In the digital age, social media has become more important than ever, and its momentum shows no signs of stopping. That’s why picking a good influencer marketing agency is so important.
Traditional media methods in the marketing and advertising world do not produce the same results as they used to. In fact, consumers have now proven to trust their favorite influencers on social media more than traditional advertisements.
Once a brand partners with an influencer marketing agency that can successfully address their goals, the brand will not only boost their online presence but will maximize their ROI too.
How Influencer Marketing Campaigns Come Out on Top
As social media becomes increasingly popular over time and draws in millions of users, influencer marketing proves to be extraordinarily beneficial. According to a study from MuseFind, 92% of consumers trust an influencer more than an advertisement or even a traditional celebrity endorsement.
In other words, traditional media methods don’t work as well as they used to. Instead, influencer marketing involves the use of well-known social media influencers to drive digital campaigns in an organic way. More importantly for brands, influencer marketing provides a better return on investment (ROI) in comparison to other marketing strategies by pinpointing the influencers who have the largest impact over a brand’s target audience.
For example, the brand FanDuel achieved mass success by launching an influencer marketing campaign to promote its services. In the end, the campaign achieved a 5:1 ROI. With successful results like these, now over 60% of brands have adopted some form of influencer marketing.
What Are the Roles of an Influencer Marketing Agency?
Contrary to popular belief, not all influencer marketing agencies are the same, the same way that not all marketing/advertising agencies are the same. For example, some influencer marketing agencies may handle more of the social media campaign process than others. Or, some agencies may have different software or methods they use to source top-performing niche influencers for specific campaigns.
In the end, it all depends on what a brand is looking for in regards to their social media campaign. If a brand is in search of an influencer marketing agency that specializes in targeting young audiences online, there are agencies that focus on reaching Generation Z on new platforms like TikTok. There are even agencies that directly target the gaming community for gaming brands.
For those brands that want to contract the most popular influencers with impressively high engagement rates that will bring in great results, there are high-performing agencies that use data-backed strategies to source those creators. Overall, a majority of agencies will handle the entire campaign process for a brand from developing the creative strategy to tracking the campaign’s performance and insights. Like most projects for brands, the key to success, and finding the right agency, is to figure out their main goals and go from there.
What is the Campaign Process of Working with an Agency?
As mentioned previously, influencer marketing agencies can be extremely helpful in the way that they handle the entire social media campaign process for a brand. Whether it’s sourcing, negotiation, or even coordinating communication with the influencers, agencies can do it all and are a great resource to use.
If you’re unfamiliar with the process for running a campaign with the help of an influencer marketing agency, it can be broken down into four simple steps:
Step 1: Meet with the Team
Once a brand has found an influencer marketing agency that outlines the best solutions to address their problems and campaign goals, it’s time for the brand to brief the agency on the campaign expectations, vision, and guidelines.
Together, the brand and the agency will discuss the brand’s main long-term and/or short-term goals. They’ll brainstorm creative strategies, and compile a roster of prospective influencers that best fit the brand’s image and values.
Step 2: Outreach to Online Creators
The influencer marketing agency builds a roster of influencers that would best match the social media campaign. The brand should then go through the roster and point out the creators they would be most interested in partnering with. This results in a shorter contact list.
Then, the agency will reach out to those chosen influencers and/or their managers to initiate conversation and attempt to negotiate a deal based on both the brand and the creator’s budget. Once negotiations wrap up, the agency will then gain the brand’s approval to recruit a specific number of influencers while staying within the agreed budget.
Step 3: Content Creation
Based on the campaign and the brand’s image, the contracted influencers create a first draft of a social media post. They’ll base this on what they feel will best attract and engage their followers.
The creators will send the posts to the agency. The agency will approve or edit the posts based on the brand’s requirements outlined in the first meeting. As soon as the posts are approved, they’ll be posted live online.
Step 4: Amplification
The agency analyzes the influencers’ posts and tracks the relevant insights. As a next step, they will determine the highest-performing posts to amplify across all social media channels. The agency will then continue to track and report on the campaign’s performance to the brand.
How Do You Measure Results?
One of the most efficient of measuring ROI is to track the cost-per-impression (CPM) an influencer gets on their posts. Impressions describe the number of times a piece of content was shown to someone online. The more followers the influencer has, the higher the likely impression count, and the lower the cost per impression. This is why it’s so beneficial for a brand to work with a top-performing influencer.
ROI
In fact, sponsored posts alone have shown to yield up to 11 times more ROI than standard ads. It’s also why those influencers price their posts higher than others. According to Influencer Marketing Hub, for every $1 the brand spends on an influencer, they are getting an ROI of $5.78.
Take this campaign for Oh! My Gif toys, for example. Since Moose Toys contracted popular influencers like Brent Rivera and Addison Rae, the campaign resulted in a 4.45 times ROI.
Tracking Links, Tags, and Metrics
When agencies are creating a creative strategy, they may also create affiliate links and social media tags. This means that social media users can correlate a campaign with the brand. This is a fantastic way to measure results. That’s because brands can see how many users were redirected to their website or social media pages.
This translates to website traffic, CPM, views, and engagement. Ultimately, it can also translate into revenue. Brands can also see if users purchased products or services on their website after seeing the influencer’s promoted link.
Influencer marketing agencies know social media inside and out. That’s why they achieve mass success and boost ROI, unlike most traditional media campaigns today. Influencer marketing agencies are one of the most helpful resources a company can find today. With them, a brand can grow its online image, reach its marketing goals, and build relationships with top-performing influencers. Now that a killer social media presence matters more than ever, there’s no better time to partner with an influencer marketing agency.
