What does an Influencer Marketing Agency do, and what makes a good one? 7 things you need to know

An influencer marketing agency is rapidly becoming a core pillar of the modern marketing landscape. Able to provide the insight, data, and creative and cultural understanding to help brand clients navigate the relatively new and always (always) evolving influencer landscape, they’re a vital partner to those wanting to achieve the most effective marketing results, and enjoy the most fruitful creative relationships with influencers.

By nature of the above though, the ins and outs of actually working with an influencer marketing agency can take some explaining. So, being thoroughly versed in the field, with some steadfast outlooks on what good influencer marketing really looks like and how to achieve it, we’ve put together this primer.

Here are the seven things you need to know (and look out for) when it comes to influencer marketing agencies.

What is an influencer marketing agency? 

An influencer marketing agency, simply, is a creative marketing agency focused on bringing brands together with online influencers and content creators. Whether working with YouTube influencers, TikTok influencers, gaming influencers, food influencers, or content creators in any other category, the ultimate aim is to build successful marketing campaigns that leverage the creative partner’s content, following and voice. 

You can get a full crash-course breakdown on how and why influencer marketing works through our introductory primer article elsewhere on the Fourth Floor blog, but the key takeaway is that developing truly powerful, authentic branded content with online influencers is a specialist and uniquely effective way of authentically reaching audiences. Getting an influencer marketing campaign right requires a great deal of understanding, nuance, creative expertise, and data insights, so a dedicated influencer marketing agency should be the most qualified team to deliver a campaign that really works. 

What does an influencer marketing agency do? 

While the daily design, execution, and reporting of good influencer marketing campaigns is a job as varied as the content produced (ie. very), at its core, a good influencer marketing agency should be fuelled by one key principle. That is, driving the maximum value from every project, for the brand client, the content creator(s), and the audience. This means working with insight and forethought to make sure all stakeholders’ needs and concerns are understood and met. 

Influencers need to feel supported, creatively understood, and never pushed into campaigns or branded content ideas that don’t gel with their values, style of content, or audience tastes. An influencer marketing agency’s brand clients need to feel informed, have their specific campaign needs and KPIs understood and served, and feel assured and looked after with absolute transparency through what is, to many, still a relatively new process. 

An influencer marketing agency’s responsibility is to find the right, most natural and effective matches between brand and influencer, and be capable of generating creative ideas and campaign formats that serve both parties in the most harmonious and mutually beneficial manner possible. And beyond engineering the right influencer marketing campaigns to reach the right audiences, it must also be able to parse and learn from the results, in order to provide full, actionable reporting that can continually hone and improve further work. 

Influencer marketing agency services 

Influencer marketing agency services can vary wildly from project to project, and from agency to agency. While the core principles of good influencer marketing should always be held high whatever the context, the exact methods of delivering are bespoke to each individual influencer marketing campaign. Or at least they should be. 

Above: A full-service influencer marketing agency will deliver much more than client/creator connections.

Fourth Floor’s influencer marketing services range from managing influencer marketing campaigns, to providing full production services, to events management, advocacy programmes, commerce and merch solutions for influencers and brands, and providing the insight and data reporting required to deliver and explain the success behind all of the above. A good influencer marketing agency should have the tools and versatility to integrate any combination of approaches at any scale, in order to be truly effective on a tailored, case-by-case basis

Influencer marketing agency fees and pricing 

Influencer marketing agency pricing, as you may have deduced from the above, also varies from project to project. Influencer marketing agency fees should usually be built out of a combination of the fees of the influencer talent involved in the campaign, alongside any production service costs (if applicable), with an agency fee on top. 

An influencer marketing agency should have a standard rates card covering all of their services in order to maintain consistency and transparency. And it should go without saying that, like any creative agency, an influencer marketing agency should tailor its choice of influencers and campaign ideas to gain the optimal results for each individual client’s budget and needs. As with every part of how a good influencer marketing agency should work, it’s about customising the approach to serve each unique situation, not pulling out off-the-peg solutions with pre-set package costs. 

Influencer marketing agencies vs. influencer marketing platforms 

Although rather ubiquitous in the modern marketing landscape, the fact is that influencer marketing platforms - that is, semi-automated database services that use search filters to ‘match’ brands with influencers - cannot alone match the same level of care, insight, or bespoke service provided by a good influencer marketing agency. The versatility, finesse, and personal care of a good influencer marketing agency should serve client's’, creators’, and audiences’ needs better.

Above: Influencer marketing platforms don’t throw virtual Christmas parties like this either.

The expert, human guiding hand is vital. An influencer marketing platform might be able to superficially source ‘suitable’ influencers based on keywords, broad areas of interest, and recorded audience demographics, but it takes an engaged, attentive influencer marketing agency to really build the relationships, affinities, trusted working dynamics, and long-term market understanding to really deliver campaigns of substance time and time again.

Not to mention a good influencer marketing agency will provide an ever-updating creative awareness of what’s successful on YouTube, the secrets of success on TikTok, and the current state of how Twitch works, not to mention the nuance of Instagram influencer marketing. And of course, the ability to properly consult with a client in order to truly understand the minutiae and identity of their brand or product. 

Influencer marketing agency business models can vary slightly, especially when it comes to talent 

While the basic economics and pricing models of influencer marketing agencies should work pretty similarly across the board, it’s worth looking out for differences in how agencies operate in regard to the influencers they work with. Some influencer marketing agencies might focus around a particular platform or subject matter, which will obviously need considering as you plan out what’s right for your individual campaign. But a possibly more notable factor to keep an eye on is exclusivity and access when it comes to talent. 

Some influencer marketing agencies might work with a set pool of affiliated content creators, effectively working with a persistent ‘stable’ of talent. That can bring about some benefits in terms of the regularity of working relationships, but it can also come with significant downsides when it comes to the design of truly appropriate and effective campaigns. A limited pool of influencer partners can potentially lead to a degree of shoehorning and forced ‘best fit’, rather than the creation of a campaign that truly seeks out the absolute best new and established voices to communicate an authentically hand-crafted and tailored campaign. And at the bottom line, authenticity is what it’s all about.

Influencer marketing agency case studies  

Influencer marketing case studies should always cover three main factors. Firstly, they should clearly explain the client’s needs and any unique challenges involved in the project. Then they should detail not just which influencers were chosen, but exactly why, paying close attention to the channels’ culture, audience, native content, and voice of the content creators brought onboard for the collaboration. And then, of course, they should show good results. But these should not simply relate to scale, views, or superficial vanity metrics. They should also confirm and explain effects of real engagement and effective, resonant messaging. 

Above: Just one of the influencer marketing case studies available on the Fourth Floor website.

A good influencer marketing agency should not be content to simply put their clients’ products in front of large audiences. Done without the right care and understanding, that amounts to little more than placement advertising. Good influencer marketing is about telling stories, making real connections, and forging genuine, authentic engagement with motivated communities. Looking for the above factors in an influencer marketing agency’s case studies will tell you whether the agency in question is achieving that or not. Fourth Floor’s recent influencer marketing case studies can always be found on our website, and are regularly updated.