3 Tips to Choose Right Influencer Marketing Agency for Business

Market research says that more than 90% of people trust recommendations from their friends and family over the other forms of marketing.

Trusting these influencer marketing statistics, it can be inferred that brands promoting their own selves are only reaching about 10% of the masses and not necessarily reaching their target audience or gaining enough attention. This is where the potency of an influencer marketing agency needs to be considered.

Many businesses recognize the importance of digital media influencer marketing. So what are the challenges brands face trying to create a footprint on the influencer marketing scenario? To answer this it needs to be explained why companies want to use influencers, what is their appeal? Why is this method so successful? How does the industry keep on blossoming? And why are the consumers becoming sustainable buyers?

Key factors and outcomes

Brands spend a majority of their marketing budget on influencer marketing campaigns. So why do businesses spend large amounts of money on these people who will just post some content for them? Though it looks like that it is not that simple. Marketing is not an amateur’s trade. The millennials take kindly to this form of advice and the industries’ facts and figures from performance tell us more.

• 76% of people use Facebook, 51% use Instagram and about 40% of Twitter are used by the American population daily.
• Viewers influenced by social media convert into customers at a 130% higher rate than usual. They are also researched to be spending three or more times significantly higher than non-social media indulged people.
• Reading, writing or in other words, engaging with social media posts, comments or reviews influences around 65% of consumers.
• About 75% of people use social media platforms for suggestive inputs before making buying decisions.

These key factors are already enough to make you think, but the outcomes will make you sure of wanting to run a campaign.

Outcomes

• The average ROI for every 1$ spent on influencer marketing is about 10$.
• The average cost per engagement is 0.93$ and an engagement rate of 2.01%.
• Interest multiplied itself to a whopping 90 times in 2016 to where it was in 2013 and is on an ever-growing trend.
• More than 70% of all brand’s marketers have budget allocations for influencer marketing.
• More than 50% of people trust influencer recommendations for their purchasing decisions.
• Word-of-mouth advertising retains 37% more customers than other forms of advertising.

However, it also remains a fact that most brands get stuck in the phase of selecting an influencer for their business and the campaign does not even get realized. Here is where an influencer marketing agency guarantees your success. Also, before finalizing on the agency you would want to know if the said campaign requires in-house management or if it would be of more worth to outsource the project to an agency.

Campaign Goals

Again you would need to set your campaigns goals before finalizing on the above. So what could be the goals you wish to achieve? Some examples of campaign goals are,

• Product launch
• Reach your audience
• Create a new niche audience
• Overcome social algorithms

Through studying many campaigns, it was revealed that the foremost goal of most brands is to reach a newer audience and another is to reach a niche audience. Once you set your campaign goals you will still have some more decisions to make regarding your campaign in an effort to set the tone of your venture.

• Do you want the marketing drive to be done only online or do you want some live offline events complimenting the online drive?
• Do you want to run the campaign with one or two influencers with a huge number of followers and a wide reach or do you want to run the campaign using multiple influencers sharing your brand’s message?
• Also, Do you want to run a short-term or a long-term campaign?
• Do you want to approach it with a single channel campaign or a multiplatform one?

Once you have these answers you would want to choose an influencer marketing agency. So let’s review the key things to consider that an agency should possess as you decide on the one you want to source your campaign to and collaborate with.

1. Care about your business

The bottom line of every business is to make profits. All businesses have their own ethics, ideals and goals. Some see profits as the only outcome, some care about the effectiveness of the work they do for their clients while some care for business ethics and goodwill as the primary goal.

Marketing is no different and this is where it’s very important to work with agencies that have their business ideas in line with yours and care for your business.

An agency that cares about the influencers they work with and their client’s needs and requirements as paramount is the one you are on the lookout for. Your selected agency should be your brands best fit and care about who they do business in the long run.

2. Flexible execution

With your search for the most suitable agency, you will meet many agencies with success stories on their campaigns. Almost all of them will have streamlined their formulae, but some recipes will have been used too much and are no more a fresh or creative approach.

Agencies being unbendable and inflexible with their ideas might not do a world of good to your brand or the campaign itself.

Selecting an agency that puts its creative minds at work to devise a more customized plan for your brand would be more efficient and successful in the campaign’s outcomes. Along with a personalized plan the agency will also need to have skilful administration and control on the management aspects.

Research lots to find out about the prospective agencies and decide on the one that has the most flexible approach as you cannot predict what challenges might present themselves. Your agency needs to have the proper balance to counter them when they need to if they need to. 

3. Streamlined processes yield better results

Social media, SEO, branding, business and influencer marketing is a numbers game. Your campaign’s success will need measurements and assessments done in numbers weighed against its metrics. An Influencer marketing campaign has a process of choosing influencers, sourcing them, payment, content arrangement, contracts and measurements.

Agencies confident of their processes will be able to share their detailed plans on the campaign. Understand them, be confident about them and then take your call.

Selecting an influencer marketing agency is the most important facet of your campaign’s success. Choosing the right one needs a lot of research and analysis. Choose well and make your campaign a success even before it starts.