What does an influencer agency do?
Influencer agencies appear to be a dime a dozen these days, but what are these mysterious companies, and what role do they play in today’s creator economy? As an influencer agency, we think we’re well equipped to answer this question, so let’s get right into it.
In short, we’d define an influencer marketing agency as an organization that serves two groups in the creator economy:
Influencers: We find, recruit, and represent influencers (or as we prefer to call them, content creators) by helping them with most aspects of their career. We provide career advice, we seek out work opportunities, we negotiate their contracts, and we ensure they are being compensated fairly for their work, among other things.
Brands: Brands need help when it comes to influencer marketing. And while many brands have opted to transition influencer marketing operations in-house, they still work closely with agencies like Dalton Street to create campaigns and work with creators we represent. We help negotiate contracts, monitor key performance indicators, and help them maximize their marketing budgets. Most of all, we see that the capital deployed on advertising campaigns is used effectively and produces results.
These are obviously extremely simplistic explanations of what organizations like ours do on a day-in, day-out basis, but understand that most of the ad integrations you see on YouTube and other social media platforms crossed the desk of an influencer agency at some point or another.
The importance of influencer agencies has increased over the past decade (and especially so over the past five years) as more users find themselves on social media, and an increasing number of brands seek to leverage the power of these platforms to capture the attention of these users.
Our goal in this post is to eliminate some of the mystery surrounding influencer agencies, so let’s get into it.
What services do influencer agencies offer?
We like to divide the focuses of our business into three distinct segments:
Talent management
Campaign strategy and execution
Performance analysis
In the realm of talent management, we effectively represent influencers. Our job is to find and recruit influencers to join our agency and subsequently represent them. We answer their business emails, handle their public relations needs, find them brands to work with, and negotiate their contracts and agreements. We also work with these influencers creatively, offering our insights when it comes to producing compelling content. Additionally, we are also responsible for offering career advice and helping these creators take their work to the next level. Our creators come to us for advice, even if it’s not directly related to their work, and we’re happy to be there for them in that regard.
When it comes to campaign strategy and execution, we are constantly thinking about how to take advertising campaigns to the next level. This means developing campaign concepts, planning and coordinating campaign logistics, and content creation and planning. Most of this work is done with our brand partners. For instance, a brand may come to us and say, ‘we would like to use influencer marketing to talk about our latest product.’ From there, we’ll leverage our own network of creators and even creators we don’t already work with to promote that product. While this conceptually sounds simple, it is an incredibly intricate process of producing creative ideas, engaging talent, signing talent, and ensuring all parties involved are meeting their expectations (see our 15 rules of influencer marketing).
This leads us to performance analysis. Our jobs don’t end once we’ve conceived a brilliant marketing campaign and engaged the talent to execute the campaign. We’re also monitoring campaign performance metrics to ensure they are meeting requirements. This often means making adjustments and optimizations while the campaign is running! This, in turn, will take us to a place where we are analyzing ROI (return on investment) and the overall effectiveness of the campaign.
How do influencer agencies work with brands?
We’ve touched upon our work with brands in the preceding paragraphs, but we think this topic is deserving of some additional context. Without brands, we certainly wouldn’t have a need to represent creators, after all. So, when a brand comes to us, what exactly happens?
In general, agencies like ours will — as a starting place — try to understand the brand’s overall objectives. Who is the target audience? What are the goals the brand is trying to achieve? With all of this (and more) information, we can start to align influencer campaigns with brand values.
In order to do that, we implement collaboration campaign planning. Key activities here include brainstorming campaign ideas, customizing strategies based on the social media platform, and of course, establishing campaign key performance indicators. The process of actually facilitating partnerships begins, which in marketing speak, means matchmaking influencers with brands. A special note here: we not only work with content creators on our roster (those we represent), but we actively reach out to influencers who we think would be good for the campaign that we don’t already have a relationship with.
During this process, we’ll manage all communication between the brand and the influencer, and we’ll also ensure that contractual obligations are negotiated to everyone’s satisfaction and met. While this sounds straightforward, it’s a massive undertaking, particularly in large campaigns with many influencers.
The benefits of working with an influencer agency.
Why would a brand work with an influencer agency instead of, say, doing it themselves? This is a valid question. In fact, many brands have elected to handle influencer marketing themselves, particularly large brands. The more integral to the marketing strategy influencer marketing is, the more likely it will be handled in-house. But doing so is expensive. Having multiple employees handling this function on payroll can run into the high six, low seven figures on an annual basis, so to say that it is a commitment is an understatement.
Brands reach out to agencies like ours for three major reasons:
The first is access to expertise. The second? Time and resource efficiency. Thirdly, maximized impact and return on investment. Let’s go through each of these.
Access to expertise
Our team has been in the digital media space since 2009. We have considerable knowledge of the industry and have valuable insights from our time in it. We understand which strategies work, and which probably won’t. We know what ballpark costs should be. We know which niches work for certain industries. For a company that hasn’t dabbled in influencer marketing, this is extremely valuable.
Time and resource efficiency
This leads us to our next point, time and money. Some companies would simply rather outsource influencer marketing functions so that they can focus on what they do best. In many cases, it’s also economical to do so, making the brand-agency relationship a win-win. Agencies like Dalton Street offload the complexities of influencer marketing and streamline campaign execution.
Maximized impact and return on investment
Working with an influencer agency means increasing reach and engagement through strategic planning. This planning comes from years of experience, which also allows us to react more quickly to optimizing campaigns for better results. On-the-fly changes based on challenges we’ve faced in the past give agencies an advantage over in-house influencer marketing departments.
Agency services will continue to expand.
Now that you’ve learned a little about what influencer agencies do, you have probably put together in your mind that the role of agencies in the creator economy is vital. Moreover, we expect this industry to continue expanding over the next decade as brands seek to leverage the experience of agencies to carry out campaigns.
If you’re with a brand and you’d like to explore influencer marketing, please reach out.
