10-Steps Guide to Choosing the Best Influencer Marketing Agency

Influencer marketing is here to stay; if you haven’t started using it yet, you may miss out on many potential clients. But starting can be very difficult, especially if you have to design the campaign, establish connections and build relations with many influencers. For these reasons, you may be looking to ask for the help of an influencer marketing agency.

Influencer marketing agency advantages

They will take care of most of the job:

• Identifying the right influencers
• Identify important KPIs and how to achieve them 
• Manage the campaign, ensuring that the influencer knows the goals and what kind of messaging should be followed.
• Track and measure the results of your campaign

Using the services of an influencer marketing agency would lean on people with a long history of expertise and experience in the field. They would streamline your individuation, acquisition, and tracking time while delivering content that aligns with your requirements and standards.

How to choose an influencer marketing agency

To pick the right agency for your needs is important to keep in mind Localization, Areas of Expertise, and evaluate their Track Record, Previous Campaigns, Communication Methods, Creativity Inputs, Goal and Timeline Setting, Quality Controls, and Reporting mechanisms they have in place.

1. Localization

Many marketing agencies specialize in the area they are located in. In contrast, others prefer to go international, like CreatorDB, and have teams able to deliver campaigns across the globe.

While English is typically enough to go by in a business setting, many influencers may not be comfortable with it or would prefer to communicate in their native language. Accommodating them will translate into much less friction and misunderstandings when briefing them about the campaign goals.

Therefore is essential to identify marketing agencies that can operate in the market you are targeting.

2. Area of expertise

Some agencies only work with fashion and beauty brands; others specialize in gaming or luxury branding. But don’t get too set on finding an agency that works only in your field: sometimes a narrow focus is dangerous and leads to delivering “standard” campaigns that may lack personalization and authenticity in favor of the standard way to do things.

3. Track record

Check with who they worked previously and how they are doing now. At this point, consider contacting the agency and asking for examples of previous campaigns if you include an idea of what you want so that they can provide you with something relevant and not just a campaign that was successful for them but irrelevant for you.

4. Previous campaigns

As they say in finance: “Past records are not indicative of future performances,” but they can help to understand how things will go. If you contacted the agency and obtained some examples of their previous works, now is the time to compare it to your original idea.

Here you should keep an open mind and not look for a copy of what you are looking for but just a hint at the agency’s capabilities and results.

5. Communication

At this point, you must contact the agency and get a feeling of how to interact with them: do they reply fast? Do they understand what you are looking for? Are they interested in the case?

These are all things you should consider when choosing since you don’t want to pick a sloppy agency set in its way and with no interest in what you want.

Starting a direct communication will give you the feeling of how they manage their clients, what care they put into their interactions, and if they are passionate about your project.

6. Creativity

Once you start communicating with the agency and explain your idea and what you expect from the partnership, you will likely get a reply containing their side of the story. While only part of the campaign, this should already give you an idea of what they can do and how they would tackle your case.

Here you can start noticing if they are just going along with what you say or bringing their weight into it. It is important to remember that you are not using them to find a series of “yes men,” but you want to access their knowledge and expertise.

So be open to their suggestions and evaluate them without being dogmatic.

7. Goal setting

Marketing campaigns need to have goals.

Possibly SMART (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Time-bound) goals.

When communicating with an agency, start considering how they will achieve the results: do they have a clear idea of what you want? Are they establishing metrics to go by to reach your final goal? Are these goals realistic considering budget and time?

8. Timeline

While already a part of goal setting, establishing a timeline of operation is one of the most important steps when dealing with an agency. Especially if your influencer marketing campaign is time-sensitive, like, in connection to a holiday or a product launch, you want to have a clear view of how the agency team is going to manage the time.

9. Quality control

Influencers and content creators are human beings, and all humans are prone to bring their interpretation to their tasks.

Creativity can be highly beneficial if the creator truly understands and shares your campaign vision, but the case of a misunderstanding or different ideas can translate into a disaster.

That’s why it is crucial to have in place a failsafe mechanism: generally, it translates into a final check on the content from the agency and your company before it goes live.

10. Reporting

While the agency will be doing all the heavy lifting concerning contacting and managing influencers, you should still be able to keep an eye on what is happening. Therefore, ask for periodic updates on the campaign. While it would not require you to micromanage the campaign itself would let you know if all the steps taken are going in the direction you wanted.

To make your life easier and ace your next influencer marketing campaign we prepared an easy cheatsheet you can download here

If you are interested in hiring an influencer marketing agency to run your campaign why not take a look at what CreatorDB has to offer? 

• We provide services in 10 of the most spoken languages in the world.
• Our people are experts in a wide variety of fields from gaming to fashion and much more.
• We worked with many know brands all over the globe.
• Our campaigns are always tailored to the client’s needs and we pride ourselves on offering top-of-the-line customer care.

Talk with us and we will provide you with a custom solution for all your influencer marketing needs.