With an estimated market value of $13.8 billion globally, influencer marketing is quickly becoming one of the top ways for brands to boost their recognition and engagement online. In fact, according to a recent survey, around 93% of marketers use or have used influencers in their brand strategies.
But what’s the best way to go about it? Are influencer platforms any good or should you hire a specialist influencer marketing agency like FYI? Read on to discover the key differences between the two and some of the pros and cons of each approach.
Influencer platforms vs. influencer marketing agencies
First, let’s take a look at the difference between these two similar sounding terms. An influencer marketing platform is essentially an online tool that brands can use to find influencers to work with. Most offer databases with filters so that you can narrow down your search for relevant influencers based on things like niche and budget. You can then view their profile and statistics and contact them about campaigns you’d like them to take part in. Once hired, influencers are then paid through the platform.
Influencer marketing agencies like FYI, on the other hand, offer a fully managed service so that you can take more of a backseat. We do all of the hard work for you, including sourcing influencers from a broad network of contacts, negotiating rates and securing contracts, and managing campaigns from planning to delivery. Agency experts will also keep your campaigns on track for best results. This helps to ensure your influencer marketing is effective and prevents any of your budget being wasted.
Why choose FYI over an influencer marketing platform?
Influencer research and engagement
With an influencer platform, you or a member of your team would be responsible for finding and communicating with influencers. This will give you full control over your choice of influencer, but it takes time and effort. Your search will also be limited to influencers who have signed up with the specific platform you’re using and you’d only have the statistics listed in their profile to work off.
As an agency, at FYI we have access to a huge network of over 100,000 influencers. We conduct research using our own database and utilise our relationships with talent agencies to find the perfect influencer to promote your products. Plus, if we’ve worked with them before, we can assess the results of their previous campaigns too.
Once we’ve narrowed down our search, we’ll send the details of your campaign to a hand-picked group of vetted collaborators in your niche. If they express an interest, you can then choose your favourite and we’ll negotiate a deal on your behalf.
Campaign briefing and management
Once you’ve chosen an influencer, we can move onto the campaign briefing process. This involves providing the influencer with a creative brief to work from, which helps to ensure the content they create meets your objectives and requirements. We’ll also set up a contract so that the influencer knows what’s expected of them and distribute any product samples and information they’ll need. We’ll then develop a plan for you and manage the campaign on your behalf, making sure everything runs smoothly.
If you decide to go with an influencer management platform instead, you’ll need to come up with a strategy and implement it yourself. While this might be okay for a very small campaign, it isn’t easy if you’re not familiar with the process or don’t have the time to devote to it. Hence why we recommend outsourcing to an expert agency.
Content monitoring and reporting
While influencer platforms don’t offer advice on campaign optimisation, our experienced team at FYI will monitor the progress of your campaign and make adjustments if needed. To do this, we give our influencers access to a dedicated dashboard where they can generate unique tracking codes to include in their content. This enables us to track how each influencer and post is performing based on key data like traffic and sales, rather than simply looking at reach and engagement rates.
We can use this information to ensure KPIs are met and even reward influencers who are performing particularly well with a commission per sale. At the end of the month, we’ll compile the data into a clear report to show you how everything’s going.
Influencer content collection and amplification
Finally, unlike self-serve influencer management platforms, we will collect all of the content that has been posted and use our Facebook and Instagram advertising experience to amplify the best content. In other words, we’ll use targeted ads to promote your influencer’s top-performing posts on your brand’s own social media channels for greater reach.
Our team is well versed in running effective acquisition and retention campaigns. We will test various formats and placements to get you the best ROI possible and also make sure your brand’s social ads meet the relevant advertising standards. Plus, if you’d like to extend the campaign to YouTube and Pinterest, we can do that too!
Get the best out of your influencer marketing with FYI
Forget about wasting your valuable time and marketing budget on influencer campaigns that may never actually achieve results. At FYI, we work with a range of brands across a variety of industries to deliver effective influencer marketing campaigns that meet or exceed set goals.
Through our vast network of connections, we can arrange collaborations with top-performing influencers that are hard to reach through traditional influencer platforms. Plus, we have the tools and expertise to track and optimise your sponsored content for maximum reach and revenue!
So, whether you want to increase awareness of your brand, boost sales from social or even launch a brand new product, we can help. Contact us on 01617310048 or send us an enquiry to get the ball rolling. We promise you won’t regret it!