Follower Count Is Dead. So How Should Brands Choose Creators in 2027?

For years, influencer marketing came with a fairly simple assumption: bigger audience, bigger impact.

The creator with 500,000 followers looked more valuable than the creator with 50,000. Reach was visible, easy to compare and easy to put into a spreadsheet.

But in 2027, follower count tells us less about a creator's potential impact than ever before.

And consumers seem to agree.

According to recent industry research, just 17% of consumers consider follower count when deciding whether to follow a creator. Almost three times as many - 47% - care about the subjects they talk about. The brands they partner with and the quality of their recent content both matter more too.

Brands are beginning to make the same shift. Content quality and style is now the number one criterion marketers use when selecting influencers, followed by engagement rate and authenticity. Follower count sits further down the list.

Follower count isn't completely irrelevant. But as a shorthand for influence? Its usefulness is rapidly disappearing.

Your followers aren't necessarily your audience anymore

The biggest reason is the way social platforms themselves have changed.

TikTok's For You feed, Instagram Reels and recommendation-led feeds increasingly distribute individual pieces of content based on what people are interested in, rather than simply serving posts to people who already follow an account.

That means a creator with 30,000 followers can produce a piece of content seen by hundreds of thousands of people. Equally, having hundreds of thousands of followers doesn't guarantee every post will reach them.

Recent analysis found that for Instagram Reels, 60% of creators had audiences where at least 70% of viewers were non-followers.

We're entering the post-follower era.

And that requires a different approach to creator selection.

Fit beats fame

The good news is that marketers are already moving in this direction.

Micro influencers remain the most commonly used creator tier, with 71% of brands and agencies working with creators between 10,000 and 100,000 followers, compared with 60% using macro influencers and just 25% working with mega or celebrity creators.

More importantly, the criteria used to select those creators are changing.

Content quality and style now outrank follower count. Engagement rate has grown in importance too, while authenticity - whether the influencer already knows and likes the brand - is among marketers' leading considerations.

Interestingly, less experienced brands appear to be the exception. Businesses with fewer than two years' experience in influencer marketing rely more heavily on follower count.

The more mature influencer marketing becomes, the less useful audience size seems to become as a proxy for creator quality.

So, what should brands actually look for?

At Pepper, we don't think the answer is replacing one vanity metric with another.

Engagement rate isn't automatically a better way to select creators simply because follower count has become less important.

The question brands need to ask is much broader:

Is this the right person to tell this particular story to the people we need to reach?

There are a few things we think matter.

1. Start with the content, not the creator's profile

Before looking at how many people follow someone, look at what they're actually creating.

Would their content stop you scrolling? Does it feel native to the platform? Are people watching, sharing and discussing it? Does the creator have a recognisable point of view? And, crucially, could you imagine your brand appearing in their content without it feeling like an interruption?

When 47% of consumers say subject matter influences whether they'll follow someone, compared with 17% who care about follower count, topical relevance becomes a form of reach in its own right.

If algorithms are finding audiences based on what content is about, selecting someone who naturally creates around the right subjects gives that content a better foundation for discovery.

2. Look at who is actually paying attention

Audience size and audience attention are very different things.

A smaller creator with an active community that asks questions, shares recommendations and trusts their opinion can sometimes be far more useful than a larger creator with passive reach.

Recent consumer research found 33% of people see no difference between niche and large influencers when it comes to purchase recommendations. Among those who do have a preference, niche creators come out ahead: 21% favour recommendations from niche influencers versus 15% from larger influencers.

That's why we need to look beyond headline engagement rates too.

What are people saying in the comments? Does the creator generate genuine conversation? Do audiences ask for recommendations? Do they come back repeatedly? Is there evidence that the creator can actually change how people think or behave?

Influence isn't simply how many people saw something. It's what happened because they saw it.

3. Look for genuine brand fit

The best creator partnership shouldn't feel like a brand borrowing someone's audience for 30 seconds.

It should make sense.

That means looking at a creator's interests, previous partnerships, values, tone, audience and existing relationship with the category.

Consumers increasingly expect that too. 44% think an influencer should be a long-time user of a product before promoting it, while another 37% expect them to have at least used it before. Only 19% said personal product use doesn't matter.

That's a pretty compelling argument against picking creators from a database, sending them a rigid brief and moving on to another roster next month.

The strongest creator relationships are built, not booked.

4. Choose creators against the job you need them to do

There is no universally "best" creator size.

A mega creator might be exactly right when the job is mass awareness or cultural impact. A highly specialist creator might be more effective when the goal is education, consideration or conversion.

The important part is knowing why they're there.

This becomes even more important as influencer marketing moves further down the funnel.

Two-thirds of consumers say they've made a purchase decision directly because of an influencer recommendation in the last year, rising to 81% among Gen Z. Almost a third say they've done so ten times or more.

In the UK, that commercial role is particularly pronounced. 38% of UK brands now consider influencer marketing a core growth driver. Half say influencer marketing accounts for 11-25% of their marketing-driven revenue, while 11% attribute more than half of that revenue to the channel.

Creator selection therefore needs to start with the outcome, not a follower bracket.

5. Look at past performance, not potential reach

If a creator has worked on previous campaigns, we have something much more useful than an audience number: evidence.

How did their content perform? Did people watch it? Click? Comment? Search? Buy? Did the content outperform their usual baseline? How did it perform when amplified through paid?

Marketers are becoming more performance-minded in their selection. Engagement rate is now one of the most important selection criteria, while previous campaign success is also part of the mix.

UK marketers go even further. Here, engagement rate is the leading creator-selection criterion at 48%, while campaign ROI is used by 38% of UK marketers, above the European average.

Historical performance isn't a guarantee of future results, but it's a far more useful signal than assuming 500,000 followers automatically equals 500,000 opportunities to influence.

6. Think about responsibility as part of suitability

Creator fit isn't only about performance.

Who a brand partners with says something about the brand itself, which means selection should also consider transparency, previous partnerships, brand safety and whether a creator's approach aligns with the standards expected of the campaign.

That consideration is becoming more formalised.

In the UK, 49% of marketers expect clear disclosure of sponsored content and 52% prioritise compliance with advertising rules.

For brands working with children, families or other audiences where additional care is needed, this becomes even more important.

A creator can look perfect on paper and still be the wrong partner.

Stop building creator lists. Start building creator strategies.

This shift matters because influencer marketing itself is scaling.

89% of brands expect to increase influencer marketing spend over the next 12 months, while 85% increased the number of creators they worked with during the previous year.

In the UK, 31% expect to significantly increase the size of their creator roster.

The temptation will be to respond by finding more creators, faster.

We think brands need to do the opposite: get better at identifying why each creator deserves to be there.

Follower count can still provide context. So can reach, engagement rate and audience demographics. But none should make the decision in isolation.

Creator selection in 2027 needs to combine content fit, audience behaviour, cultural relevance, brand affinity, past performance, responsibility and creative potential.

Because the most valuable creator isn't necessarily the one with the biggest audience.

It's the one most capable of making the right content resonate with the right people - whether those people follow them yet or not.

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