Influencing the Influencer — A Series: The Agency’s Perspective
As we dive into Part 3 of this series, you’ve woven your way with the endpoints of influencer marketing: the brand and the creator. It’s the engagement between the two that makes the magic happen, and that is the agency. They protect both sides of the conversation, make strategic decisions for campaigns, and deliver effectively.
Let’s take a look at a few pillars the agency keeps together.
The Agency Connecting The Two Together
Build Relationships
Advertisers and creators alike are looking to bring in results to the opportunity they’re willing to take. As the agency, you’re there to fulfill a campaign as easy and efficiently as possible. That means calling, texting, emailing, and reaching out to the creators, their managers, their talent agencies, etc. to get from Point A (the campaign) to Point B (the launch). What happens between Point A and Point B is unique in every campaign scenario. Some of the intersections you’ll pass by to get to your destination after departing (or, reaching out) include Negotiation Ave., Legal Blvd., and Payout Drive. No matter how long that may take, you’ll get to know more about that said content creator, manager, talent agency, etc. to potentially opens more doors for more campaigns.
Having a content creator, a manager, and/or a talent agency a phone call away at least simplifies the “cold-call” or outreach step where you may never get a hold of a content creator. These relationships that spur can come in pretty clutch at times. Sometimes, a slot opens in a content creator’s schedule where he/she is available to promote another product in that month, the creator is willing to add a discount on his/her rate, and/or can deliver a product sooner than anticipated.
At the end of the day, the agency wants to see everyone at a win-win-win scenario: creators get paid for what they enjoy doing, the advertiser gets to promote a product with the creator, and the agency gets to understand if the campaign met or exceeded expectations for the advertiser to potentially build a larger relationship with them (and even more that realize the power of influencer marketing).
Similar to the previous article’s example with The Game Theorists, you can get a channel like Thoughty2 who is willing to work with all sorts of brands. Brands notice his influential potential (of course) and will resort to his creativity and the agency’s expertise to deliver, which leads us to our next key point.
Deliver Quality
The best audience reception to a promo is when the creator plays to his or her strengths. They have the creative freedom (when following guidelines by the advertiser) to showcase a product he or she believes the audience will enjoy. The agency strives to do its due diligence and find what exactly that target audience is and reaches out to the creators who fit best.
When watching content on the daily, you get a better feeling for who the target audience is, and you make sure that the creators who are approved to go live do their best in promoting to their audience. If the campaign is performance-based, from the moment the video goes live, advertisers and agencies track the performance of the creator’s video, and if performance metrics are met, this could mean the quality delivered and can lead to another “rehire” for a future video in the same campaign or in a future campaign from the advertising agency. And with that, the relationship grows!
Going back to The Game Theorists and Thoughty2, they have tremendous audience reach. Sometimes, you don’t need a grand audience to deliver. A League of Legends creator like Vars or ASMR creator Scottish Murmurs ASMR delivered with a brand’s first promotion that led to another promotion. By continuing to create unique content with the agency noticing where the promotion may be best fit with a certain type of content done by the creator, then you’re finding golden nuggets.
Know Your Worth
Without a doubt, this applies to everyone involved in the process of influencer marketing. As the advertising agency, you’re bringing an opportunity for the creator to deliver to the brand you’re representing. This goes without saying that everyone is putting in time and effort to make ends meet. If this means creators may need more time or budget to deliver a video, advertising agencies are doing what’s most effective in terms of making the connections and spending money to make money while also calculating what will work best for the brand.
It’s no simple feat to make a video that everyone will enjoy. Agencies (both talent and advertising) may face back and forth in between Point A and B, and that’s part of the risk. Over time, you gain the knowledge needed to push things forward to where it becomes second-nature. In some cases, it takes two to tango; but, other times, it takes the DJ, the production team, the lighting crew, and many more people to build an unforgettable memory.
As a channel like videogamedunkey continues to grow, people behind the scenes will be there to back you up (whether that is in production, effects, editing, etc.), which in turn can increase the value of the creator’s business while alleviating some of the things the creator has had to manage all by himself/herself.
With that, the audience is getting larger and more people are watching the videos, and their value is greater than it was before. Some creators may increase their price based on this, and that is what makes the creator marketplace for sponsorships dynamic and ever-changing. It puts the agencies on their toes to be ready to make sure ends meet where the agency that ensures the connection between the brand and the creator also has its time and value in mind.
The agency has powers capable of making both the brand and the creator happy. Sometimes, you’re getting a creators’ first ever sponsorship and making their day, week, month, or even year worthy. Other times, you’re getting a creator booked several months in advance realizing that the creator has been noticed by a number of other brands that work with him/her too.
You’re pushing the boundaries with the brand to tackle influencer marketing while also continuing a relationship with the brand where it may want to spend more. In this creative food chain, everyone is hungry to deliver, and the agency has the right vision for success for all.
By combining these three perspectives, you’ll find yourself in the exciting world of content creation, but there’s more to the story than meets the eye. Tune in to the final part of the series to see where we go from here.
