Honestly, this is one of the worst experiences I've had working with an outside partner. And I want to be upfront: I made the choice. I'm not telling this story to blame anyone else. I'm telling it because if you're thinking about working with an influencer agency, there are things I wish someone had told me first.
We were just starting out. Sales weren't moving the way we hoped, and I thought maybe we needed more experience, more resources, more structure than we could build ourselves at that stage.
A logistics company we were already working with referred us to their in-house marketing team. It felt like a safe introduction. Someone is already in our world. I thought it made sense.
Why I said yes
I had been speaking to different agencies before this. Most were cold, or they disappeared after the first message, or they were expensive in a way that didn't match what they were actually offering.
This one was different. Warm from the start, genuinely keen, and they came back with a customised proposal. Not a generic deck sent to everyone. Something that felt specific to us.
That felt rare. So I said yes.
I also want to be honest about the other reason. I was desperate for sales. We were stressed. I thought an agency might have some kind of magic I didn't. They implied they did. That's on me for believing it.
"They knew how to pitch. They just didn't know how to follow through."
The cracks appeared fast
Late meetings. Slow responses after payment was confirmed. Technical issues. Influencers ghosting the agency itself. They had also set up a structure where influencers were recruiting other influencers, which added a layer of chaos that was entirely their own design.
The contact they assigned to us had just graduated. New, learning on the job, the manager is not paying much attention. They were treating us like a mass market product, constantly suggesting we expand into other markets when we were still establishing ourselves in the first one. They didn't understand what we were building or who we were building it for.
The comment on our brand post
Then an influencer DM'd us directly. Not the agency. Us. "Hi, just letting you know, I still haven't been paid."
We were confused and shocked. We were paying the agency. The agency was supposed to be paying the influencers. We passed it on and got a reassuring reply. A small tax issue is being sorted out, nothing to worry about.
A few days later, a different influencer had the same problem. This time she left a comment on our official brand post. "Can someone pls pay me?"
I was at the gym. I stopped, opened the notification, and spent the next few minutes managing a public complaint on our own brand page because an agency we were paying had failed to pay the people they hired.
I replied directly, explained we used an agency, and promised to follow up. She was reasonable and deleted the comment quickly. Thank god we had just started and not many people saw it. But the moment had already happened.
This is the worst part. We hired an agency, and they damaged our brand image. That's the exact opposite of what you pay someone for.
I messaged the agency immediately. No reply. I messaged again. "Yes, we are fixing it." Days passed. Another message. "Yes, we will fix it soon." The influencers kept contacting us directly because the agency wasn't responding to them either.
We were now the ones chasing, forwarding, and managing. Every message cost us time we didn't have. It was exhausting, especially when we were just starting and had so many other things to hold together. At some point, I had to make myself calm down and just cut it quickly.
"I hired an agency to protect our brand. They damaged it instead."
The numbers, the excuses, the pattern
This is the pitch every influencer agency gives you. First, we build awareness, then we drive sales, then we optimise for conversion. It sounds like a plan.
What actually happens: they show you traffic numbers. Impressive looking data. But the audience is wrong, nothing converts, and the explanation is always the same. Branding takes time. Give it more time. And while you're waiting, they get comfortable.
The influencer selection gets lazier. The briefs get looser. The problems get more frequent. The numbers keep looking busy. The results are not arriving.
If an agency can't define what a good result looks like for your specific brand before the work starts, they are not working for you. They are working for their retainer.
Awareness without a path to conversion is just spending money. If their answer to everything is awareness, they don't care about your business. They care about justifying their invoice.
And here's the honest question worth asking before you sign anything: why pay for an expensive agency when a freelancer or a dedicated assistant would do the same work, understand your brand better, cost significantly less, and actually have you as their priority?
An agency has twenty clients. A freelancer you hire has one. You. That difference in attention is worth more than any polished deck.
The repeated failures gave us clear grounds to end the contract early without penalty. We terminated formally, citing no clear strategy, poor influencer selection, and reputational damage from unpaid collaborations.
Their reply: "We understand, but our team worked very hard and cared deeply about your brand."
No handover. No closure.
The chaos continued even after termination. Products still being sent out, deliverables outstanding, everything just floating. I checked in: "Is anyone still handling our account?"
A former employee replied: "Sorry, no one is managing your account. The entire team has been laid off."
Just like that. No handover, no closure, no responsibility. Another agency under the same parent group confirmed it: they didn't exist anymore.
And don't assume that because something is incorporated, has a website, and speaks like a twenty-person team that it is stable. Agencies close. Teams get laid off. Founders move on.
What looks like infrastructure is sometimes just a pitch deck that got funded. If you're a small brand without a big budget, you are not their priority client. The ones they protect are the big accounts. If you're not one of them, you'll find out eventually, usually at the worst possible moment.
Most influencer agencies work this way. Not all, but enough that you need to go in with your eyes open.
What I actually learned
Most agencies have never started a brand. They've never spent their own money producing a product, never felt the weight of a slow month. They make decisions from outside the brand. And that gap shows.
If you want to work with an influencer agency, ask for a customised proposal that shows they understand your specific market. Do a trial of three months maximum before committing to anything longer.
Any agency that pushes back on a short trial period is telling you something. And define what success looks like before you sign anything. If they can't give you a concrete answer, they are protecting themselves, not you.
And if you're considering an agency because you think finding influencers yourself is too hard, it really isn't.
