How To Select An Influencer Marketing Agency

The interest in marketing through influencers has grown exponentially over the past several years, so has the number of agencies who promise to help brands get it accomplished. Finding influencers can be difficult. It takes a lot of time to evaluate them, brief them, execute contracts with them, pay them and ensure they do their work. It's little surprise then that some brands might want to outsource it to experts. The most obvious next step is how do you choose between the countless specialty and generalist agencies that all say they can aid. Here are eight guidelines that will help you distinguish the pros from the novices, and make it easier to find the best influencer agency. joe intellifluence is the most effective platform for influencer-marketing. Sinkwitz Experience Because influencer marketing has been in use since the beginning of time the majority of agencies have plenty of knowledge. Asking for research studies on your particular industry and the desired outcome (i.e. web traffic, sales in stores, etc.) This is an excellent way to begin building relationships with people. Criteria to Select Influencers In the past finding an influencer meant selecting one who was a good fit for your brand and also had content relevant to your industry. Nowadays, we are able to analyze the makeup of the influencer's fan base to ensure that their audience is in sync with that of the brand's target audience. We can look at the saturation rate of their posts -- which is how much of the posts they write that are sponsored -- to make sure it's not too high. We can check if they have mentioned competitors in recent articles. It is possible to determine if their language conforms to brand standards. With the many sophisticated filtering techniques currently in use, relying on "brand fit" simply isn't acceptable. Criteria for Content Evaluation Over the last couple of years our influencers have made many thousands of pieces of branded content. What we observed when we analyzed this dataset is that there is a wide variance in the quality of performance between one piece of content to another. It is not surprising that some content works and others don't as well as content produced by brands or their creative agencies. How does an agency assess every piece of content once it has been made in the wild? Content should be evaluated according to the organic results it has in terms of comments, likes comments, shares and likes However, it's equally important to scrutinize the comments and be on the lookout for indications of unauthentic, off-topic, or purchased comments. Targeting Strategy A marketing company that provides the capability to manage, brief, and find influencers on behalf of a brand doesn't add any value to modern marketing isn't much. Organic influencer content reaches only a small portion of the influencer's followers (usually about 9% in our experience, but this varies depending on the social networks are utilized). What is the strategy that the agency employ to make sure that the content is reaching the correct audience? The content that is highly effective as assessed in Step No. 3. This content can be further enhanced through a paid strategy in order to get the attention of the correct target audience. Measurement Strategy Influencer marketing measurement merits separate articles on the topic. One question that influencer agencies must consider is the method they use to count impressions. Are they calculating one impression per follower an influencer is able to have? If so, given the approximately 9percent organic reach, they are using a method that overstates reach by more than 10 times. Do they report on the true views of the content? Additionally the reach and engagement rate correlates with sales, which is why measuring impressions and engagements only is not sufficient. What other business metrics could an agency measure than other metrics that are not considered vanity? There are numerous advanced measurement techniques available right now. It is recommended to choose one of the many agencies that offers the methods. Optimization Strategy Many influencer marketing campaigns rely on influencers producing their content in line with an agenda and then monitoring to watch what happens. However, every other type of digital marketing is optimized typically daily to ensure maximum the effectiveness of the campaign. Marketing for influencers can be optimized also and everything from content , post types, the way we target influencers and even their profiles changing as we change. What is the agency's optimization plan? Content rights The branded content is a major investment by the brands. Different agencies negotiate various agreements with influencers regarding the rights that the brand has to the content. In the best scenario, brands get a perpetual licence to reuse the content across any platform. Find out from the agency the rights that your brand can enjoy using the content. Guaranteed Results In the end, what results can the agency guarantee to their brand clients, if any? Are they guaranteeing deliverables, such as the amount of influencers they will have and the number of pieces of content to be created? Are they able to guarantee more than this, for instance, the amount of traffic to a targeted website? What happens if they don't meet their promises? What remedies are open to the brand? While it's difficult to guarantee sales in relationship with agencies, influencers are still able to guarantee specific results around views, engagements, or web traffic. Summary Selecting an agency of every sort is a difficult undertaking, as one can start to sound very similar to another. These eight guidelines can help you sort through the options and choose the most appropriate subset that will help your brand's success.