What do influencer marketing agencies do and why should you hire them?
That’s a question that has plagued many marketers over the years. After all, why pay someone to do something as simple as influencer marketing when you can do it yourself?
Well, it’s not as simple as that.
While anyone can try their hand at influencer marketing, you need professional help if you want to do it right the first time. Not everyone has the time and the budget to experiment and learn from their failures.
In this post, you will learn:
- What’s an influencer marketing agency?
- What do influencer marketing agencies do?
- How do they differ from influencer marketing platforms?
- And why should you choose them instead of doing things yourself?
Curious to learn more?
Keep reading.
Table of Contents
What’s an Influencer Marketing Agency?
An influencer marketing agency is a company that works with brands to plan and run a successful influencer marketing campaign on the brand’s behalf.
A full-service influencer marketing agency will design and execute influencer marketing campaigns end-to-end. This includes gathering requirements from brands, laying out the creative strategy, finding and collaborating with influencers, and tracking campaign performance throughout the duration of the campaign.
Most agencies have worked with influencers across social media platforms. However, there are also specialized niche influencer marketing agencies that have expertise in just 1-2 social media platforms.
Some agencies also specialize in just the creative aspects and others may only help with finding influencers and negotiating contracts. You can choose a full-service agency or a niche agency depending on your specific needs.
What Do Influencer Marketing Agencies Do?
Here is a general overview of what influencer marketing agencies do. However, remember that this is for full-service agencies and some specialized agencies may not offer all of these services.
Devise a Strategy
Influencer marketing agencies start the process by gathering requirements from clients and making a customized strategy for them.
This will include details like:
- Content strategy
- Choice of social media platforms
- Type and number of influencers
- Number and frequency of posts
- Type and duration of the campaign
- Goals and KPIs for performance measurement
Once the client approves of the strategy, they move to the next step of finding the right influencers.
Find Influencers
Influencer marketing agencies use their own network and third-party influencer platforms to find the right influencers for each client’s campaign. They will find and vet the influencers to choose only the most authentic and trustworthy influencers that align well with the brand they will represent.
Influencer marketing agencies like Get Hyped that already have a network of trusted influencers are especially helpful at this stage as they can quickly find the best fit influencers.
Conduct Outreach
Working with influencers is a mutually beneficial process, so you need to offer fair compensation to get them to work with you. Influencer marketing agencies can help with that by drafting a lucrative pitch that will get the influencers interested.
An ideal pitch should include:
- An introduction of your brand
- Appreciation of the influencer’s work
- A request to collaborate with them
- Compensation and campaign details
Agencies are experts at drafting pitches and will ensure that you get positive responses from the influencers you want to collaborate with.
Negotiate Contracts
Influencer marketing agencies also specialize in contract negotiation and are aware of the current influencer rates. They can negotiate influencer contracts in a way that’s mutually beneficial to both parties.
Moreover, agencies will also take care of minute but important details like content licensing, exclusivity period, etc. that amateur marketers often miss.
An influencer contract is a legal document and should be taken seriously. Influencer marketing agencies can provide brands with contracts written by experienced industry attorneys that ensure the brand will not get into any legal trouble with government regulatory agencies like the FTC.
Run the Campaign
Once the contracts are finalized, influencer marketing agencies get to the actual work of running and managing the influencer campaign.
But what exactly do influencer marketing agencies do?
They take care of a variety of tasks including:
- Providing a brief with clear guidelines to influencers
- Reviewing or even co-creating content
- Posting content according to the pre decided schedule
- Making sure that influencers follow FTC guidelines
- Ensuring that they use the right hashtags and content formats
- And more!
Measure Performance
Influencer marketing agencies do more than just create influencer marketing campaigns and guide influencers—they also monitor and measure campaign performance.
Agencies track both the influencer marketing campaign performance and each influencer’s individual performance. This helps you identify top-performing influencers, whom you can leverage for future influencer marketing campaigns as well.
They also provide a complete report on the campaign performance and things that worked or didn’t work for your audience. These insights can help you optimize your future campaigns.
Remember, it might take some time to see the results from your campaigns, but influencer marketing generally pays off, if done right.
How Do Agencies Differ From Influencer Marketing Platforms
Influencer marketing agencies do a lot more than just find social media influencers. An influencer marketing platform, on the other hand, is used simply to make the process of finding, selecting, and managing social media influencers easier for a campaign.
Influencer platforms can be used both by agencies and brands to help with the influencer campaign process. However, most platforms do not actually perform the tasks on your behalf and simply provide you with a database of influencers and filters to sort them. Platforms don’t provide strategy or expertise to determine if your campaign approach will be successful. They also don’t teach you how to communicate effectively with the influencers that you find.
Influencer marketing agencies, however, will not just help you, but will actually do the job of everything from selecting to paying influencers on your behalf. So, the key difference between the two is that agencies provide end-to-end services, while platforms simply give you a collection of a few influencer tools to choose from, but you still need to know how to use those tools effectively.
Why Should You Hire Influencer Marketing Agencies?
Influencer marketing agencies can plan and execute effective campaigns with speed because they have both experience and expertise. Agencies work with all types of products and services across various businesses so they know what influencer marketing strategies have been proven to work.
Here are some reasons why you should choose to work with an agency:
- They understand the audience and the industry better than any one brand
- Agencies that specialize in influencer marketing have years of experience
- They often have a strong network of trustworthy influencers that you can leverage
- There are tons of fake influencers on social media and agencies can help you weed them out
- Planning and executing a campaign requires time and resources that you may not be able to spare
- They can negotiate much better contracts and make sure that you don’t make any obvious mistakes
- You can work with an agency on a short-term basis instead of hiring and training multiple team members
These are just a few of the things that influencer marketing agencies do to make your influencer campaign successful. You can, with enough experience, get to a point where you can do it all yourself. But for most brands and marketers, it is definitely worth it to hire a professional agency. A good influencer marketing agency will also teach your team how to improve their influencer partnerships.
When selecting an influencer marketing agency, remember to check their past work and the complete portfolio of services that they offer. Ask them if they specialize in influencer marketing or if they “also do influencer marketing”.
FAQs
1. How does an influencer marketing agency work?
An influencer marketing agency helps brands run successful influencer marketing campaigns.
A full-service agency will manage influencer marketing campaigns from start to finish. From planning a winning influencer marketing strategy to finding and collaborating with influencers to measuring performance, they do it all.
A niche agency, however, will provide only a few of the services offered by a full-service agency. For example, a specialized agency may only help you with finding and selecting the right influencers.
2. How does an influencer marketing agency make money?
Most influencer marketing agencies create customized plans for each client and charge according to the duration and type of campaign. Agencies will usually do an initial consultation where they will decide on the scope of the project and the price they will charge. Since agencies are experts at influencer marketing, they can afford to charge brands only a fraction of the price that it would cost the brand to run a campaign in house.
3. What do influencer marketing agencies do?
Influencer marketing agencies help brands run winning social media influencer campaigns. They may offer end-to-end services from ideation to execution or niche services like finding and vetting influencers.
Here is a quick list of services that full-service agencies provide:
- Devise a strategy
- Find influencers
- Conduct outreach
- Negotiate contracts
- Run the campaign
- Measure performance
Some influencer agencies also represent influencers and help them find collaboration opportunities.
4. What does an influencer talent agency do?
These are the types of agencies that represent influencers and help them connect with brands for collaborations. As the name suggests, they represent the talent of influencers and help them find business opportunities.
Please note that such agencies charge a fee for their services, like any other agency, and are, therefore, best suited for popular influencers. After all, new influencers may not be in a position to hire an agency and often depend on free influencer platforms or their own social media profiles to find work.
5. Why should you hire influencer marketing agencies?
Here are some of the many reasons why you should hire influencer marketing agencies:
- To better understand the target audience and design highly-targeted campaigns
- Leverage their years of experience and expertise in influencer marketing
- Use their strong network of trustworthy influencers to find the best fit for your brand
- Avoid working with fake influencers and vetting the influencers you do work with
- Negotiate mutually beneficial influencer contracts
- And most importantly, to ensure the success of your influencer campaigns
In a nutshell, influencer marketing agencies do everything from campaign planning to performance measurement. So, unless you are very sure that you can do it all by yourself, you should hire an expert agency to do it for you.
Final Thoughts
What do influencer marketing agencies do?
Hopefully, this post has answered your question and you would have realized the importance of working with an influencer marketing agency.
In a nutshell, influencer marketing agencies are experts at planning and executing influencer campaigns like a pro. So, if you want to run a successful influencer marketing campaign to achieve your goals the first time, set aside some budget to hire an agency.
Make sure that the influencer marketing agency that you choose has a good track record and offers all the services you need.
Need help with your next influencer marketing campaign?
Contact our team to schedule a consultation so we can ensure the success of your campaign.
