thinking about their long term approach (considering all the activations they want to do, all the content they need, all of their usage requests) then they may hit a wall in which they haven’t budgeted appropriately to actually reach their goals.
Having an agency partner that specializes in this work will be able to advise on both the big-picture of it all, as well as what the more granular, day-to-day work is going to require. We see some brands with lofty wish lists for how they want to partner with creators, but a lack of understanding of the landscape, so they hit this roadblock. A good partner will always help you navigate this and plan your budget accordingly.
Roee Zelcer, CEO, Humanz US
The biggest challenge brands face when increasing their creator marketing budgets is making sure that the extra spend actually leads to real impact. When budgets go up, there’s a tendency of focusing on bigger creators, but that doesn’t necessarily drive better results. Instead, brands should double down on authenticity and relevance over pure reach. Scaling on creators who share the brand’s values and have an engaged audience, regardless of follower size, while making data-backed decisions and continuously optimizing, will result in better ROI and deeper loyalty.
Hazem Dawani, CEO, GigaStar
One of the biggest challenges brands face when increasing their creator marketing budgets is ensuring that the investment translates into authentic engagement rather than just increased spend. To make additional funds impactful, brands should prioritize building relationships with creators who align with their values and audience, while leveraging data-driven insights to track performance and optimize campaigns for the best results
Brendan Gahan, CEO and Co-Founder, Creator Authority
One of the biggest challenges brands face in increasing budgets for creator marketing is defining success. Many teams struggle to identify what’s possible with influencers. They’re not sure what types of collaborations drive results or how to build effective partnerships. Since influencer marketing is still developing as a priority within many organizations, it hasn’t been as thoroughly cultivated as other disciplines, like paid media. As a result, brands often default to more traditional tactics.
Grace Murray Vazquez, VP of Strategy, Fohr
The biggest challenge isn’t in increased efficacy, it’s in increased pressure and stakeholder management. Resourcing, investment and measurement is about five years behind consumer media consumption behavior. Influencer marketing professionals at brands are being pulled in every direction by every department, all of whom are increasing their requests for content to use in their channels to drive their results up. So, the challenge becomes: how do I segment this and organize it? How do I manage back and up? How do I prove that the last click that my paid media team is claiming credit for is largely driven by the strength of my influencer content?
Influencer budgets will increase 15 to 30% YoY which seems significant, but it’s a drop in the bucket. It’s not reflective of the reality that influencer leads are faced with, which is: they’re fueling the entire marketing mix, and aren’t getting enough support or credit for what that takes.
In order to make it successful
Influencer strategies need to have MULTIPLE line items. It’s a “yes, and,” not a “this or that.” That’s the main thing you get with bigger budgets—more shots on goal, more opportunities for bigger impact. This is new media, not an amplification tactic. You have to level up accordingly with a strategy that’s layered and complex. How much are you investing in relevance and entertainment-led work? Conversion? Paid assets for the whole brand and business? These are all separate needs, the same content can’t serve all of them. You have to segment these so you aren’t tanking your organic performance too.
Quality often drops as scale increases. We often see brands trying to exert too much control in some places, and nowhere near enough in other places. You have to have a segmented strategy up-front, led by a deep understanding of how your brand fits into internet culture.
Brittany Kelly, Head of Sales, Fohr
Shifting to Performance-Based Marketing
You mentioned that the future of influencer marketing is performance-based, as brands seek more predictable returns on investment. How is Mavely structured to support this shift, and what impact do you see this model having on the industry as a whole?
Incentivizing Creator Performance:
Mavely emphasizes commission-based earnings for creators. How do you approach building a system that motivates creators to consistently deliver results, and what role does community play in sustaining high engagement and performance?
Scaling with Data and Technology
Given that brands rely heavily on performance data to guide their marketing budgets, what specific technologies or data analytics tools does Mavely provide to track and optimize creator performance at scale?
Ruben Hassid, Founder, EasyGen
1. The Power of Product-Audience Fit
The biggest challenge for brands is skipping product-audience fit. Just because a creator has reach doesn’t mean their audience cares about the product. Imagine paying a creator who posts about AI tools to promote a beauty brand—it’s a mismatch, no matter how big their audience. Campaigns work when the creator’s audience already needs the product. That’s how you build trust and drive real results.
2. Relevance Drives ROI
Brands fail when they treat influencer marketing like traditional advertising. Product-audience fit isn’t optional—it’s the entire game. If a LinkedIn creator’s audience is full of HR professionals, and you’re a SaaS tool for hiring, that’s a perfect fit. But paying that same creator to promote a product irrelevant to their audience wastes everyone’s time—and budget.
3. Why Fit Outweighs Follower Count
Follower counts are misleading without product-audience fit. A LinkedIn creator with 1,000 engaged followers in your niche is infinitely more valuable than a TikToker with a million disengaged ones. For example, when I promote tools like EasyGen, my audience listens because they trust me as a creator in the AI and LinkedIn space. Brands need to find creators whose audience naturally aligns with their product. That’s where campaigns win.
Cameron Ajdari, Co-Founder & CEO of Currents Management
Biggest Challenges:
Balancing Reach with Authenticity:
When budgets increase, brands often focus on creators with the largest followings. The challenge is maintaining authenticity—if the creator isn’t a natural fit, audiences can sense it, and the partnership falls flat.
Proving ROI
Brands need to be clear on what their target KPIs are. In some cases awareness is the focus, and in other cases performance KPIs such as conversion are the priority. Too often, brands get stuck on surface-level metrics like followers instead of focusing on deeper outcomes like engagement, conversions or brand affinity.
Finding the Right Creators
With bigger budgets, brands might try to work with too many creators, leading to scattered messaging. The real challenge is finding creators who truly align with the brand’s voice and values.
Making Campaigns More Impactful
Focus on Authentic Storytelling
Campaigns work best when creators have the freedom to tell stories that feel authentic to them. The key is collaborating to make your brand part of their world in a natural way. Often, brands want to control the creative to fit their broader marketing campaign. However we find that the best results often come when collaborating with creators closely on developing creative concepts that will truly resonate with their audiences.
Set Clear Goals Together
It is important for brands to not only be clear about their objectives, but to also share those objectives with creators and their teams. Work with creators to define what success looks like, whether it’s conversions, brand sentiment, or something else. Having a shared plan helps make sure everyone is aligned.
Go for Long-Term Partnerships
Partner with the right creators in a more comprehensive way. Instead of one-off deals, invest in creators who can grow with your brand. Audiences trust creators they see consistently supporting a product or company. It is often the second or third touchpoint that leads to the best results in a creator campaign.
Brit Starr, CMO, CreatorIQ
One of the biggest challenges brands now face in creator marketing is achieving measurable ROI. According to our latest survey of brands and agencies, 98% of industry leaders believe creator content drives more ROI than traditional and digital advertising, and they outspend their peers by 299%. 74% of organizations increased creator marketing investment over last year, and 78% of organizations expect to invest more in creator marketing over the next two years. As investment grows, the stakes rise, and so does the pressure to justify the investment by tying it back to clear, impactful business outcomes.
In our survey, measurement was designated as the top roadblock standing in the way of creator campaign success, yet 70% of brands reported that creator marketing contributed to their highest-ROI campaign. In other words, the impact of creator marketing for brands is potent, but marketers need to have the right tools and metrics to prove the value in order to expand creator marketing efforts and results.
To ensure that these additional funds lead to impactful programs, brands need to adopt a strategic approach to creator selection and measurement. Fostering long-term partnerships rather than one-off campaigns and assessing metrics by not only their impact sales but to upper-funnel activity like awareness and desirability can provide more depth to how creator programs are assessed internally and foster greater trust and authenticity externally.
Abraham Lieberman, CEO and Founder, Clicks Talent
The biggest challenge in influencer marketing is the lack of measurable ROI. I believe brands need to shift their focus from immediate sales to building long-term value by prioritizing brand visibility. By targeting more ‘eyeballs’ and fostering lasting brand commitment, brands can create recurring sales behavior that justifies increased influencer marketing budgets.
Vin Matano, Founder, Creatorbuzz
The biggest challenge brands face when increasing their influencer marketing budgets is ensuring a positive return on investment and measurable impact. Influencer campaigns have different objectives. Some campaigns are focused on brand awareness and impressions, while others are focused on driving bottom-funnel actions like purchases or sign-ups. Branded campaigns are more challenging to measure impact, which makes it more challenging to secure larger budgets. However, if you can compare your Influencer Marketing CPM to your Google CPM, that would allow your management team to understand that Influencer Marketing is (usually) a more affordable way to reach your ICP.
Scott Sutton, CEO, Later
Proving ROI remains the biggest challenge brands face when it comes to budgeting for creators along with tracking performance. There is an outdated mindset when it comes to influencer campaign attribution and the burden of proof is much higher than traditional marketing methodologies. The biggest asset to marketers looking to increase their budget is using tools that can offer one to one full funnel attribution.