In even the most traditional fashion marketing teams nowadays, there will be precious little dissent on the matter of whether or not influencer marketing is necessary. After all, it’s not like it’s the new kid on the block anymore. Instead, influencer marketing is a tried and tested channel; it has been weighed, it has been measured and it has been found to be unbelievably effective with 80% of consumers making purchases off of the back of influencer recommendations, and beauty brands, for example, enjoying an 881% return on their investment.
But if its efficacy isn’t up for debate, what else is holding brands back?
While there are undoubtedly a number of challenges you might face when looking to incorporate influencer marketing into your strategy, one major one comes up time and again: resources.
Yes, marketing’s oldest struggle rears its ugly head, holding brands back from enjoying the outcomes they should expect to see from their influencer marketing efforts. And while growing your team in-house can be a solution, it’s often a slow one and unavoidably costly. Another route is of course to outsource, partnering with an agency who offers influencer marketing services to get the job done without adding to your teams already weighty workload.
But with so many agencies now crowding the market, how can you know which is the right pick for you?
In our guide to finding the best fit for your influencer marketing agency, we’ll be taking a look at what type of agency will help you achieve your goals. Let’s get started…
Generalist vs specialist
The first thing you’ll want to consider when assessing your options is whether or not you want a team who offer a selection of services, or one whose focus is solely on influencer marketing.
1.Full-spec media agencies
Let’s start with look at the one-stop-shop media houses. These guys will cover everything, from paid social to print, to billboards and direct mail; they will serve most if not all marketing channels including influencer marketing.
Agencies like this offer a particularly valuable service if you’re looking to outsource more than one channel. They will have individuals or teams to cover the different areas involved, and communication can be more streamlined by virtue of proximity. You may have to keep an eye out for any conflict over budget attribution or resource prioritisation, as each piece of the puzzle may want the greatest representation, but as far as coverage goes, this type of agency will have you covered.
Of course, there are naturally downsides to working with agencies that spread themselves across so many channels. The first of which most commonly presents itself in resource availability – a challenge not unlike the one that led you to recruit an agency in the first place, in fact. By covering so many different marketing elements, full-spec agencies simply cannot justify maintaining large teams for any single channel. So if the time comes when you want to scale and grow your influencer marketing efforts, you may find that they simply do not have the number of specialists on board to meet your needs.
The second big challenge is one of knowledge. Everyone knows the proverb ‘Jack of all trades, master of none’. While this won’t necessarily apply to every agency in this category, it certainly is a risk you take; what you get in breadth of knowledge, you may lose in depth. If you’re looking for a very straightforward, top-line influencer marketing strategy, where visibility is more important than returns, then this may not be a concern for you. However, if you’re looking for something a bit more tactical and data-driven, then this could present a challenge.
2. PR Agencies
The second type of agency that can help you with your influencer marketing is the PR agency. In short, the purpose of PR is to raise brand awareness, to get the word out there about your brand and all the great stuff you do. This is a core capability of influencer marketing so a PR agency can be a great fit. In fact, this approach was the go-to tactic when influencer marketing first emerged: influencers would be sent free products or invited on press trips or to events in the hopes of a favourable mention later.
This might seem like the most familiar and comfortable route to take; campaigns tend to be less data-driven and so there are no numbers to worry about or KPIs to measure, and influencers are naturally very open to receiving free products and services, so communication tends to be smooth and inboxes wide open!
However, while this will generally land on the PR team’s desk to manage, it’s important that you are conscious of increasingly stringent regulations guiding ‘gifting’ activities within influencer marketing and the content they can result in. Should an influencer fail to accurately declare a post in which they have received compensation (be that financial or otherwise) then the repercussions won’t just land on the PR agency, they’ll hit you too, and while the fines will be damaging, the impact on your brand’s public image could be far more costly in the long run. So make sure you work with a reputable agency, and ensure they vigilantly uphold advertising standards to mitigate this risk.
If your goal is to deliver short-term influencer activations and you’re keen to prioritise larger accounts like macro-influencers, then collaborating with a PR agency can be an excellent way to achieve that. However, as the channel has matured so too have the tactics required to succeed in it. While the OG of influencer marketing can certainly help you achieve soft goals, you may find it tricky to measure anything more tangible or commit to the consistent presence required to stand out in this crowded market.
3. Influencer marketing specialists
Now we come to door number three: your specialist agencies. Focusing exclusively on influencer marketing, these teams will be the nerds of the channel; while their eyes might glaze over at the mention of print and radio ads will leave them cold, the mere mention of an Instagram update or a new influencer tactic will be enough to keep them up at night with excitement.
For a relatively new channel, influencer marketing changes a lot and when it does those changes need to be responded to quickly, so having a team whose sole focus is attending to or even preempting those developments can be invaluable when it comes to distinguishing yourself from your competitors.
Working with an influencer marketing specialist will also mean your ability to scale is really only limited by your budget and your goals. By partnering with a specialist agency you’ll have immediate access to the expertise and the goals you need to realise your influencer objectives, but you will be limited to that one channel and your efficacy will be dictated by the quality of the team you partner with.
Look for specialists who can quantify their value with cold, hard data, and who can clearly demonstrate that their campaign strategy is guided by analytical insights rather than guesswork, and is constantly reviewed and optimised to maximise results. If they’ve got the goods to back up their claims, and if influencer marketing is set to be a major element of your marketing strategy (as we naturally believe it should) then this type of agency may well be the best fit for you.
Remember the remit
Once you’ve boiled down your choices to just the types of agencies that best suit your strategy and goals, you can look at the different ways agencies within that selection work. There’s no one-size-fits-all solution so make sure you think about what you’re hoping to achieve in the channel to decide which is the right route for you.
1. Talent
Operating like a traditional modelling or casting agency might, agencies who have talent as the foundations of their business will have a roster of influencers they work with on a contracted basis. This can be great if you have a specific personality in mind that you’re keen to work with, but can present a challenge if the agency prioritises who is on their books rather than who is genuinely the best fit for your brand and objectives.
This approach is typical for agencies who prioritise macro- or celebrity accounts and who play a role in managing their career, so they will likely be as invested in maximising the benefit to the influencer as they are to you. Now, this is not necessarily a bad thing! After all, what works for an influencer generally shouldn’t be a million miles away from what works for a brand, as both should have the goal of generating authentic content and nurturing their relationship with their audience or consumer base. However, it’s important to note that by partnering with a talent agency, your goals won’t be the only objective at play.
While long term collaborations are less common in this environment due to the average audience size and popularity of the influencer on the agency’s book, they’re not impossible if you’re looking to implement ambassador-style activations. So if there’s a specific name you have in mind then finding the agency that represents that influencer is the quickest way to get a short term collaboration off the ground.
This approach will often be most effective as part of a wider strategy supported by smaller influencers who more accurately reflect your target customer, and with whom you’ll find more room to optimise your activations and a wider selection to pick from. By combining the different styles of influencer marketing you can still benefit from the firework effect that larger names can confer, but you won’t leave yourselves open to the risk of low engagement from audiences that are simply too broad to be relevant across the board.
2. Creative
The aesthetic appeal of influencer marketing is not to be underestimated! Don’t forget, beautifully designed blogs and flat lays is where it all began. And agencies with a creative focus are the people who are best equipped to help you tap into that facet.
Coming into their own when you need a splashy event or a big one-shot ad, agencies who are primarily attending to the aesthetic can help you build showstopping campaigns with the right names involved and content that will immediately get you noticed for all the right reasons.
Hard, data-driven KPIs are less likely to be in focus when partnering with creative agencies and objectives will be more ephemeral: creating attention-grabbing content that you can repurpose, for example, or getting the right influencer holding the right product.
Often the terrain of newer agencies who are still developing their influencer marketing strategy, creatively focused agencies are not to be scoffed at and are a great way to add a bit of sparkle to more enduring, long term influencer strategies you may have in play elsewhere.
3. Independent
Last but by no means least, you will come to agencies who operate ‘independently’. With these agencies you won’t find creative content lacking and you’ll certainly still have your pick of influencers, but you’ll probably notice that they’re more concerned with what the data supports in directing your influencer marketing efforts than purely what looks flashiest or which celebrity has the biggest following.
These agencies won’t maintain an influencer ‘book’ which means they won’t have a permanent roster. Instead, influencers will be hand selected for each and every activation based on the agency’s experience of what works best, and who the data suggests is the best fit for your brand and goals. While this will sound like a lot of work (and we’re not saying it isn’t), the strain will be managed by the agency, not you, and it means you’re not limited to which influencers are currently signed with that particular agency.
With data at the core of their activations, you’ll often find independent agencies prioritise micro-influencers for the bulk of their activations. While to some this may seem counterintuitive, research regularly finds that micro-influencers generate superior results to their more well-known peers, and 61% of consumers are more likely to follow them in the first place.
Driven by a strategy that’s guided by data and targeted towards long term success rather than short-lived results, independent agencies like Cure Media tend to be a better fit for brands working with big budgets who are looking to influencer marketing as a long term, always-on tactic, and who expect to see measurable results from their investment.
Spec the tech
Prefer to listen? Tune in to hear Babak Faramarzian, Co-founder and Head of Product at Cure Media sort out what brands need in an influencer marketing platform.
We know – there’s a lot to consider. But there’s one last thing to think about before you make your decision and that’s the technical capabilities of the agency you’re looking to partner with.
Managing influencer marketing manually (generally meaning a barrage of emails back and forth), at the scale and breadth that you need to achieve the greatest results nowadays, is an almost impossible task, and whether you’re handling the channel in-house or partnering with an agency you’re going to need to consider which platform you or they will be using.
For many agencies, this will be an external platform. Especially if they are not influencer marketing specialists, the likelihood of budget and resources being deployed to develop an in-house solution is low and probably for good reason. This isn’t necessarily a problem as there are several strong contenders available who can offer good insights into your campaigns and streamline much of the daily work for the agency involved.
Alternatively, you could prioritise finding an agency with a proprietary platform. This was an especially important decision for us at Cure Media, and one we feel strongly correlates to our success and the results we can provide to the brands we partner with. With a bespoke solution, we are able to tailor it to suit their processes and their clients’ needs. For us, that translates to AI-enhanced influencer recommendations, algorithms that assess and score influencer authenticity, extensive campaign monitoring tools, and many more capabilities all designed to make our clients’ lives easier and our campaigns smarter.
With a proprietary platform you’ll usually also benefit from an in-house tech team who are not only constantly tinkering with the platform to improve it, but who are permanently on-hand to respond quickly to any updates from the social media channels, or any new requirements from clients.
Whatever platform an agency relies on, make sure you do your research and confirm that it offers more than influencer selection. While this is obviously a critical component of influencer marketing, it is as valuable to be able to collect and analyse campaign performance data to ensure that you can identify opportunities for optimisation and deliver the most effective campaigns (and use of your budget) as possible.
To wrap up…
There is no single right or wrong way to approach influencer marketing, and with that no right or wrong influencer marketing agency to pick! But by understanding your business goals, you should be able to reverse engineer the decision making process to land on the agency who will be best equipped to help you meet them.