How More Nutrition Became a Billion-Euro Brand With Influencer Marketing

About More Nutrition

More Nutrition is a German supplement brand that has grown into a billion-dollar company. When Laura Koch joined as Head of Marketing in 2020, the team was fewer than 10 people. The brand had five product categories and generated some €40 million in annual revenue. At the time, it was activating around 100 nano and micro creators on little to no influencer budget. Today, More Nutrition is part of the Quality Group, which also includes ESN, and works with more than 1,300 creators across both brands and all markets.

Business-Critical From Day One

In the supplement space, no one buys on a whim. "So much of it comes down to trust — people want recommendations from someone they actually believe in," says Laura Koch, VP of Influencer Marketing at More Nutrition.

Budget for other channels simply didn't exist. Influencer marketing wasn't optional — in Laura's own words, it was "truly business-critical."

 "We put 100% of everything into influencer marketing. We couldn't buy reach. We were invisible outside of Instagram." 

Community Over Follower Count

With no tools and no data foundation, the team researched creators manually on Instagram. The key question was never about reach. It was: does this person have a real community? Does the product fit naturally into their content? From the beginning, More Nutrition built its creator selection around three clear criteria: community strength, product fit, and authenticity.

"Early on, it was obvious to us that reach alone meant nothing. What mattered was having a genuine place in someone's natural content," comments Laura.

Stories were especially powerful. "Back then, whoever was sharing their day-to-day life through Stories could integrate our products in a much more organic way. That's where the trust was built, trust that convinced new customers to give us a try."

The Model: Commission, Not Flat Fees

More Nutrition solved its budget problem with a simple commission model: 10% on generated revenue. No flat fees, no fixed cost per post, no financial risk. The model created clear performance transparency and genuine win-win partnerships: the brand carried minimal risk, and creators controlled their earnings directly.

"It incentivized our creators — it drove them to post more than they might have otherwise," comments Laura. "Everyone had a hand in determining their own income."

At the time, the model was unfamiliar, and the brand had to work to convince creators to join the program. Today, performance-based commission is a widely recognized format in influencer marketing. Jan Kraume (@jax.vita), who has worked with More Nutrition since the early days, now has over a million followers and has since founded his own community brand, puts the shift plainly. 

"In the past, you'd get a brief as a creator that just didn't fit who you were. You had to try to make it work and hope it didn't come across terribly. Now it's really about bringing your audience along for the ride — creator authenticity matters more than ever," he says.

From Manual Research to Data-Driven Creator Selection

In the early startup phase, the More Nutrition team leaned heavily on gut instinct, and decisions about whether a creator was the right fit were largely intuitive. Manual research was also extremely time-consuming. Today, More Nutrition uses Kolsquare for systematic discovery, though gut feel still plays an important role.

Kolsquare allows the team to evaluate creators based on data that actually matters: engagement rate, audience demographics, follower interests and locations, and past brand partnerships. The visual image search helps identify creators whose content style fits the brand. The creator look-alike feature makes it possible to discover new profiles based on partnerships that are already working well, including in new markets. More Nutrition also uses Storyclash by Kolsquare to track content performance and monitor which creators are already talking about the brand organically.

"In the early days, we could look at everything manually. With more than 1,300 creators in the system, that's just not possible anymore. Kolsquare gives us the data we need to find the right partners faster and see the key stats at a glance, even if More Nutrition still puts a lot of weight on personal communication when selecting creators," says Laura.

Long-Term Partnerships as the Foundation

From day one, More Nutrition avoided one-off deals. "To this day, I'm convinced that our relationship with our creators is the number-one factor in our success."

In the early days, Laura personally messaged every creator on WhatsApp. As the program grew, More Nutrition set up FAQ groups where creators could ask questions. What happened next was unplanned: creators started helping each other, friendships formed, and collaborative content followed. 

"Influencer work can be so much more than campaign management — it's really about building genuine connections."

The Key Takeaways

"We understood early on that influencer marketing wasn't a channel for us — it was a foundation. You can buy reach. You can't buy trust. That's exactly why we still operate on the same principles today as we did at the beginning: real relationships, real products, real opinions," comments Laura. 

Laura's four core lessons from years of growth: 

• Community beats reach, because trust is the real currency. 
• Relationships beat briefs, because great partnerships don't happen by copy-paste.
• Product quality beats production value, because even the best marketing can't save a bad product. 
• Long-term partnership beats short-term deals, because brands and creators can only grow sustainably when both sides genuinely believe in what they're building together.

What's Next?

Influencer marketing will keep evolving, and More Nutrition is paying close attention. Laura sees five key trends: creators are becoming brands in their own right, AI is reshaping content production, authenticity will matter even more than it does today, community will remain more important than reach, and loyalty will become the defining competitive advantage. These aren't abstract theories — they're principles More Nutrition is already acting on.