How to Choose an Influencer Marketing Agency: A Comprehensive Guide

Influencer marketing agency promote your products by hiring top influencers. Influencer marketing is somewhat similar to social media marketing. Here the person, or influencer, as he is called, gathers an audience from social platforms. This channel provides access to an enormous audience, used by half of the global population using social networks.

Influencer marketing agencies enable brands to reach out to their target audience via these influencers, which can’t be attained through traditional advertising. The reason is: Two-thirds of consumers use ad blockers, while the same people under the influence of these influencers consider purchasing the products. About 80% of users have purchased products based on an influencer’s recommendation.

Getting the essence of your Marketing brief right

It all starts with a good brief. When brands approach an agency, they give them a brief. A good brief should have a general description of what the brand wants to endorse, other than the parameters like desired target audience, click-through rates, conversion rates, etc.

An action plan is derived, with a detailed outline of the campaign’s progression based on these parameters, by the agency and sent to the brand for approval. The influencer marketing agency will also propose ideas for campaign themes, posts, images, hashtags, etc.

The agency will also provide the brand with a list of potential influencers to work with who are relevant and in sync with the brand’s ideologies and what they plan to achieve.

Sometimes agencies estimate the KPI for the campaign based on the selected influencers.

While finalizing an agency, brands must examine the kind of content the agency provides, their clientele, etc. This indicates the quality of work that brands can expect from the agency.

It is suggested that it is always better to get consistent reports on campaign progress from the agency brands hire. The simple reason is that the brand knows where the campaign is going. Hence, a good brief must cover all the above aspects, which can differ depending on the agency’s expertise as an influencer marketing agency.

Selecting an Influencer Marketing team that executes

Usually, brands don’t have a clear picture of the wide array of options thereare when it comes to choosing an influencer who will be on their influencer marketing potential list. Hence, there are a variety of steps involved in executing an influencer marketing campaign. Agencies tend to combine tasks so that the best work is done and team members aren’t overburdened.

Therefore, a good influencer marketing agency will provide services like creative content creation, strategy experts, influencer activators and managers, campaign managers, graphic designers, and data analysts.  Thus, the top three qualities that a good influencer marketing team should possess are creativity, strategy, and execution. These are the fundamental criteria needed for the campaign to be successful.

When it comes to selecting a team, who will be responsible from the brand’s side of things? Often, responsibility for influencer marketing campaigns can be thrown around, which impacts the success of the campaign if there is no designated social media marketer to oversee the campaign. Hence, it is really important for brands to be on top of things, whether the responsibility is allocated to an agency in terms of managing the campaign or not.

Brands can assign a project management office, or PMO, that oversees the campaign on a regular basis. If a regular reporting regimen is decided upon before the launch of the campaign, the PMO may only have to run through to see that everything is set as per the plan. Influencer campaigns can be dynamic, so it’s crucial for the teams to be equally engaged from both the agency and brand sides.

A hunt for a well-equipped Influencer Marketing agency to streamline the marketing process

In influencer marketing, having expertise can take you far. But technology is increasingly coming into focus when it comes to providing meaningful insights and delivering concrete results. Many agencies have chosen to invest in tech-driven solutions to improve influencer discovery, campaign tracing and reporting, and overall project management. Some agencies develop their own solutions in-house to give their agency added value. It also gives them a competitive edge and sometimes even a lower price point for their services.

When we talk about the kind of technological solutions needed for influencer marketing, we can start with campaign management solutions that automate the posting process, setting specific dates and times for selected content to be uploaded and optimized. This has to be done while keeping in mind human considerations, but there are automated solutions that also make it possible to passively post and engage on social media.

One can find solutions for discovering the right kind of influencers that brands can use in their campaigns. One will find millions of influencers in the market, from macro (those with more than 100K followers) to micro (those with 10K or fewer followers) influencers. Hence, the discovery and selection process can be daunting for those who are new to the space.

Discovery solutions help brands identify the influencers that they could activate. This is based on their desired target audience and engagement goals. These solutions are usually based on hard facts and data collected. There are solutions that also make the influencer activation and management process much easier. This is done by automatically establishing contact with selected influencers, and closing the terms based on the set budget, and communicating with them when needed to upload the campaign content.

Lastly, there are integrative artificial intelligence solutions which are the most advanced option in regard to influencer tech. These solutions optimize the campaign automatically. This helps the brands to be aware of which influencers produce the best results as the campaign progresses and what type of content is receiving the most engagement, as well as live reporting on KPI performance.

Whatever the agency, selected by the brand, the brand should definitely inquire whether they work with a tech solution or not. And whether the brand can be provided with direct access to them. Some agencies enable “white label” solutions i.e., products or services that are created by one company for the purpose of being sold by another company under that company’s own unique branding.

Brands, themselves can actually generate their own reports and manage the dashboard without relying on a third party. Thus, making the entire process more seamless and accurate for the brand over time. White-label solutions also make it easier for brands to engage with the influencer campaigns and manage them according to their needs, alongside the marketing agency, in order to obtain optimal results.

Making sure the selected Marketing agency has an expert team

It is important to remember that there are many different types of agencies with various areas of expertise. If the agency chosen by the brand specializes only in influencer marketing, discovery, and activation, then social media management and optimization of campaign content may not be one of their strong points.

Agencies with strong creative teams generally will understand the importance of A/B testing. It will push the best lead, thus generating content as the campaign progresses. e.g. when the campaign is organically launched, the agency will / can examine how the different types of content perform with the influencers that have been selected for their campaign. If the reels put out by these influencers on Instagram are performing better than the photo uploads, the agency will be able to identify this trend and then proceed to instruct the influencers to produce more reels to engage more viewership.

Social media expertise does not just mean identifying which type of content is performing the best; it also talks about how to scale the content across different platforms and influencers. This gives it a “push” with respect to paid media and ads when in need. Here, the content creation team of the marketing agency works together with the campaign managers and the strategy experts involved to make sure that the campaign budget is being optimized to the maximum.

Sometimes, in certain cases, it makes sense to allocate some of the campaign budgets toward paid media ahead of time or while the campaign is unfolding. This makes sure that all the content is constructively utilized. It helps push the content to the desired target audience, improving click-through rates, view-through rates, and conversions to sales.

Social media trends should also be considered when choosing an influencer marketing agency. Especially when it comes to trends in the brand’s industry and sector. Some brands are aware of which platforms work better for their sector. Agencies definitely intervene where they see content working best.

Agencies should be working across various platforms no matter what the campaign goals are, other than the platform that is strongest for the brand’s industry. Thus, influencer campaigns are versatile and ever-evolving. This means they need to be conducted across different platforms (Instagram, Facebook, YouTube, etc.) for a long-lasting impact.

Consistent and clear reporting is essential for Influencer Marketing

Reporting schedules are imperative for brands to work effectively with influencer marketing agencies. Brands must never wait until the campaign ends to see the results. Influencer marketing agencies must share details of the campaign’s performance on a regular basis. If that isn’t possible, at least once a week, twice a month. or biweekly.

Influencer campaigns are so easy to invest in without seeing any results, which makes them crucial for brands. Due to a lack of clear and consistent reporting, many brands have lost money in the past.

Brands need to receive reports that have statistics regarding engagement rate, total followers from the campaign, potential impressions, actual impressions, total engagements, total views of stories or reels (or other content), including VTR, the campaign progression, clicks, including CTR, total conversions, cost per engagement, and media value. Other demographic statistics, such as age, location, and interests of the engaged audience, as well as engagement, spread among activated influencers, also need to be mentioned in the report.

This is really essential to the brands because, not only does a report increase the level of accountability between the influencer marketing agency and the brand, it also enables both sides to draw data-driven conclusions about the success of certain types of content and influencers and how to implement those conclusions moving forward.

Influencer marketing is not a one-time pursuit but a consistent journey that brands are in for the long haul. One must look at this from a wide lens to see how the brand is building its following and online marketing presence over time. By only understanding the lasting impacts of influencer campaigns over a period of time, a brand can really excel at and succeed at social media marketing, and this can be done only with the right kind of data in hand.

Influencer marketing agencies understand that brands are committed to the social media space. Yet some of them are still clueless as to how specific campaigns run and how they fit into the larger scheme of things. In order to ensure that the brand can build a lasting social presence over time, consistent and comprehensive reporting must be done by the influencer marketing agencies, and this is not something that brands should feel they are compromising on.

Thus, we can summarize by saying that influencer marketing is now an inseparable part of a brand’s marketing strategy, but there remains a huge knowledge gap that agencies can help close. However, brands shouldn’t just pick any influencer marketing agency to partner with on their social media journey. Brands should look for agencies that can provide a detailed brief; have strong, experienced, and diverse teams; use technological solutions where possible; have expertise in optimizing campaigns on social media; and can derive data-driven reports. Once these elements are in place, a brand can feel confident that they’ve found the right partner to guide them on its social media marketing journey.