What is Influencer Marketing?

Influencer marketing is the process of paying people with significant social media followings to promote products, goods, and services.

Influencers are the most effective form of advertising in modern day marketing. People that follow influencers already know, like, and trust them. Influencer marketing eliminates most barriers that normally challenge a brand in making a sale.

The most effective influencer marketing strategies work because they incorporate several elements to work together.

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PRODUCT FIT

The correct product is paired with the correct influencer. Influencers often occupy niches like fitness, financial, or beauty.

ATTITUDE

Influencers sell products with different levels of energy. Influencers who are excited to talk about products convert 12 times better on average than ones that aren’t.

CAMPAIGN SETUP

How influencers make calls to action to talk about products and services matter. Each platform’s users respond differently depending on the platform’s culture.

An effective content marketing strategy can exist on any social media platform. Over 75% of brands have some form of influencer marketing budget as of 2022. Most of these brands advertise with influencers on platforms like Instagram.

Recently, more and more attention is coming to new media platforms. New media is the future of any new media marketing strategy.

What is New Media Marketing?

New Media marketing is a category of marketing targeting the newest platforms.

New Media platforms are platforms like Twitch, Youtube, and Tiktok.

New media advertising is often cheap because brands are slow moving and don’t realize the benefit of advertising there yet. Users and attention is often on these platforms long before advertisements show up.

Early adopters of new media platforms often get incredible results from their influencer marketing strategies. The attention on their products is not only underpriced but also users are more open because they haven’t been swarmed with ads yet.

Each new media platform has a unique culture and way that its users respond to advertising.

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What is an Influencer Marketing Agency?

Influencer marketing agencies are companies familiar with influencer marketing that create and manage advertising campaigns between influencers and brands.

There are generally two types of influencer marketing companies:

Talent Agencies

Companies that manage social media influencers exclusively or non-exclusively. These companies usually approach brands that want products and services advertised on behalf of the influencers they represent. Talent agencies usually make money by taking a percentage of every deal they manage for an influencer.

Creative Agencies

A creative agency is a company that represents brands in exclusive or non-exclusive relationships. A creative agency helps brands build effective influencer marketing campaigns. Creative agencies make money by charging a percentage off the budgets they control for brands.

Why use an Influencer Marketing Agency?

If you are in a company considering using influencer marketing, you have a decision to build influencer marketing campaigns inhouse or to use an agency to do it. Major brands with huge marketing budgets often do both.

Using an influencer marketing agency will almost always produce better results than inhouse work. Influencer marketing is highly specialized and each platform has a different culture.

The most effective influencer advertising campaigns are tailored to the individual influencers community and the brand. It is rare that a company can keep track of all of the factors that go into a great marketing campaign because they’re normally focused on making their product or service the best possible. Any attention a company does put towards creating influencer marketing campaigns is taking away from time they could optimize their primary offering.

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How to Choose the Right Influencer Marketing Agency

The right marketing agency spends their time understanding what gets people's attention and what leads to sales. They’re able to tell you what works and why for each platform you’re interested in advertising on. They’ll have case studies to support what they’re telling you, and they’ll have done work successfully on social media platforms in the past.

Here are some great questions to ask an influencer marketing agency to determine if they’re right to work with you:

What are the other brands you’ve worked with and what success stories can you share?

How would you approach marketing my (product/service) for a platform like Youtube?

Have you ever marketed a product or service like (my company) before? How did it go?

What is your influencer selection process? How do you determine the right influencer to work with us?

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