Follower counts stopped being a reliable signal years ago. Here’s how we actually evaluate creator partnerships now. Every year someone declares influencer marketing dead, usually right after a campaign built entirely around follower count underperforms. The channel isn’t dying — the old way of buying it is. Brands that still choose creators by audience size alone are making a decision with the least useful data point available to them.
What we look at instead: engagement quality on recent posts (not just the rate, but who’s actually commenting), audience overlap with the target customer, and — most importantly — whether the creator’s existing content style could plausibly feature the product without feeling forced. A creator with 40,000 highly engaged, niche-relevant followers will often outperform one with 400,000 generic followers, at a fraction of the cost.
We also stopped treating influencer campaigns as one-off bursts. The creators who move the most product for our clients are the ones we’ve worked with three or four times, because repeated, authentic exposure builds trust in a way a single sponsored post never will. That means smaller initial tests, but real budget behind the partnerships that prove out.
The brands still getting real results from this channel aren’t spending more. They’re spending more carefully, and giving it time to compound.