Scaling a high-performing influencer marketing program

Launching an influencer marketing program is no small feat—especially for B2B brands.

Yet, influencers are the modern way to reach audiences, and their content dramatically outperforms most content that comes directly from brands. That’s why more than half of marketers say they already rely on influencer marketing to increase brand awareness, audience engagement, credibility and trust, and even revenue, per the Q1 2025 Sprout Pulse Survey.

The same survey found that most brands focus their partnerships on 10 influencers or fewer, and 59% plan to forge new partnerships in 2025. To grow and scale effectively, marketing teams must overcome common hurdles like unclear ownership, budget constraints and inefficient processes.

Over the last few years at Sprout Social, we transformed a handful of ad hoc influencer activations into a robust influencer marketing program that sits at the center of our marketing strategy. Rather than placing the responsibility solely on the social team, we built a cross-functional influencer and creator marketing machine that spans many departments and functions—and that has been one of the keys to our success.

The result: Partnerships with dozens of unique creators and hundreds of pieces of content that drove more than 4 million impressions, 100K+ engagements and a large volume of leads.

To go from one-off partnerships to building a sophisticated influencer marketing strategy that is executed across the organization, we needed to align our efforts with clear business goals, define and report on impactful metrics that are tied to our core business KPIs, and rebuild our entire process from top to bottom. Let’s dive into how we implemented these changes, and steps you can follow to create a best-in-class influencer program of your own.

The challenges of scaling an influencer marketing program

Internal stalemates can stunt influencer marketing programs from growing beyond the initial phases and delivering groundbreaking results. These are some of the most common challenges when scaling up:

• Budget can be a major stumbling block. Despite 65% of marketers saying they’re very confident in their ability to convey the value of influencer marketing and that their leaders understand the business impact (Q1 2025 Sprout Pulse Survey), they still struggle to secure more resources. Influencer ROI can be more challenging to articulate than other forms of ROI, including organic social—especially if campaigns are focused on brand awareness or loyalty instead of leads, conversions or revenue.
• Inefficient processes slow teams down. According to the Q1 2025 Sprout Pulse Survey, 39% of teams still rely on manual research to find the right influencers for their business. Relying on manual research and campaign management can be tedious and tends to bring momentum to a screeching halt.
• Most brands don’t have a dedicated influencer marketing team. The responsibility of managing influencer relationships and campaigns falls on the shoulders of already overtaxed social teams (or in some cases, paid and digital teams). Even when you unify marketing teams around influencer marketing, it can introduce new collaborative challenges, like disparate influencer communication, and siloed planning and reporting.

It’s imperative to empower meaningful collaboration between teams and external stakeholders by clarifying roles and responsibilities, and using the right processes and tools to reduce manual tasks, promote visibility and unearth meaningful data and insights upon which you can take action.

Leveling up your influencer strategy

In 2023, when we started, Sprout’s influencer marketing program was characterized by a few one-off activations and a relatively small talent pool. In 2024—recognizing the growing importance and benefits of developing a more robust influencer strategy—we matured this motion within Sprout. We laid the foundation for a consistent and highly effective program we could scale.

Here are the steps you can take to scale your own program:

Adopt a center of excellence model

Before implementing a center of excellence model for influencer marketing efforts, our activations only scratched the surface of what was possible. We didn’t have an organizational framework that connected influencer marketing to wider marketing and company goals.

We intentionally pivoted from a siloed effort exclusively owned by the social team to a broad program that touches almost every area of the business. Our influencer center of excellence spans functions—from social, PR and content, to campaigns, demand, customer marketing, field and channel. This approach allows us to weave activations into social content, webinar programming, gifting opportunities, in-person events and more. It requires every team to be all in, all together, supporting influencer marketing as part of each team’s core strategy.

With so many teams brought into the fold, it was important to delineate clear roles, responsibilities and relationship managers. Our roster of influencers and creators steadily multiplied (growing to include European-based influencers) which meant we needed someone at the helm who could lead the charge. Our Senior Social Media Strategist, Greg Rokisky, stepped up to fill that role and take our influencer strategy to new heights. Our new center of excellence focused on a core strategy that permeated the marketing organization through a highly collaborative model. With everyone working together, we were able to create a 360° influencer experience—something we had never done before.

Apply it: As you scale your influencer program, adopting a cross-functional approach can help overcome inefficient spend and fragmented impact. A center of excellence model consolidates strategic decision-making—ensuring teams use data-driven insights to invest in the right influencer activations, manage influencer relationships in lockstep and optimize resources. By aligning your teams, you can transform influencer marketing from a set of siloed tactics into a high-performing machine to deliver on your larger business goals (which, in our case, includes both reach and revenue).

Streamline influencer sourcing and relationship management

There are an estimated 127 million influencers (and growing) on social media today. Manually researching millions of accounts to identify influencers who are the right fit for your brand isn’t only inefficient, it’s downright impossible. Especially when you consider how much additional time it takes to vet influencers for brand safety compliance.

The Sprout team uses our own Influencer Marketing platform to zero-in on the right partners quickly. The tool helps you find the right influencers, evaluate their content and followers, and manage approvals and performance all in one place. For example, we consult the newly-introduced Brand Safety Report and Brand Fit Score to discover the perfect matches to build authentic brand-influencer relationships.

We also leverage the platform for relationship management, from scaling outreach to managing and approving content submissions. Influencer Marketing by Sprout Social enables our cross-functional team to provide all stakeholders with visibility into ongoing activations.

Apply it: If your team still relies on manual processes for influencer discovery and management, you’re falling behind and creating space for your competitors to swoop in. AI-driven solutions leverage data to ensure partnerships drive real impact and that teams collaborate effectively.

Think beyond expected partnerships

At the beginning of 2024, as part of our efforts to be louder and prouder in our marketing, I challenged my team to deliver bold and unexpected activations. This meant showing up in places and ways that our competitors (and even our peers) weren’t—and this certainly included our influencer marketing efforts. And wow, did they deliver.

One of the activations I’m proudest of was Design Miami (Art Basel) 2024. We made a huge splash during a major cultural moment that rippled across social. We were actually the only tech company at the event. Our on-site influencer activations—like with Maxine the Fluffy Corgi—brought moments of surprise and delight to attendees and our audience on social. This influencer content was part of a much larger play that also included a VIP customer event featuring social and influencer marketing experts, and a robust landing page that surfaced real-time event insights and trends from our Influencer Marketing and Social Listening solutions.

From all that we did at Art Basel, to inviting Corporate Erin to join a webinar, to asking Vin Matano to be our on-the-ground correspondent at Dreamforce, we took big swings last year.

For all of these programs and more, we relied on our Influencer Marketing platform to identify the influencers, who are not the creators typically tapped by B2B brands. These unconventional partnerships helped us break through industry echo chambers and reach untapped audiences.

Apply it: When a brand approaches influencer marketing in a unique way—whether it’s a finance influencer discussing beauty spending habits or a fitness creator advocating for productivity tools—it signals innovation and cultural relevance. For brands focused on growing their program and reaching larger business goals, this strategy not only expands their reach but also fosters new consumer relationships, driving both demand and long-term brand equity.

Contextualize influencer performance metrics

Nearly 83% of marketers say that sponsored influencer content generates more conversions than organic posts from their brand account, per the Q1 2025 Sprout Pulse Survey. Not just reach or even engagements, but revenue-generating conversions.

At Sprout, we’ve used our platform to build actionable social media reporting dashboards that elevate social insights to critical business intelligence. In our reporting, we hone-in on key metrics linking social efforts to pipeline generation—including Earned Media Value (EMV), Cost Per Lead (CPL) and, of course, Leads Generated.

Considering the impact influencer marketing efforts have on these KPIs, it’s critical that they are incorporated into our reporting. With our Influencer Marketing platform, we’re able to calculate reach, engagements, EMV, leads and more.

Apply it: To measure impact beyond basic metrics, your team needs to incorporate influencer results into the performance reports they generate for you and share them with cross-functional stakeholders. Tracking these metrics not only ties influencer marketing to core business metrics like revenue, but also provides insights that inform future revenue-generation. By leveraging sophisticated reporting solutions, teams can optimize their strategies and drive business growth.

Scale influencer marketing into a revenue driver

Scaling your influencer marketing program requires more than just increasing the number of partnerships.

By adopting a center of excellence model, leveraging AI-driven discovery tools and integrating performance data into business reporting, brands can transform influencer marketing from a siloed set of tactics into a revenue-generating powerhouse.

The key is alignment—when teams collaborate effectively and invest in the right influencers, the impact extends far beyond social engagement. With the right strategy and tools, your influencer program can become a critical driver of brand awareness, trust and measurable business growth.

Want more resources to scale your strategy? Download our influencer marketing toolkit to find the resources your team needs to begin, budget and build a strategy for ROI.