5 Ways that Brands can Work with Influencer Marketing Companies

Once you decide that influencer marketing is the way forward for your brand (along with 75% of marketers), your team will need to decide: to use or not to use an influencer marketing company?

Influencer marketing has boomed in recent years, growing from a $6.5 billion market to its current $13.8 billion worth in the past three years alone. Alongside this meteoric rise of the craft, there has, naturally, been an increase in influencer marketing companies themselves. As more and more brands turn to influencer marketing, they are outsourcing their campaigns and partnering with more experienced agencies (industry vets at this point) that are equipped with the necessary resources and experience they need to run successful influencer marketing campaigns. 

To start exploring working with influencer marketing experts in any capacity, all you need is a brand and an open mind. Let’s take a look at the top influencer marketing agencies and how you can begin working with them today to grow your brand.

What do influencer marketing agencies do?

Think of influencer marketing agencies as the middle-man of influencer campaigns, bridging the gap between the brand and the Influencer in order to create a campaign that is beneficial to all parties. Influencer marketing agencies are not only the facilitator between the brand and Influencer, but also the mastermind and creator of their campaigns, depending on the activation or arrangement. Due to their expertise and resources, influencer marketing agencies are equipped to design campaigns to the goals of each brand, all the while creating content that speaks to both the unique ethos of the brand and the Influencer.

Whether you are a brand that has been partnering with Influencers for years now or are looking to set up your first partnership, working with an agency is a key way to take your campaign to the next level, and leave the stress, brand safety management, and timelines up to the pros.

What are the top influencer marketing companies?

There are two primary forms of influencer marketing companies: agencies and platforms. While both forms are capable of providing brands with the tools they need to run a successful influencer campaign, it’s important to understand the difference between the two— especially for brands that have not partnered with a company to do influencer marketing before.

The primary difference is that influencer marketing agencies are full-fledged service providers who offer the work of planning, launching, and managing campaigns for brands. Influencer marketing platforms are software solutions designed to allow brands to create their own campaigns and act as more of a self-service option, without the strategy and execution pieces. Think of agencies as providing you with all of the same tools as platforms, just with the added bonus of also including humans to do the work of using the tools for you.

Depending on the length of your campaign and your experience with influencer marketing, you may decide that you are knowledgeable enough to use an influencer marketing platform to create your campaign yourself. However, if you decide that you’d rather hand the reins over to an agency, you can begin by contacting our team of experts here at RhythmInfluence today.

5 Ways to Work with Influencer Marketing Companies

Influencer marketing companies are like Swiss Army Knives, they provide a seemingly endless array of services. You can use as many or as few of these services as you’d like. To work with an influencer marketing company to grow your brand, review their capabilities until you find the tools and services that are best suited for reaching your specific goals and fall within your budget. Let’s take a look at the top five ways that brands can work with influencer marketing companies.

1. Full-Service Influencer Marketing Campaign Execution

For brands that prefer a hands-off approach to their influencer campaigns, they will want to consider taking a full-service approach to working with Influencers. In this format, brands hand over the entirety of the campaign creation process to the experts over at the marketing company. While this is the most expensive form of working with a marketing company (more services = more money) it is a popular choice, especially for brands who have just begun dipping their feet into influencer marketing. It’s hard to put a price tag on expertise, but easy to understand when the results pay for themselves.

Remember, at any time you can pivot from using an influencer marketing company one way to using it another way— even within one form. For example, if you start by using a full-service company for a long-term partnership that is deemed an overwhelming success at its completion by all parties, that doesn’t mean you need to continue using full-service companies for long-term campaigns. Instead, you can pivot to only outsourcing content for your next campaign or engage full-service companies on an activation by activation basis.

1. Strategy Only: Influencer Marketing Consultation + Strategy

Does your brand already have a rockstar creative team that regularly produces world-class content? If so, you may want to use an influencer marketing company for their strategy services only. After all, why fix what isn’t broken? If the content your in-house creatives are designing is already proven to connect with your target audience on social, then there may be an opportunity to use your creative team's expertise to work with Influencers to create content directly. Just bear in mind that your creative team knows how to create quality brand content, but that doesn't mean they can successfully handle all of the moving parts of an influencer marketing campaign.

Remember, audiences can detect when they are being marketed to, especially when that marketing rings false or goes against the image they already have of your brand in their head. If you all of a sudden re-brand in a way that feels inauthentic, your audience may be turned off from your brand. Instead, when incorporating influencer marketing into your marketing strategy for the first time, stay true to your classic and recognizable forms of content in order to retain and attract users.

1. Influencer Marketing Content Creation Only

On the flip side of the influencer marketing company coin is using their content services only, and choosing to run the strategy side of your campaign on your own. For brands composed of strong strategic minds but whose content underperforms, this is a popular form of working with influencer marketing companies. Think of working with an influencer marketing company as outsourcing the aspects of influencer marketing that your brand could use help with. Once again, there’s no need to fix what isn’t broken. By only outsourcing the aspects of influencer marketing that you feel your brand is not capable of properly executing, you are setting your campaign up for ultimate success.

1. Influencer Sourcing Only

Influence sourcing is one of the most time-consuming aspects of influencer marketing, especially for the uninitiated. It includes everything from the initial search for an influencer and the influencer vetting process, to influencer outreach and making first contact with the influencers of your choice.

For brands new to influencer marketing, this process can include a learning curve and even some trial and error. To bypass all of that uncertainty and potential frustration, consider working for an influencer marketing company for their influencer sourcing services only. This is a common choice for brands confident in their content creation and strategy capabilities, who only need assistance breaking into the world of influencer marketing. 

Influencer marketing can be a tough strategy to dive right into. Luckily, there are many resources and tools available to brands who are looking to begin using the power of influence in their marketing efforts. For inspiration on your next campaign, here are The Biggest Deals Between Brands + Influencers (+ Why They Worked).

So how do you make sense of all the data that the marketing company compiles?