How to Choose an Influencer Marketing Agency?

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Nike was the top fashion brand in 2024 in the US for their influencer marketing, and they regularly work on visiting and reiterating their goals based on current market trends.

So, give an ample amount of time to this step and treat it as the foundation of your whole influencer marketing strategy. Once you have your goals in place, you will automatically know what efforts you need on social media to nail your influencer marketing strategy.

Get your detective glasses on and research which influencer marketing agencies work in your niche. Ask around, reach out to brands to understand how they selected their agencies, and gather some insights from them.

If you don’t have many people to ask around, just go to the internet and research or look for brands and check which agencies they work with. When you shortlist agencies, look for their case studies, and past campaigns, basically to know how they have performed in the past. If those don’t make you confident, read through the client testimonials and take a judgment call. Check their influencer network when you speak with them and if you think at least 80% of their influence network resonates with your business, there you go!

Pro Tip: Before you hire and onboard them, ensure you do a background check for these agencies just to be on the safer side.

3. Assess Their Strategy and Approach

When you onboard someone to do your work, you want to assess how they operate, and if their work principles match with yours. We follow the same procedure when we interview candidates and the same has to be followed for onboarding agencies.

To help you a bit, here are the questions you need answers for:

1. Do they pick random names off social media or do they have a more structured approach to vet influencers? Do they evaluate based on the demographics of the audience, engagement rates, content quality, etc or do they have any other checks in place?
2. What does their workflow look like? Do they take content creation and strategy into their own hands or rely on influencers for it? How do they structure their final approvals and reporting?
3. What do their tech and analytics capabilities look like? Does the agency rely on analytics tools or are just good at guessing games? What metrics do they usually track and how do they derive insights from them? Do they use those insights regularly to target better future performance?
4. How do they handle crisis? When the influencer (you collaborated with) faces backlash, what are the measures the agency can take? Do they have a plan of action ready for such situations?

4. Transparency and Communication

As they say, the less the transparency, the greater the insecurity. 

The same goes for influencer marketing agencies. A good agency is usually very clear in its communication, expectations, and pricing from the beginning. If you suspect dishonest behavior or complex pricing, wave the red flag high and move on.

Some agencies charge a fixed fee for their services while others charge based on campaign performance. This is the first thing you would want to clear when it comes to pricing models. Understand which pricing model works best for you and make the decision from there.

Other than this, check how transparent they are with tracking performance and reporting it back to you. If the agency works in silos, it can never do you any good. Remember, data is the mother of success.  

Last but not least, open communication is the key to all successful relationships.

5. Compliance and Brand Safety

The last thing you want to get into is a shady influencer agency during your search. When you look for an agency, keep a basic check of a few things. For starters, ensure they adhere to Federal Trade Commission (FTC) guidelines and legal compliance. Agencies should follow basic advertising guidelines so that your business doesn’t end up in a ruckus.

Other than that, it’s also necessary to vet every influencer thoroughly before signing up with them. The agency should have proper tools in place to check if the influencer is authentic and if their followers are not fake/bot-driven. Once that is in place, the influencer’s profile should resonate with the brand’s alignment (not forced partnerships) so that there is an optimized audience that you target through influencer marketing.

A good agency ensures that all influencers follow these guidelines, preventing any legal trouble for your brand.

Pro Tip: The influencer’s behavior directly impacts the brand’s image, hence the need to be very mindful when you pick your influencers.

6. Compare Costs and Value

While influencer marketing might sound like an expensive activity to do, there are affordable agencies out there who can help you with it. Hence, set your budgets first and then start your search and not the other way around.

Don’t let the agencies perceive you as a newbie and mislead you with their complex pricing structures. Understand their pricing structure thoroughly and go through the entire contract terms and pricing breakup. While you do so, set your expectations right and demand transparency at all levels— influencer charges, agency’s commission, ROI through each influencer, etc. Here is an example of a sheet with these details:

You can get additional trackers created where such details of investment and ROI are regularly monitored. For example, both these influencers post content in the fitness industry but their reach and follower count will determine their pricing. Make sure to follow each step thoroughly.

Watch out for additional fees, extended campaign charges, and any hidden costs that can affect your budget down the line. Overall, just set realistic expectations with the agency and ensure transparency throughout your term of the contract.

7. Request a Proposal and Run a Test Campaign

We don’t just meet someone for the first time and instantly decide to get married to them, right?

The same goes for influencer marketing agencies. Do not jump into a long-term commitment; rather, start with a customized proposal and get them to work on an assignment or a small project. Assess their technical and creative skills, see how proactive they are with coordination, and check their level of transparency. Point out if you spot any red flags and aren’t on the same page.

Let the agency know that this is a small test campaign, and that the final decision will be made after this. That’s how the agency will perform at its best for that campaign, and you can make a judgment call based on that. Here are a few examples of test campaigns that you can run with new agencies that you shortlist.

• Influencer Selection
• Content Creation
• Performance Tracking
• Budget Alignment

8. Make Your Final Decision

Gathered all the data? It’s decision time!

Keep all the data in one place and compare it wisely. Look through the numbers and compare their pricing, content ideas, execution abilities, collaboration proactiveness, and overall compatibility with your brand values.

Some agencies might be a great fit, but only for a selected few social media channels while some might benefit you overall. If your business is focusing on just 1-2 specific social media channels based on where your target audience is, you can go ahead with the same. Similarly, some agencies will have a knack for your niche, and some won’t. 

You should have a clear understanding of how influencer marketing works before talking to agencies. For example, here is a sense of collaboration that’s possible for a beauty brand.

✅ Beauty brands collaborating with beauty influencers 

✅ Beauty brands collaborating with travel influencers 

✅ Beauty brands collaborating with fitness influencers 

❌ Beauty brands collaborating with coding influencers 

Some other factors to choose from can be experience with diverse clients, usage of technological solutions, optimization expertise, data-driven report quality, etc.