When and How to Build An In-House Influencer Marketing Team

If you're reading this, influencer marketing is probably working for your brand. You've proven the channel and seen solid returns, and now you're asking: "Should we bring this in-house?"

It's an expensive and time-consuming decision to get wrong. Hiring too early can drain resources. Hiring too late means missing growth opportunities. And hiring without the proper setup? That's a quick way to burn out good talent.

In this article, we'll look at the signs that tell you when to build an in-house team, how to train them, and how to set them up for success.

Before we get into the specifics, you need to know precisely what you're getting into. Let's start with an honest look at what works and what doesn't with in-house influencer marketing.

Advantages of in-house influencer marketing team

Many leading DTC brands bring their influencer operations in-house because of the competitive advantages the provides, like:

Direct learning

When your team runs influencer marketing, they gather data about which content styles, posting times, and promotional approaches work. This firsthand helps you learn exactly which influencer characteristics (like engagement rates, content style, and audience demographics) drive sales for your specific products, thus optimizing future campaigns.

Faster execution

In-house teams can launch campaigns within days instead of weeks. They can negotiate rates, approve content, and handle revisions without waiting for agency middlemen. During crucial shopping periods like Black Friday or product launches, this speed difference directly impacts revenue—especially for seasonal or trend-driven items.

Cost efficiency at scale

Once your monthly influencer spend reaches a certain amount, in-house teams will become more cost-effective than agency fees. You eliminate agency markups on creator fees and can reinvest those savings into more partnerships or experiments.

Challenges of Running an In-House Influencer Program

There are some common pitfalls and resource requirements that you need to prepare for when building their internal influencer team.

Resource-intensive training

Building an effective influencer team requires significant training investment. New hires need a few months to learn your products, brand image, and contract negotiation skills. During this learning period, revenue coming from influencer marketing will dip.

Bandwidth limitations

With a small team (typically 1-2 people), you're limited in how many influencer relationships you can actively manage. This becomes critical during product launches or seasonal peaks when you need to coordinate with multiple creators simultaneously. Sick days, vacations, or employee turnover can impact your ROI.

The real question is: How do you know which side of the fence your brand sits on? Let's break down the specific signals that will tell you whether to stick with your current setup or make the leap to an in-house team.

When to stay with agencies and freelancers for influencer marketing

Building an in-house team isn't always the right move for many small and medium DTC brands.

The most obvious signal is if you're still testing influencer marketing as a channel—you need the flexibility to experiment without the overhead of full-time hires.

Similarly, if your campaigns are seasonal (like swimwear brands focusing on summer), maintaining a year-round team might not make financial sense. It makes sense to go with a freelancer in that case.

If you're not ready to dedicate resources to building proper workflows—from creator briefing templates to payment systems to content approval processes—stick with agencies. They already have these systems, and building them from scratch takes significant time and effort.

Signs you're ready for an in-house influencer team

The clearest signal is the consistent success with influencer campaigns—if you're running regular collaborations and seeing predictable ROI, that's your first green light.

Other key indicators that you're ready to build in-house:

• You're managing 10+ active creator relationships at any time.
• Your agency fees/freelancer fees are approaching the cost of a full-time hire.
• You have clear data on which creator types and content formats work for your brand.
• You want deeper relationships with creators but feel constrained by agency workflows.
• You're spending significant time giving agencies feedback about brand voice or if creators proactively reach out and want to work more closely with your brand.

How to Structure Your In-House Influencer Marketing Team

Here’s a framework for building an effective influencer team, from your first hire to a fully-functioning department:

1. Hiring Your First Influencer Marketing Lead

Your first hire should be an Influencer Marketing Lead. This person is crucial—they're building everything from scratch.

What to look for

Look for someone who:

• Understand how to write clear emails and manage relationships
• Knows how to manage budgets
• Most importantly, is super organized and can build processes that scale
• Can build relationships with influencers (keeping in touch, listening to their feedback, etc.)

Don't get too hung up on years of experience. Someone who manages their successful social media presence or handles customer service at a DTC brand might be perfect.

Interview them to judge that they are good at juggling multiple tasks and staying on top of details.

They should be scrappy and can figure things out. Your first lead will build systems from scratch, so they need to be someone who gets excited about creating strategy and processes.

2. When to Hire an Influencer Marketing Coordinator

For a few months, your lead will do everything related to influencer marketing. But if your strategy works, the day-to-day tasks will pile up, and things will slip through the cracks.

Here are the clear signs it's time to hire a coordinator to handle operations:

• Your Lead is spending more than 3 hours daily on admin tasks
• Products sit on shelves for days because there's no time to pack and ship
• You're getting feedback that payments are slow or content approvals take too long
• Your influencer content isn't being properly saved and organized
• Basic follow-ups are falling through the cracks

A coordinator will take on the operational load so your lead can grow the program.

What they'll own

Think of them as your program's operations manager. They handle three areas:

1. Make sure products get to influencers, content to your brand, and money to creators - all on time. Without a Coordinator, these basic but crucial tasks often cause relationship problems.
2. They're the ones who know where everything is - from contracts to content to tracking numbers. They build the systems that let your program scale without chaos.
3. They track what's happening - who posted, who got paid, what content came in. This frees up your Lead to think about what should happen next.

The right fit

Look for someone who loves making things run smoothly rather than someone focused on strategy or creativity. They should get excited about organizing things and fixing inefficient processes.

3. Adding an Influencer Partnerships Manager

Once you're running lots of campaigns, bring in someone focused purely on relationships—let's call them a Partnership Manager.

Signs it's time for this third hire

When you start seeing these cracks in your influencer marketing, bring in a partnership manager:

• Your lead has a list of promising creators they haven't had time to reach out to
• They're missing partnership opportunities because they can't jump on calls quickly.
• Existing creator relationships are not getting attention.
• Your top creators are starting to feel like "just another partnership."

The partnership manager will take relationship-building off your lead's plate, letting them focus on the bigger picture: program strategy, budget planning, coordinating with other teams, and measuring what's working.

Keep it connected

The biggest mistake is letting your influencer team become isolated. They should regularly talk with:

• Product team (to know what's launching)
• Customer service (to hear what customers are saying)
• Social media (to align content)

Let's say you're a coffee brand.

Your customer service team notices many people asking, "Which coffee maker should I use?" meanwhile, the social team sees their pour-over technique posts getting lots of saves and shares. When they tell the product team about this, they mention that the upcoming Ethiopian beans work perfectly for pour-over brewing.

Your influencer team can now plan something useful: they'll ask creators to make simple pour-over tutorials using the new Ethiopian beans. This content answers customer questions, aligns with what's working on social, and highlights your new product—all because your teams talked to each other!

Examples of influencer marketing teams of popular brands

See how successful DTC brands structure their influencer marketing teams, with actual case studies and org charts.

Poppi's Three-Person Influencer Team Structure

Poppi's influencer marketing team features three key roles for different aspects of their influencer marketing:

1. Influencer Coordinator (Lauren Wysseier) manages campaign operations, tracks deliverables and schedules, and handles product shipments and logistics.
2. Influencer Relations Manager (Emmerson Allen) builds and maintains creator relationships, ensures consistent brand alignment, and manages two-way feedback between the brand and creators.
3. Collegiate Relations Manager (Caroline Taylor) focuses on college ambassador programs, coordinates campus events and activations, and specializes in student market outreach.

This structure shows how larger brands segment their influencer marketing teams based on core functions: operations, relationship building, and targeted audience engagement.

Loop Earplugs' Lean Influencer Marketing Approach

Loop Earplugs shows that successful influencer marketing doesn't require a large team. With just one lead, and two team members plus agency support, they maintain strategic control while getting execution help—proving that the right structure matters more than size.

Olipop's Creator-to-Team-Member Success Story

Even successful brands like Olipop had to learn when to build an in-house team. After investing months and thousands in agency-led content that barely hit 100 views on TikTok, they recognized the need for change.

They hired Sara Crane, a TikTok creator who brought hands-on experience to their internal team.

The move highlighted a crucial timing signal: when generic, outsourced content isn't delivering results, it might be time to bring expertise in-house. Having team members who deeply understand the creator landscape can dramatically improve your campaign performance.

Tools and Software for In-House Influencer Teams

Moving influencer marketing in-house will mean you'll need to invest in tools built for DTC brands.Email threads and spreadsheets become a mess once you're working with 15+ creators. You need one place to track who's posting when, what they're supposed to deliver, and how much you're paying them.Your team should focus on building creator relationships and working on ideas and strategy, not copying-pasting data.This is where SARAL fits in. Our bootstrapped company has built an all-in-one influencer marketing tool for brands like yours.

Run any type of campaign you want…

…with the help of powerful features like:

Why SARAL?

Most tools in this space are built for huge brands with big budgets. They're expensive and overcomplicated because they're backed by VC money and need to justify high prices. We're different—we keep it simple, affordable, and focused on what growing brands actually need: finding creators, managing relationships, and tracking results, all in one place. We listen to our customers—you—and keep improving each month.

But you don't have to make any commitment today. Claim your free trial here. There are no long-term contracts. You can leave anytime if you're not happy.