Alexis JarreCMO & Co-founderOnce a B2B team decides creator-led growth is worth a real budget, the next question is how to run it: hire an agency to do it for you, or use a platform and run it in-house. The two paths cost different amounts, hand you different levels of control, and fail in different ways. This is an honest breakdown of the trade-offs so you can pick based on your team and stage rather than on whichever pitch you heard last.
It is written for B2B SaaS marketing leads who have read why B2B influence works and are now choosing an operating model. If your real question is whether to outsource at all versus do it yourself, start with founder DIY vs hiring creators.
What an agency actually gives you
A B2B influencer agency is a done-for-you service. You brief them on goals, they handle sourcing, negotiation, briefing, and reporting, and you pay a retainer plus the creator spend. The value is real when you lack the time or in-house expertise to run the program yourself.
→ Pros: hands-off, existing creator relationships, strategic guidance, useful when you have budget but no bandwidth. → Cons: retainers typically run €3,000–€10,000+ per month on top of creator fees; you are one client among many; the creator relationships and the playbook live with the agency, not with you; and turnaround is gated by their queue.
The deeper cost is dependency. When the program works, the institutional knowledge — which creators convert, which angles land — sits inside the agency. The day you stop paying, you start over.
What a platform actually gives you
A creator platform is self-serve infrastructure. You source and brief creators yourself, but the platform handles the operational layer that usually kills in-house programs: discovery, payments, and tracking.
→ Pros: dramatically lower overhead (no retainer), full control, you keep the data and relationships, and you can launch in days rather than after an onboarding cycle. → Cons: you own the strategy and the briefing, so it suits teams willing to learn the channel — though the operational hard parts are handled for you.
The two operational problems that stop most in-house programs are payment and measurement. B2B creators are usually salaried employees who cannot issue invoices, and without tracking you cannot tell which creator drove which click. A platform built for B2B solves both, which is what makes running it in-house viable in the first place.
Cost, control, speed, risk — side by side
→ Cost. Agency: retainer + creator spend, fixed monthly. Platform: creator spend + a much lower platform cost; on a per-click model you largely pay for results. → Control. Agency: low — they run it. Platform: high — you run it. → Speed to launch. Agency: weeks (onboarding, queue). Platform: days (self-serve). → Ownership. Agency: relationships and data live with them. Platform: they live with you. → Risk. Agency: flat spend regardless of results. Platform: on per-click pricing, spend tracks performance.
There is no universally right answer — but the trade is clear. An agency buys you bandwidth at the cost of control and ownership. A platform keeps both, in exchange for owning the strategy yourself.
How to decide
Choose an agency if you have real budget, no in-house bandwidth, and need someone to own the whole program — and you are comfortable that the expertise stays with them.
Choose a platform if you want control, lower and more results-tied spend, faster iteration, and you want the creator relationships and performance data to compound inside your own team. For most B2B SaaS teams below the enterprise tier, the platform path wins on cost and ownership — especially once the payment and tracking problems are handled for you.
Where Naano fits
Naano is the platform path, purpose-built for B2B. You source and brief creators; Naano handles the operational layer that usually requires an agency:
→ Payment without invoices. Creators are paid €1.10 per qualified click by statement, so salaried experts can participate without a registered structure. → Per-click billing. The brand is billed €1.90–2.90 per qualified click — a click that passes UTM tracking with 30 seconds or more of on-site engagement — so spend maps to results, not flat retainers. → You keep everything. The creator relationships, the performance data, and the playbook stay with your team.
The takeaway: an agency rents you a program; a platform builds you a capability. If you want creator-led growth to become a durable, measurable channel your team owns — rather than a line item you outsource — the platform path is the one that compounds.
To run B2B creator campaigns in-house with payment and tracking handled, start a campaign on Naano. To see how Naano compares to other tools, read Naano vs alternatives.
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