Before You Scale, Audit
Before you double your influencer budget or ramp up creator partnerships in 2026, take a breath.
Ask yourself:
Are we building a system - or just running campaigns?
Too many brands head into Q1 with:
Scattered spreadsheets
No clear tracking
No idea what’s actually working
If that sounds familiar, this blog’s for you.
Below are 10 audit questions we use with clients to assess whether your influencer marketing is ready to scale - or needs a rebuild.
1. How Are We Discovering Creators?
Are you manually scraping Instagram, searching hashtags, or using databases with little targeting logic?
Or do you have a repeatable system that aligns discovery with your customer persona?
2. How Many Creators Are We Seeding Monthly?
If you're not shipping 200–500 products/month, you're missing scale.
Seeding drives:
Awareness
Organic UGC
Entry points into long-term partnerships
3. What's Our Creator Post Rate?
Are you tracking:
Who posts?
How quickly?
What kind of engagement they drive?
This tells you how effective your seeding and creator selection really is.
4. How Are We Measuring Seeding Success?
Are you just counting posts?
Or are you measuring:
UGC volume
Impressions
Engagement
Sales attribution
Hint: customer acquisition should be on that list.
5. Are We Converting Creators Into Long-Term Partners?
You’ve found creators who fit the brand. Great.
Now:
Are they in your affiliate program?
Are they incentivised for repeat performance?
Are you tracking their lifetime value?
6. Where Are We Tracking Creator Performance?
Do you have a dashboard to see:
UGC volume
Revenue
Top performers
Platform breakdowns
If not, scaling will break you.
7. Are We Repurposing Creator Content?
UGC isn’t just for Instagram.
It should be fuelling:
Paid ads
Landing pages
PDPs
Email flows
You paid for it - now make it work harder.
8. What Would Break If We Doubled Our Budget?
This is the ultimate stress test.
If you doubled spend next month:
Would your systems hold up?
Would tracking scale?
Would comms fall apart?
Whatever would break - fix it now.
Access Our Playbook
Take 5 minutes to answer the above internally.
✅ Creator performance breakdown
✅ Systems check
✅ Scale roadmap for Q1 2026
And if you haven’t already, check out our 2026 Influencer Playbook Blog Post for a deeper dive into building an engine that scales.