Haus Labs' Senior Influencer Marketing Manager, Megan Kurtz, on Getting to Creators Before They Sell Out and What It Actually Takes to Measure Influencer ROI

Haus Labs' Senior Influencer Marketing Manager, Megan Kurtz, on the creator pipeline nobody talks about, why the best creators are the ones not doing ads every day, and the analytics gap she's still waiting for someone to solve.

Megan Kurtz builds creator relationships at Haus Labs, drawing on experience at Kylie Cosmetics and Kora Organics. In this conversation with RoarOS' Mekhi Simpson, she breaks down her creator pipeline, the trust dynamic that makes smaller influencers outperform bigger ones, and why the analytics tools most marketers rely on still aren't telling the full story.

Q: Nowadays, are you investing in big audience influencers or UGC creators more? How does performance data influence that mix?

Megan: Overall, I'd say it depends on the product. It’s really a mix of big and small influencers. UGC creators are more for paid social, and I’d say that’s where pricing comes into play. I think you get more ROI with smaller influencers, but you need the bigger ones for awareness.

Q: Is there a specific reason why you think that you get more ROI from smaller influencers? Is that more of a trend now, or has it always been this way?

Megan: It’s become more of a trend now, just because if you’re not using Shop-My, LTK, or tracking link clicks, you don’t truly know how many sales you’re getting from a specific creator. When you only have, say, a million dollars to spend and a creator with over 1M followers accounts for about 10% of your budget, we wonder: is it really worth the cost? It also depends on how you define ROI and whether it's about awareness or whether you can really track sales. If we ran an influencer’s video as an ad, you can really track the key metrics, like clicks and sales, directly from the video.

Q: Recently, we looked at how authenticity plays into this, especially among Gen Z and Gen Alpha, who say authenticity is their most important value. So, do you think the higher ROI from these UGC creators is driven by their stronger relationship with their audience?

Megan: When working with smaller creators, you’re usually starting that relationship with them before they’re popular. They’re not doing ads as often, so it has a lot to do with trust. Sometimes, the bigger the creator, the more ads they’re doing, the more they’re saying this is my “favorite product,” versus a smaller creator who is not doing as many paid collaborations. These creators are genuinely speaking to their audience about what they like. It is always better to work with people who post products organically, making their content feel more authentic and helping us build trust and genuine connections with their followers.

Q: What would make measuring success for Haus Labs easier? Is there anything that comes to the top of your mind?

Megan: Most platforms surface standard metrics like views and engagement rate, but they don’t always go deeper into why certain content performs well. You still have to manually analyze top-performing creator posts and ads to identify patterns across videos. I think there’s a big opportunity for better tools that can analyze creative elements at scale.

Q: One thing that is interesting about our tool is that we let people tag certain things based on different videos. For example, a hook, CTA, or audio. Do you think that type of feature actually helps choose which content works and how to better optimize for Haus Labs?

Megan: On our reporting platform, you can tag videos based on campaigns and what they're working on. But if you can also add more specific tags to the content, you can compare the videos using a tool that does it automatically rather than manually.

Q: How do you go about briefing UGC creators to make sure content is optimized? Are there any specific guidelines in the briefs you guys use to ensure UGC content is optimized for Haus Labs?

Megan: Every single brief is individualized. For paid partnerships, we always discuss the concept with them before sending the brief. We let them share how they envision the video, then provide product talking points. It always works better than sending a rigid brief without agreeing on the concept.

Q: How do you look at competitors for inspiration? How does what you see in their content influence the choices that you make?

Megan: I look at competitors a lot, but our brand identity is very different from most. I focus more on which creators competitors are choosing and why, rather than their actual ads, because what works for other brands often won’t translate to our audience or positioning. If I identify a great creator using other makeup brands, then I send them a product. From there, if they genuinely love it, they start posting about us organically. Consumers discover Haus Labs through people they already trust, and they buy these products because they actually deliver.

Q: What role do keywords or other search and performance filters play when you’re discovering new creators or posts to track?

Megan: I think sometimes people will use hashtags. As a consumer, I don’t really use hashtags on TikTok. I’d say I’m only looking up things when I’m looking for something specific; otherwise, I don’t use search, I just look at my FYP. Usually, I notice products when people tag them in their posts or GRWM videos, where they tag all the products they use and mention something specific, like ‘Haus Labs bronzer.’ That’s typically how I discover other products and creators.

Q: Do you find it easier sometimes to give an example video in your briefs to a creator, especially smaller creators that might be newer to posting content for a brand?

Megan: I have two TikToks, one that I only use for makeup, so that FYP is really curated. This makes it easy to find people through makeup application videos. Providing examples of videos creators have already done is super helpful. It is so much easier to digest if you send them a video of themselves and just ask them to “do something similar to this.” Using examples of previous content they’ve done helps them understand and minimizes edits and notes from the brand side.