When to Use an Influencer Marketing Agency or Technology Platform?

Marketing is constantly going thru changes and updates in order to achieve better ROI while being less intrusive to the end consumer.

However, brands and agencies that are looking to leverage the power of influencer marketing effectively can encounter many challenges executing their campaigns.  It’s a lot of hard work, from finding the right influencers, structuring and optimizing the campaign, payments, product shipments, boosting top quality content, content reviews etc… which is difficult without the right knowledge, proper experience and using the right technologies. Plus, as the space gets more crowded brands seek more from their partnerships and the prescription for success will only become more and more sophisticated.

So, which is right for you and your brand? An influencer marketing agency or an influencer marketing platform? Before you can determine which one you need, it’s important to understand each of these mediums better.

Advantages of an Influencer Marketing Agency

Influencer Marketing Agencies are a group of people who are responsible for all aspects of a delivering a successful influencer marketing campaign.  They work with brands and influencers seamlessly to facilitate and optimize the campaigns. A good influencer marketing agency will be able to effectively organize and manage several campaigns with different variables.

Agencies have the experience and relationships to ensure your campaign runs smoothly.  Although any good influencer marketing agency will utilize an influencer marketing platform, their platform will be more specifically curtailed to meet the needs of their clients more effectively and top agencies will have in-house developers who are responsible for making upgrades to their platform and offering their clients cutting edge tech, features, processes and reporting.

If your company is new on the influencer marketing scene or you want to be conservative with your manpower and time spent on developing marketing campaigns, an influencer marketing agency may be for you.

Here are some advantages of working with an influencer marketing agency:

1. Can help identify the right influencers based on brand affinity.
2. Can help identify audiences that fit your brands target demographic and interests.
3. Save time by managing vetting influencers, negotiations, contracts, product shipments, approvals, revisions, content, compliances, fraud detection, reporting and payments.
4. Save money, it takes labor hours for a campaign with ten influencers around 110 working hours averaging around $4k in working hour operational costs alone.
5. They maintain strong relationships with both brands and Influencers that lead to better quality content.
6. Knowledge of what’s worked for other clients.
7. Easily scalable investment.
8. A close eye on emerging trends and technologies

Simply put, an influencer marketing agency will gather all the necessary components of a successful marketing campaign they have at their disposal.  Check out some additional benefits here Benefits That Come From Working With an Influencer Agency

If you do choose an agency that offers extensive digital marketing services, they should help match your brand with the most ideal influencer content creators. The appropriate agency will leverage their existing relationships to identify and select the influencers who can deliver maximum exposure for your brand, at the desired reach and engagement rates, and at a price within your budget.

The best agencies will be able to identify and approach the right influencers on your behalf with ease. They have experience working with influencers who have the top social media engagement rates, audience affinities, the highest brand safe, and quality custom content. It’s paramount that these agencies provide you with a list of potential influencer prospects for your company to review.  You and your brand can then double confirm that these are the right influencers for your campaign, saving your company (and you) time, money and frustration.

When everyone is upfront about their expectations for the creation of content, deadlines, talking points, disclosures, revisions and timing of content approval your campaign will run more smoothly. Consider asking for the delivery of content ahead of the actual desired publication date – this way if there are any necessary revisions to be made, they can be worked out in a timely manner, saving frustration for everyone involved in the process. In fact, adding additional time for one or two revision touchpoints is the safest way to proceed. All-in-all in takes around 4 to 6 weeks to launch and publish an influencer marketing campaign, so keep that in mind. Influencers don’t want to wait any more time than is necessary to get your message out there, so trust their creative abilities and do not hold up the process with long approval times unless necessary.

Before the details of the campaign are developed, be sure that everyone on your team and your influencer(s) are aware of specific legal and marketing guidelines. Sponsored Posts require disclosure, and everyone should be aware of that fact. All those collaborating with the campaign should be kept in the loop. After the execution and launch of the campaign, either brand employees or employees of the influencer marketing agency handling your campaign should monitor compliance with the agreed upon guidelines. Ongoing monitoring for compliance is becoming more and more necessary as the influencer marketing arena continues to see more outside oversight.

Influencer Marketing Platform:

An influencer marketing platform is software that helps you find potential influencers, manage influencer relations, and reporting.

Influencer marketing platforms are best suited for smaller or one-off influencer campaigns. They work well for campaigns that do not involve strict regulations, consistent brand messaging, fraud detection or a very high level of reach and activations. This is because, unlike agencies, most platforms can’t quantify some of these metrics.

If your brand goes with just a platform vs. an agency managed approach,  you will be responsible for:  influencer discovery & vetting, devising campaign talking points, contracting & payment, creating a campaign timeline, compliance implementation & monitoring, content reviews and revisions, shipping & ensuring product has been indeed received, enforcing the campaign timeline and deadlines, metrics tracking and reporting (if you can), campaign results, essentially overall execution & development of the campaign from start to past the finish line. Keep in mind influencers have time constrained lives too complete with life emergencies that may sidetrack content creation, revisions, and even posting. Adhering to a campaign timeline can be the toughest part of an influencer campaign, so make sure you allot for a little wiggle room with your timing just in case!

Have more questions or want to talk to us about starting an Influencer Marketing Campaign?  ShopHer Media is more than happy to offer a Free, No Obligation Consultation. Contact Us Today!