How to start influencer marketing without a massive budget

Josh went to San Francisco for an event. After a drink or two at dinner, a CMO friend whipped out her phone to show him her entire influencer marketing strategy.

"You just need to follow this 27-step process."

Josh's brain: 27 steps for me? Nah. One step. Tell Jess. She'll handle the other 26.

Classic CEO energy—bringing back ideas from companies at completely different stages with completely different budgets. The irony? We recorded a whole Season 1 episode roasting CEOs for doing exactly this.

But it’s okay. I wanted to test influencer marketing too.

So I built Vector's first influencer pilot. Seven influencers. $12,000 budget. Three months to test. No vanity metrics. No chasing million-follower accounts. Just authentic voices who had the ear of our ICP.

The result? $1.1 million in pipeline. 45 demo requests. 82% ICP leads.

And posts so authentic you couldn't even tell they were sponsored until you scrolled to the hashtag.

In this episode, we walk through how I built Vector's first influencer program from scratch—who I picked, what I asked them to do, and why giving up control was the smartest move I made.

What you’ll learn:

• Why starting with a small pilot beats going all-in on influencer marketing right away
• How to find influencers with authentic audiences (not just big follower counts)
• The power of giving creators access to your product and letting them experience it firsthand
• What makes a great influencer brief (spoiler: it's short, flexible, and story-driven)
• How to measure success without getting lost in attribution tracking drama
• Why the best influencer posts don't feel like ads at all

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TOP THREE TAKEAWAYS

Takeaway 1: Start small with a mix of customers and thought leaders

When Josh brought back this influencer idea, I didn't go out and try to replicate some giant CMO's program at a company ten times our size. I started with a pilot.

$12,000. Seven influencers. Three months.

The mix mattered. I brought on three customers—people already using Vector who could speak to real results and use cases. Then I added four thought leaders—well-known demand gen marketers on LinkedIn who weren't customers yet, but had the ear of our ICP.

These weren't people with millions of followers. The average following across our group was about 13,000. But they had something way more valuable: trust. Their audiences actually listened to them.

If you're thinking about starting an influencer program, don't overthink it. Pick three to five people whose content you already follow and respect. Give them access to your product. Start there. Test it. Then scale.

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Takeaway 2: The best influencer posts don't feel like ads

You know how I knew this was working?

Josh would scroll LinkedIn, see one of our influencer posts, and genuinely couldn't tell it was sponsored until he got to the bottom and saw #VectorParter.

That's the goal.

I gave our influencers three things:

1. Flexible timing — a range of dates, not a hard deadline
2. A tight but short brief — a couple of paragraphs with the story, messaging points they could borrow or riff on, and some visuals if they wanted them
3. Complete creative freedom — they picked their format, their tone, their angle

I didn't tell them exactly what to say. I didn't make them all use the same graphic or banner. I didn't force video when they knew text performed better for their audience. I just gave them the story and let them tell it in their own voice, in their own format, in their own style.

These people built their audiences without your help. They know what works. Let them do their thing. If you try to control every word, it'll feel like an ad—and that defeats the entire purpose of influencer marketing.

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Takeaway 3: You don't need perfect attribution to know it's working

I almost created individual UTM codes for every influencer so I could track exactly who drove what traffic.

Then I stopped myself.

This was a pilot. I didn't need pixel-level precision. I just needed to know directionally if it was working.

So I kept it simple:

• Added "How did you hear about us?" to our demo request form (shoutout to marketers who fill these out with wild detail—you're the real MVPs)
• Set up keyword alerts in Fathom for "influencer," "LinkedIn," and our influencers' names
• Watched the pipeline
  

At the end of three months, I pulled all the data. 45 demo requests came directly from LinkedIn or named an influencer as the source. 82% of those were ICP. And together, they created $1.1 million in pipeline.

From a $12,000 investment.

Sometimes you don't need a perfect attribution model. You just need to know if the investment is paying off—and when the ROI is that clear, the exact UTM breakdown doesn't really matter.

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It’s a no-brainer, we're scaling this

Influencer marketing can feel intimidating if you've never done it before. You think you need a massive budget, a huge team, or relationships with people who have millions of followers.

You don't.

You just need to start small, pick the right people, and let them tell your story in their own words.

Our pilot worked because we focused on authenticity over vanity metrics. We gave our influencers access to the product. We let them be themselves. And we didn't try to control every single detail.

Now? We're scaling it. Bringing on new voices. Testing video. Experimenting with podcasts. Because when something works, you keep going.

And if Josh brings back another CEO dinner idea? I'll be  27 steps ahead.

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Catch the full episode (and subscribe to This Meeting Could’ve Been a Podcast!) on YouTube or your favorite podcast platform.