It always starts with a simple enough idea. You see sponsored influencer content on your feed in your daily TikTok or Instagram scroll and think, “I need to get my product in front of all these eyeballs, I need to work with these influencers”. Enter the “how?”.
It could be as easy as DM’ing these creators and sharing the details about your product to see if they’d be interested, but then you realize:
- You don’t have the time (as someone who leads marketing in-house you are already working on multiple other initiatives unrelated to influencer marketing campaigns!)
- You don’t know if these creators are genuine fans of your type of product (just because you like them doesn’t mean they like your product!)
- You don’t know if their audience is located in your market or interested in your product (you need people who can actually purchase your product to be able to find it!)
- You don’t know how much to pay them (can’t they just post for free? The answer is no, it’s not always that simple!)
- You don’t understand the legal requirements (what legal requirements? Can’t they just post a video featuring the product with a trending sound, let my ads team boost the content, and call it a day?)
- Conclusion: you’re F’d without real experience in influencer marketing and can’t do this entirely on your own without hiring an agency or platform to support you
This is a very common experience for many teams working behind brands and the internal conversations eventually lead them to explore external support. With the growth of the influencer marketing landscape, influencer marketing agencies have burst onto the scene with the expressed purpose of supporting brand teams on building and executing successful, results-driven influencer campaigns. There are also influencer marketing platforms now available that serve to automate influencer campaigns without the human touch and resources of an agency to provide support. With advantages and disadvantages to both approaches to influencer marketing. What’s the best option when everyone is looking to partner with creators to reach their marketing goals?
The difference comes down to manual vs. automated management.
The 411 on Influencer Marketing Platforms
Influencer marketing platforms use software-based technology to select influencers, manage campaigns, and measure results, whereas agencies offer a turn-key solution to developing and managing influencer campaigns.
Influencer marketing platforms lead with technology and offer tools that can help make an influencer campaign more seamless for a brand, but they STILL require a brand team to manage the campaign on the platform and complete the tasks within the platform. This is often an option that brands find most successful for smaller campaigns or if they have a team that is looking to develop their expertise in managing and running influencer campaigns. It offers the opportunity for brand teams to own their campaigns instead of handing off the project to an external agency.
One of the greatest benefits of these platforms is the automated influencer discovery database. These pre-populated influencer databases help brands with finding the right influencers without necessarily the intricacies of influencer relationship management. Finding (the right) agency, along with onboarding these marketers onto your influencer marketing process and influencer programs, can often take a long time. Whereas using an influencer marketing software expedites the process to building a successful influencer campaign.
When it comes to reporting on the success of these influencer campaigns, influencer marketing platforms will help pull the data and metrics that speak to your ROI directly without the need of extensive back-and-forth communication with influencers. This allows for these reports to be shared with in-house marketing teams and senior leadership, which can allow for quicker approvals on future marketing programs and the ability to secure larger marketing budgets.
The Low-Down on Influencer Marketing Agencies
Working with an agency (like our sister agency, Sundae Creative) that specializes in influencer marketing campaigns and focuses on influencers within the digital marketing umbrella allows in-house brand teams to hand over their campaign idea or request to their partners and allow them to run with their vision from A-Z. One of the great benefits of partnering with an external team of expert marketers is that everything is taken care of, and the in-house team can simply provide feedback/approvals, without having to do any of the heavy lifting of working with influencers, finding influencers, and all influencer campaign management, thus allowing them to focus on other projects.
Teams that also don't have an extensive understanding of the influencer marketing landscape or the manpower to execute an influencer program of any scale can lean on an influencer marketing agency to help with a brand's specific needs and goals. Influencer agencies also have EXTENSIVE long-term relationships with influencers (and agents with robust rosters of influencers) and they know the right influencers to take an influencer marketing strategy to the next level. The unique insight an agency can provide is very different from what an influencer marketing platform provides. These marketing experts execute influencer campaigns every.single.day, so they are intimately familiar with content creators from all different spheres of the influencer landscape.
They know whether creators are represented by agents, whether they are collaborative partners, if they are available for a project or have an interest in a specific type of product or niche, their target audience, and of course (and maybe most importantly), their rates. Influencer marketing teams can negotiate rates on your behalf unlike a software could because they are able to use their insights to make the best recommendations. Ultimately, rates play a large role in the ROI of a campaign because the level of invested budget needs to align with the KPIs and the influencers bridge the two with their unique levels of engagement and conversion.
When it comes to influencer reporting, influencer marketing agencies secure hard data directly from the creators, whereas influencer marketing platforms use their software to pull the data, which also requires influencers to onboard onto the platform and use it as an additional step in the campaign.
Does it Come Down to Platform or an Agency?
Turns out though, there is a third option also available. Some brands leverage BOTH! The expertise and human touch of an influencer marketing agency coupled with the technology and automation of the influencer marketing platform gives them the best of both worlds for maximum success and a greater understanding of the results. It also allows the in-house team to still have a close connection with the campaign in the event they want to be more involved in campaign management or offer additional expert marketer support.
Another option to consider when blending the use of influencer platforms with agencies specializing in influencer marketing? You can have your agency partner take total control over your marketing campaigns and influencer marketing efforts by also allowing them to use influencer marketing software for additional project management support and maximum ROI delivery.
Whichever option you choose (there are pros and cons to both!), there is no denying that running a successful influencer marketing campaign that delivers a strong ROI requires a lot of time, attention, and expertise (not something every in-house team of marketers always has!). A piece of sponsored content may look like a 30-second clip promoting a product or brand, but it could have taken months of planning and work for those 30-seconds to be uploaded successfully. The people behind-the-scenes work hard to make the content come to life (in collaboration with the right influencers), so the next time you scroll past ad content and think “that seems easy enough”, think again!
