Apr 11, 2025
7 MIN READ
INFLUENCER MARKETING
INFLUENCER MARKETING
When and How to Build An In-House Influencer Marketing Team
When and How to Build An In-House Influencer Marketing Team
When and How to Build An In-House Influencer Marketing Team
Aishwarya Taskar
Aishwarya Taskar
Aishwarya Taskar
Aishwarya Taskar
Content Marketer @impulze.ai
Blog in Short ⏱️
Blog in Short ⏱️
A quick glance at the highlights—perfect for when you're short on time.
A quick glance at the highlights—perfect for when you're short on time.
This blog outlines when and how to build an in-house influencer marketing team.
If you're spending $15–20K/month on campaigns or facing issues with freelancers, it may be time to hire internally.
Start lean with an Influencer Marketing Manager, a Creative Coordinator (optional), and part-time admin support. Look for candidates with hands-on experience—ex-agency talent, creators, or community managers.
Use tools like Google Sheets, Notion, Slack, and brand folders to manage workflows and content.
Build long-term relationships with creators by engaging authentically and paying on time.
In-house teams improve performance, reduce mistakes, and increase creator loyalty.
Though hiring has upfront costs, it leads to better results and scalable growth.
It started with a DM.
A small skincare brand had been sending PR kits to a few micro-influencers. No fancy strategy, no big spreadsheets—just gut and good product. Then, one day, an influencer with 80K followers made an unpaid post. It blew up. Their website traffic spiked. They sold out of three SKUs.
But they weren’t ready.
The founder tried to “wing it” with freelancers, VAs, and part-timers. Eventually, things got messy; emails unanswered, contracts lost, the wrong shade sent to a top creator. That’s when they realized: if influencer marketing is going to be a serious part of growth, it needs a serious team.
That’s what this piece is about. Not the basics. Not the fluff.
Just the real, practical signs it’s time to build your own in-house influencer marketing team—and exactly how to do it when you're ready.
First: Should You Even Build an In-House Team?
Let’s get brutally honest. Building an in-house team isn’t for everyone. It's not trendy or cool. It’s a business decision. So ask yourself:
1. Are you spending over $15–20K/month on influencer campaigns?
That’s around the tipping point. At this level, agency fees start to hurt. You’re better off hiring.
2. Do you need full-time focus and tighter control?
If you're launching multiple campaigns a month or influencers are tied closely to product drops, you need people who live your brand daily.
3. Are freelancers dropping the ball?
Deadlines missed? Creators confused? That’s your brand reputation. At some point, coordination needs to be someone’s job—not a side hustle.
If you said yes to any of these, keep reading.
What Does an Influencer Marketing Team Do?
If you’re spinning up a new arm of your marketing team, it’s worth getting super clear on what this crew is here to do—and how they’ll plug into your bigger strategy.
Here’s what they’re responsible for:
Defining Strategy: The team should create and define an influencer marketing strategy, KPIs, and its approach to achieving those goals.
Budgeting: Your team owns how the budget gets split—whether that’s investing in a platform, hiring agency support, or paying creators directly.
Nurturing creator partnerships: It’s their job to turn one-off posts into long-term, high-trust relationships that move the needle.
Campaign management: This team handles the whole flow from finding the right creators to sending briefs, tracking shipments, reviewing content, and ensuring everyone gets paid.
Performance tracking: They’ll stay on top of what’s working (and what’s not), tracking KPIs, sales, and ROI across every campaign.
Now that you know what the team’s here to do, let’s discuss who you need to make it happen.
What Roles Do You Need to Hire?
You don’t need a 5-person department right away. Start lean. Here’s a solid setup for your first in-house squad:
1. Influencer Marketing Manager
This is your quarterback. They’ll handle sourcing, outreach, relationship-building, campaign planning, reporting—everything. Hire someone with taste and spreadsheets in their DNA.
2. Creative Coordinator
Optional, but helpful. This person manages briefs and creative approvals and ensures the content feels on-brand without being boring.
3. Contract & Admin Support (even part-time)
Chasing invoices and contracts isn’t easy, get help here.
That’s it to start. Build from there. Don’t overstaff. You need doers, not meetings.
Where to Find the Right People
Hiring for influencer marketing is weird. There’s no perfect LinkedIn filter for ‘knows how to DM 50 creators without sounding like a bot.’
So look beyond resumes. Here’s where to look:
Ex-agency folks: They’ve seen how it’s done at scale. Many are burned out and would love to build something in-house.
Content creators: Yes, hire influencers to run your influencer marketing. They get it, especially those who’ve negotiated their own deals.
Community managers: Especially those who’ve built hype or handled ambassador programs. They know how to keep people engaged.
During interviews, ask for:
Campaigns they’ve run (results + what went wrong)
How they’d approach your brand
How they build and maintain relationships (this is key)
And yes, always ask how they handle a creator missing a deadline because it’ll happen.
Once your team’s in place, make sure they’re not drowning in DMs and spreadsheets.
Tools to Make Influencer Marketing Easier
You don’t need a $2K/month platform out of the gate. Start with what works:
Google Sheets: Underrated. Track outreach, responses, status, fees, and usage rights.
Notion or Airtable: For brief templates, campaign calendars, and creator databases.
Slack or Discord: If you want to build a real community vibe with your top creators.
Brand folder: Shareable link with all the things creators need—logos, tone of voice, example posts, disclaimers, etc.
As you scale, consider tools like impulze.ai and SocialiQ. That would make influencer discovery, outreach, and campaign management easier for you.
Building Creator Relationships, Not Just Campaigns
This is where in-house teams shine.
Agencies chase numbers. In-house teams build relationships. And it pays off.
DM like a human, not like a marketer.
Pay creators on time. No one forgets a brand that pays late.
Don’t just reach out when you need something. Send early access. Share their posts. Comment. Be present.
Good creators will become fans. And fans sell products better than any brief.
But What About the Budget?
Hiring people feels expensive. But so is inefficiency. If you’re working with 10+ creators/month and every campaign feels like chaos, you’re already losing money.
Let’s break it down:
Influencer Marketing Manager: ~$60K–$85K/year depending on market
Creative/Coordinator role: ~$45K–$65K
Part-time admin: ~$20/hr
You’ll recoup that in better performance, fewer mistakes, and creators who actually want to work with you again.
Once you’ve carved out a budget, here’s how to set your team up for success from day one.
Top Tips for Building Your Influencer Marketing Team
Here are a few key things to nail when putting together your dream influencer marketing crew:
1. Align influencer marketing with your broader channel strategy
Influencer marketing doesn’t live in a silo. It works best when it’s tied into your broader marketing play—whether that’s supporting paid media, amplifying PR, driving event buzz, or boosting social commerce. Sync with your CMO early to figure out how influencer efforts will plug into the rest of your channels.
2. Factor influencer campaigns into your overall marketing budget
Simple, but often overlooked. Map out how much you’ll allocate to influencers—and consider how it’ll affect spend across your other channels.
3. Invest in the right tools and the right people
Whether hiring fresh talent or reshuffling roles internally, ensure your team is ready to own this channel. Equip them with tools that make life easier. If you plan to run everything in-house, an all-in-one platform like impulze.ai will make campaign discovery, outreach, tracking, and reporting easier for you—saving your team a ton of time and chaos.
Final Thoughts
You don’t need an in-house team because it sounds impressive.
You build one when the work demands it. When you’re done duct-taping systems together and ready to treat influencer marketing like the growth channel it actually is.
Start small. Hire smart. Build systems.
And focus on people, not just posts. That’s how brands win in 2025.
That skincare brand?
They’ve now got a smart, in-house team running influencer campaigns that drive real growth.
No chaos. Just results.
It started with a DM.
A small skincare brand had been sending PR kits to a few micro-influencers. No fancy strategy, no big spreadsheets—just gut and good product. Then, one day, an influencer with 80K followers made an unpaid post. It blew up. Their website traffic spiked. They sold out of three SKUs.
But they weren’t ready.
The founder tried to “wing it” with freelancers, VAs, and part-timers. Eventually, things got messy; emails unanswered, contracts lost, the wrong shade sent to a top creator. That’s when they realized: if influencer marketing is going to be a serious part of growth, it needs a serious team.
That’s what this piece is about. Not the basics. Not the fluff.
Just the real, practical signs it’s time to build your own in-house influencer marketing team—and exactly how to do it when you're ready.
First: Should You Even Build an In-House Team?
Let’s get brutally honest. Building an in-house team isn’t for everyone. It's not trendy or cool. It’s a business decision. So ask yourself:
1. Are you spending over $15–20K/month on influencer campaigns?
That’s around the tipping point. At this level, agency fees start to hurt. You’re better off hiring.
2. Do you need full-time focus and tighter control?
If you're launching multiple campaigns a month or influencers are tied closely to product drops, you need people who live your brand daily.
3. Are freelancers dropping the ball?
Deadlines missed? Creators confused? That’s your brand reputation. At some point, coordination needs to be someone’s job—not a side hustle.
If you said yes to any of these, keep reading.
What Does an Influencer Marketing Team Do?
If you’re spinning up a new arm of your marketing team, it’s worth getting super clear on what this crew is here to do—and how they’ll plug into your bigger strategy.
Here’s what they’re responsible for:
Defining Strategy: The team should create and define an influencer marketing strategy, KPIs, and its approach to achieving those goals.
Budgeting: Your team owns how the budget gets split—whether that’s investing in a platform, hiring agency support, or paying creators directly.
Nurturing creator partnerships: It’s their job to turn one-off posts into long-term, high-trust relationships that move the needle.
Campaign management: This team handles the whole flow from finding the right creators to sending briefs, tracking shipments, reviewing content, and ensuring everyone gets paid.
Performance tracking: They’ll stay on top of what’s working (and what’s not), tracking KPIs, sales, and ROI across every campaign.
Now that you know what the team’s here to do, let’s discuss who you need to make it happen.
What Roles Do You Need to Hire?
You don’t need a 5-person department right away. Start lean. Here’s a solid setup for your first in-house squad:
1. Influencer Marketing Manager
This is your quarterback. They’ll handle sourcing, outreach, relationship-building, campaign planning, reporting—everything. Hire someone with taste and spreadsheets in their DNA.
2. Creative Coordinator
Optional, but helpful. This person manages briefs and creative approvals and ensures the content feels on-brand without being boring.
3. Contract & Admin Support (even part-time)
Chasing invoices and contracts isn’t easy, get help here.
That’s it to start. Build from there. Don’t overstaff. You need doers, not meetings.
Where to Find the Right People
Hiring for influencer marketing is weird. There’s no perfect LinkedIn filter for ‘knows how to DM 50 creators without sounding like a bot.’
So look beyond resumes. Here’s where to look:
Ex-agency folks: They’ve seen how it’s done at scale. Many are burned out and would love to build something in-house.
Content creators: Yes, hire influencers to run your influencer marketing. They get it, especially those who’ve negotiated their own deals.
Community managers: Especially those who’ve built hype or handled ambassador programs. They know how to keep people engaged.
During interviews, ask for:
Campaigns they’ve run (results + what went wrong)
How they’d approach your brand
How they build and maintain relationships (this is key)
And yes, always ask how they handle a creator missing a deadline because it’ll happen.
Once your team’s in place, make sure they’re not drowning in DMs and spreadsheets.
Tools to Make Influencer Marketing Easier
You don’t need a $2K/month platform out of the gate. Start with what works:
Google Sheets: Underrated. Track outreach, responses, status, fees, and usage rights.
Notion or Airtable: For brief templates, campaign calendars, and creator databases.
Slack or Discord: If you want to build a real community vibe with your top creators.
Brand folder: Shareable link with all the things creators need—logos, tone of voice, example posts, disclaimers, etc.
As you scale, consider tools like impulze.ai and SocialiQ. That would make influencer discovery, outreach, and campaign management easier for you.
Building Creator Relationships, Not Just Campaigns
This is where in-house teams shine.
Agencies chase numbers. In-house teams build relationships. And it pays off.
DM like a human, not like a marketer.
Pay creators on time. No one forgets a brand that pays late.
Don’t just reach out when you need something. Send early access. Share their posts. Comment. Be present.
Good creators will become fans. And fans sell products better than any brief.
But What About the Budget?
Hiring people feels expensive. But so is inefficiency. If you’re working with 10+ creators/month and every campaign feels like chaos, you’re already losing money.
Let’s break it down:
Influencer Marketing Manager: ~$60K–$85K/year depending on market
Creative/Coordinator role: ~$45K–$65K
Part-time admin: ~$20/hr
You’ll recoup that in better performance, fewer mistakes, and creators who actually want to work with you again.
Once you’ve carved out a budget, here’s how to set your team up for success from day one.
Top Tips for Building Your Influencer Marketing Team
Here are a few key things to nail when putting together your dream influencer marketing crew:
1. Align influencer marketing with your broader channel strategy
Influencer marketing doesn’t live in a silo. It works best when it’s tied into your broader marketing play—whether that’s supporting paid media, amplifying PR, driving event buzz, or boosting social commerce. Sync with your CMO early to figure out how influencer efforts will plug into the rest of your channels.
2. Factor influencer campaigns into your overall marketing budget
Simple, but often overlooked. Map out how much you’ll allocate to influencers—and consider how it’ll affect spend across your other channels.
3. Invest in the right tools and the right people
Whether hiring fresh talent or reshuffling roles internally, ensure your team is ready to own this channel. Equip them with tools that make life easier. If you plan to run everything in-house, an all-in-one platform like impulze.ai will make campaign discovery, outreach, tracking, and reporting easier for you—saving your team a ton of time and chaos.
Final Thoughts
You don’t need an in-house team because it sounds impressive.
You build one when the work demands it. When you’re done duct-taping systems together and ready to treat influencer marketing like the growth channel it actually is.
Start small. Hire smart. Build systems.
And focus on people, not just posts. That’s how brands win in 2025.
That skincare brand?
They’ve now got a smart, in-house team running influencer campaigns that drive real growth.
No chaos. Just results.
Frequently Asked Questions
Who is involved in influencer marketing?
Who is involved in influencer marketing?
Who is involved in influencer marketing?
What does an influencer marketing specialist do?
What does an influencer marketing specialist do?
What does an influencer marketing specialist do?
What are the 3 R's of influencer marketing?
What are the 3 R's of influencer marketing?
What are the 3 R's of influencer marketing?
How much do influencer marketers get paid?
How much do influencer marketers get paid?
How much do influencer marketers get paid?
What is the role of influencer marketing?
What is the role of influencer marketing?
What is the role of influencer marketing?
Who is in charge of influencer marketing?
Who is in charge of influencer marketing?
Who is in charge of influencer marketing?
Is impulze.ai free?
Is impulze.ai free?
Is impulze.ai free?
Author Bio
Author Bio
Aishwarya Taskar
Aishwarya Taskar
Aishwarya Taskar is a full-time writer. She has studied journalism and marketing. In her free time, she loves watching films and spending time with animals. You can learn more about her here.
Aishwarya Taskar is a full-time writer. She has studied journalism and marketing. In her free time, she loves watching films and spending time with animals. You can learn more about her here.
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May be Later
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May be Later