Reach is not the metric that pays your bills
Influencer budgets go two ways: a stack of one-off posts that vanish in a day, or a small bench of creators whose content quietly outperforms your studio ads.
AI can draft the 90-day plan, the tier split and the outreach shortlist. A discovery tool (Modash, or Shopify Collabs if you're on Shopify) and the platform's own creator insights supply the real follower and engagement numbers AI can't invent.
Fastest path: one prompt, end to end
🤖 AI prompt — paste into ChatGPT / Claude
You are my influencer strategist. Build a 90-day creator plan for [product], total budget [$ amount], primary platform [Instagram / TikTok / YouTube].
1. Split my budget across three tiers — nano (1K–10K followers), micro (10K–100K), macro (100K+) — and justify the split from engagement economics: nano/micro run far higher engagement rates and cost a fraction of macro.
2. For each tier, open a discovery tool (Modash, modash.io; or Shopify Collabs if I sell on Shopify) AND my platform's own creator search, and list 3 candidate creators with their REAL follower count and engagement rate next to each handle.
3. Lay out the gifting→paid ladder: who to seed free product first, who to convert to a paid post, who to move onto a long-term ambassador deal.
4. Give a week-by-week timeline: seed → first paid posts → whitelist the winners → renew the best as ambassadors.
Output ONE markdown table with columns: Tier | Budget $ | # creators | Candidate (handle) | Followers | Engagement % | Ladder stage | Week.
Do not guess or estimate any number. Every follower / engagement figure must come from a tool you opened or a source you can cite — put the source next to it. If you cannot get a real number, leave that cell blank and ask me to fill it in. If you can't browse, leave the Followers and Engagement columns blank and tell me which tool to open.
Or do it in 4 steps
- Set one goal, then pick the tier that fits it. Awareness leans toward a few larger creators; conversion and trust lean toward a bench of micro/nano. Micro-creators (10K–100K) run higher engagement than mega/celebrity accounts on Instagram (engagement drops as followers climb, per Later) and cost a fraction. One macro post equals a dozen creators whose audiences actually reply and buy.
- Split the budget by tier, not by one big name. A sane starting split: ~60% to a micro/nano bench, ~30% to one or two mid-tier anchors, ~10% held back to whitelist whatever performs. Rough per-post ranges (Hootsuite, 2026): micro ~$200–$2,000, macro ~$5,000–$20,000 on Instagram; $50,000+ is mega/celebrity territory, not macro.
- Run the gifting→paid ladder. Seed free product widely with no strings, pay the creators whose organic posts land, then convert the best into an ongoing ambassador relationship. Long-term relationships consistently return the most of any influencer format, because an audience believes an ongoing relationship over a one-off paid mention.
- Whitelist your winners. Put media spend behind the specific organic posts already over-performing, run through the creator's own handle (Meta Partnership Ads / TikTok Spark Ads). Usually cheaper CPMs and lower CPA than the same content from your brand account.
Done looks like: a named bench per tier, a budget line per creator, and every candidate row backed by a real engagement number, not a follower count alone.
Worked example: $10,000 over 90 days (illustrative split)
| Tier | Budget | # creators | Per creator | Ladder stage |
|---|
| Nano / micro | $6,000 | 12 | ~$200–$750 | Seed → paid |
| Mid-tier | $3,000 | 2 | ~$1,500 | Paid → ambassador |
| Whitelist reserve | $1,000 | — | media spend | Boost the winners |
Fill the creator handles and their real engagement rates from Modash or your platform search. The dollar split is the illustrative part; the numbers next to each name must be real.
Re-run the tier split every quarter as your winners emerge.