According to sources, influencer marketing is projected to grow to a $15 billion industry by 2022 in spite of criticism and scepticism over the past few years. This is major because of the influencers failing to disclose their involvement with the brands and validated proofs of ROI. Los Angeles is the seat of the world’s media industry and the home to many celebrities and popular icons of the entertainment industry. It is also a market for many growing businesses from a variety of industries. Influencer marketing’s unprecedented success has led to the ever-increasing demand for choosing an influencer marketing agency.
Influencer marketing is a marketing method that operates with brands, products or services being promoted on digital platforms, mostly social media applications by influencers recommending or placing the said products or services in their own creative content. These influencers are power users on social media applications with many followers who view, like, share, engage, and comment on their posts.
Making proper use of this exposure and the engaged audience has slowly developed into what we see today as influencer marketing. This marketing technique has outgrown all the traditional ones and has proven itself to be more effective than the others. This has been largely fuelled by the overall growth of social media platforms in terms of users worldwide. By 2018, mid-July Instagram alone had grown to over a billion users and still to this day remains the most effective digital marketing platform.
The model of measurement and analytics has also become more robust and strategic. A report says that conversions or sales were the most popular metric in 2020. Also, with the industry‘s growth, the number of influencer marketing agencies have increased as well. In the year 2019, the number of influencer marketing agencies grew from 380 to 1120 from being just 190 in 2015.
As the landscape grows it is becoming increasingly difficult to choose an appropriate agency from the many. There are many questions about the right operating model and the correct type of influencer marketing agency. So what do you need to know and consider as you choose an influencer marketing agency?
Decide on a suitable operating model
Since its inception influencer marketing has been largely managed by in-house marketing teams. According to a survey report, 78% of brands were doing this using their in-house resources, while just 14% were using a specialist agency to identify and manage influencers.
Larger companies will still be comfortable using services from the agencies as they will have a fee but at the same time, smaller organizations might think that they will save some money by not hiring an agency. This is true to the fact that they will save some money by not hiring an agency, but that does not guarantee the overall cost reduction of the campaign and also increases risks of unforeseen expenses.
There are a number of factors that influence the decision like sector or industry type of the business, the needs of the business as in the terms and size of the campaign, in-house resources, budget, objectives of the campaign and some wider perspectives. This helps understand what solution is most efficient, suitable and cost-effective.
Choosing an influencer marketing agency
An agency has proven expertise in the field of influencer marketing, a network of influencers, and a set of industrial tools to analyze the data of a campaign. Using an agency can increase the speed of the process and make it easier for businesses to collaborate with the right influencers.
The two most important factors aiding in the choice are budget and goals. Brands normally decide the budget in the planning phase. You would also normally target a specific type of influencer personalities as per your campaign and also your goals and targets. Popular choices are brand awareness, app downloads or product purchases. An agency would ideally match your choices and needs with the expected ROI by filling in the necessary gaps with their expert management.
When picking an agency always consider the types of influencers they work with, as well as their business ethics and ideals alignment with your business. If you are looking to target an audience with a specific or niche genre it would not be worthwhile to partner with an agency that only works with top-level influencers as a top-level influencer would generally have a variety of followers rather than concentrated. Also, influencers with a lower number of followers would have a higher level of user engagement on their posts and also be more cost-effective.
Another factor is presence or expertise in a particular social channel or trend. Some agencies only focus on some channels like Instagram or TikTok or even industries like fashion and beauty or hi-tech gadgetry. A match is what works best.
The expertise of the agency will determine your success, so it is always necessary to match up to your requirements. Select carefully and do lots of research before selecting an agency and have a higher chance of making your campaign effective for your business.
Data is the key to any marketing strategy as it allows you to plan as per your needs. An influencer marketing agency will be able to meet your requirements in terms of providing the right influencer and a lot of other services essential to make your campaign successful. These are what makes the campaign so complex, yet so effective.