We hear it all the time from early-stage CPG founders:
“What actually moves my product once its on the shelf?”
The usual options feel tired. Digital ads are expensive and increasingly ignored. Retail marketing programs are slow to spin up and built for brands with bigger budgets. In a recent conversation we had with Charise Flynn, COO of Hummingbirds, we got a front-row look at a strategy that’s getting more and more attention from smart operators: local creator marketing.
This approach that has worked wonders for brands like Olipop and Goodles. So, if you're trying to drive real-world demand that materializes in a brick-and-mortar setting and build the case to expand with your retail partner, it’s a strategy worth learning more about.
Getting into retail often feels like a rush for brand founders. The process tends to look like this: you text your investors, take pictures at the store, send your friends and family to buy out inventory in their local stores. But while getting on the shelf feels like the finish line, it’s really just the timer starting.
You’ve made it onto the shelf–but now the clock starts ticking. If your product doesn’t sell quickly, it risks getting pulled. One study found that more than 16% of new products are removed from shelves within just one month. Not a quarter—a single month. And nearly a third don’t make it through the first year.
That’s why velocity matters. It’s the metric buyers use to gauge performance, the signal retail partners use to decide who gets more shelf space, and often the deciding factor for your next purchase order. If your product doesn’t move in the specific store, city, or chain you worked so hard to enter, you don’t just lose sales–you lose the opportunity entirely.
As Lunr’s President and CRO, Erin Wall, recently said on InnerFifth’s webinar, “It sounds really crazy, but it’s very easy to get into a retailer, and it's even easier to get kicked out. If you don't create something that has meat on the bone, and isn't just like a flash in the pan situation, you will be in and out just as fast. And guess what? Once you're out, you're out. There’s not a lot of coming back begging unless you completely reinvent yourself. So I always just say, once you figure out the right partner, really go after it.”
The real problem is that most brands don’t have a reliable playbook for driving local demand. They try to back into it with broad tools–tweaking Meta geo-targeting, crossing their fingers behind major %’s of their budget with national influencers, or maybe throwing some samples at a field team. But at the end of the day, most of it’s guesswork. You’re trying to create neighborhood-level demand using national-level tactics. That’s the gap.
When Charise Flynn, COO of Hummingbirds, explained their business model to us, something clicked. What moves the needle locally tends to be actual people with small, trusted followings who post about their lives, their neighborhoods, and the stuff they love.
Local creators usually have 500–5,000 followers, and most of those followers live in the same city. They’re the ones posting soccer practice snack hauls, new favorite drinks, or where to find a very specific flavor of something at Target. And the content hits because it’s real and relatable, not aspirational.
Local influencer platforms turn this behavior into a channel:
It’s not complicated–it’s just targeted at the right consumers who are likely to be evangelists for your product and brand. Right message, right person, right store, right now.
Influencers come in all shapes and follower counts–but not all of them make sense for retail-driven campaigns. Here’s a quick look at the common tiers:
Local creators are often grouped with nano-influencers, but they’re a different species. Nano usually means niche content like parenting, fitness, or nutrition. Local is all about where someone lives and how often they’re posting about that place. And because they’re geo-specific, the posts can give your local SEO a quiet boost too.
If you’re interested in a full breakdown, Hummingbirds has a great guide →
Here’s how a typical campaign works: You launch in, say, 10 Target stores across Texas. Through digital influencer marketing platforms, you spin up a campaign that targets local creators: regular people with trusted followings in cities like Austin or San Antonio. They opt in, get a perk (usually a gift card), go buy your product, and post about it in their own voice.
While there’s a creative brief, nothing feels overly scripted. The content still feels natural–someone’s actual lunch, grocery trip, or kitchen shelf.
As Charise Flynn put it, when people try something and genuinely like it, they talk about it online and offline. It becomes part of their routine. And that’s how you get real product discovery. Not just posts, but people actually going out, buying, and trying.
The numbers back it up. Hummingbirds has seen brands 7x or even 17x unit sales in a given geography. It’s one of the most accessible forms of influencer marketing for small businesses, especially those trying to punch above their weight in retail. Nearly 50% of Gen Z and millennials say they follow creators to discover products–not from ads, but from people they already trust.
You don’t need a six-figure budget or a full brand team to make local influencer marketing work. That’s part of the appeal. The best way to get started is to test one product, in one geography, and see how it performs.
A few tips to make it count:
While local influencer marketing is a new trend, it isn’t a fad–anything that creates a more efficient way to drive real sales is here to stay.
At Lunr, we work with consumer brands that are scaling into retail and facing these challenges in real time. Getting on shelf is no longer the hard part. Building velocity, expanding with retail partners, and staying top of mind is where the real work begins.
We provide more than capital. We bring guidance, playbooks, and a robust network that helps emerging brands move faster and make smarter decisions, including strategies like this one. If you're navigating these moments and interested in learning more, contact our team today.