WHAT BRANDS SHOULD KNOW BEFORE HIRING AN INFLUENCER AGENCY
Influencer marketing is an effective and efficient way for brands to reach new audiences and drive sales. That is if you know what you are doing.
Partnering with the right influencer agency can help brands streamline and optimize their influencer marketing efforts and achieve their marketing goals.
However, before hiring an influencer agency, there are a few things that every brand should know.
The 3 Things You Need to Know Before Working with an Agency
1. Know Your Goals
Before partnering with any influencer agency, it's important to understand your campaign goals.
What are you hoping to achieve? Are you looking to increase brand awareness, drive traffic to your website, or increase sales? If all of the above, which is most important?
Identifying and weighing your goals will help your agency lead you down the most efficient path to achieving them.
2. Know Your Target Audience
Before working with an influencer agency, it's important to understand your target audience.
Who are the people you want to reach with your campaigns? What do they look like? Where do they live? What do they care about?
Knowing this information will help your agency zero in on creators that are a good fit for your brand and will reach your desired audience.
3. Know What Differentiates You
The third thing you need to know is what sets you apart from your competition.
What makes your brand unique? What do you offer that no one else does?
Understanding what differentiates you from your competition will lead to the development of effective messaging and give fuel to the influencers you work with so they can effectively communicate the things that make you unique.
3 Things You Should Expect to Learn Along the Way
1. Brand advocacy is greater than brand voice
When working with influencers, it's important to give them creative freedom to showcase your products in a manner they know their audience will respond to.
This means providing digestible information about your product so they will remember the details and speak authentically rather than reciting talking points. You could do this by creating an unboxing video or offering a tutorial session to educate influencers on the product they will be promoting.
It also means allowing your influencers the freedom to come up with their own ideas and strategies for showcasing your products in an interesting and engaging way. Avoid overloading them with heavy talking points that they feel pressured to memorize.
By allowing influencers to be creative and share their unique perspective, you allow your influencers to create content that resonates with audiences in an authentic way and helps build trust with potential customers.
2. Your best results may be outside your typical niches
It's important to remember that when working with influencers, experimentation is key.
Yes, that means allowing your influencers room to experiment with how they talk about your product (like we’ve mentioned above), but it also means sometimes experimenting with creators in unexpected niches.
Do you sell a health product? Consider experimenting with creators in automotive niches.
Do you sell a meal-kit solution? Maybe you should consider the true crime niche.
We’ve seen experiments like these and others drive surprisingly great results and expose entirely new and interested audiences to brands.
In short, being open to experimentation can help you find untapped audiences and messaging that can help you reach your goals.
3. You'll learn which social platforms work best for you
As you continue to work with influencers, you'll also learn which social platforms work best for your unique brand.
Different platforms have different strengths, so it's important to understand which platforms will be the most effective for reaching your target audience.
For example, if you're looking to reach a younger demographic, TikTok may be a better option than Instagram. If you're looking to reach a more engaged demographic and direct response, YouTube or podcasts may be your best choice.
By understanding the strengths of each platform and how they can help you reach your desired audience, you can ensure that your influencer marketing efforts are as effective as possible.
Either Way, Be Prepared to Learn
Influencer marketing is constantly evolving, and there's always something new on the horizon. When working with an influencer agency, be prepared to learn.
Ask questions, stay up-to-date on industry trends, and be open to trying new things.
The more you aim to test and learn, the more successful your influencer marketing campaigns will be.