Social media has become the go-to medium for brands to find and connect with their audiences. But successfully reaching an audience on a social media channel isn’t quite so cut and dry. Organic reach for the average brand can top out about 5 percent as platforms work to push brands toward paid efforts. Even with a paid campaign, it can be hard to create messaging that resonates with users, content that gets them to engage.
One way to circumvent the challenge of limited reach and no engagement is to hire influencer marketing companies in NYC. In this short guide, we’ll walk you through all the ins and outs of partnering with an influencer marketing agency and why such a partnership may be a good investment for your brand. And if you need help figuring out exactly what to ask a potential agency partner, we’ve actually written a guide on that, too.
Why work with an influencer marketing company?
The first question that might come to mind is — Is it worth hiring an influencer marketing agency, or can your business manage marketing in-house? When running a business, it will definitely be beneficial to outsource the heavy lifting to influencer marketing experts. After all, it takes a lot of time and effort to ensure your marketing campaign runs successfully and brings desired results for the business.
In 2022, about two-thirds of the brands surveyed say they will run influencer campaigns this year, and 90 percent of enterprise marketers are planning to partner with micro-influencers. There’s an undeniable demand for Instagram influencer marketing companies. So, let’s talk about why marketers typically choose to partner with agencies like ours.
You get their experience and expertise
Working with an agency gives your in-house team access to marketers who are specifically skilled and experienced handling influencer marketing campaigns. In our case, we’ve been in the influencer marketing space since 2012, tracking campaigns, looking at audience data, and finding better and better ways to get results for our clients.
It saves your team so much time
Planning, managing, and delivering on influencer campaigns takes time. The average influencer activation can easily take 12 weeks to get the campaign live. Once the campaign is live, then the tracking, tweaks, and optimization need to take place based on what your team sees actually happening in the day-to-day rollout of campaign content. Yeah… day-to-day. It can be quite a time-consuming endeavor.
For the reporting, metrics, and ROI
Perhaps the most important aspect of any marketing push, you want to know that your campaign is working. A good influencer marketing agency will have tools available to track the performance of your campaign in real-time. That way, if something isn’t working or content can be improved, you don’t have to wait until the campaign ends to get those recommendations. A good influencer marketing agency will know how to make any necessary shifts while your campaign’s still running.
To build a strong community of influencers
According to Hootsuite’s 2022 Social Media Trends Report, community is the key to reaching your most engaged customers. Influencers are great at building communities, not just building their follower counts.
Our account managers have pretty much perfected the art of building strong relationships with talented, creative, effective influencers. And that’s not always an easy thing to do, but it’s critically important.
The agency knows how to make your campaign deliver
Right? That’s what influencer agencies do – they understand how to build influencer campaigns to help brands get very specific results. They have the tools, the experience, the team, the tech, the time, and framework in place to ensure clients get quality work from the influencers, and that influencers are satisfied with the terms of their contract.
How to work with an influencer marketing company in NYC?
There are over a thousand influencer marketing companies on the market today. So, if you want to choose the right agency to align with your team, you’ll need a way to identify the best potential agency partners. Not a problem, we have you covered. Here are a few signposts to navigate those initial talks with an influencer marketing company when you start shopping for an agency partner.
Make sure they’re transparent about price
They’ll get you with the value-adds! A great thing to consider when hiring an influencer marketing company in NYC is pricing transparency. Does the agency openly and clearly share the pricing structure? You don’t need all the details, all the percentages. But is it clear where the money is going? Of course, you want to be able to pay the influencers, and pay the agency for their hard work and expertise. But you also want to make sure a potential agency partner can give an account for even if it’s an approximation of how spend is allocated.
Experience in the industry
We mentioned this one before, but it’s important enough to mention a second time. Does the agency you’re partnering with have experience building campaigns to get your desired results? Has that team working with brands in your industry before? The influencer marketing company you choose to partner with in NYC should definitely have experience either working in your industry, or building the right kinds of campaigns, or just crushing it altogether as an agency.
Positive Testimonials
Can the agency tell you who they’ve worked with in past campaigns? The right influencer marketing company should be able to help you boost your awareness, build a catalog of digital assets, AND get conversions. The proof of that is that the agency has gotten positive testimonials and influencer marketing case studies from companies that have worked with them in the past. Were previous clients satisfied? Can you speak with any of them? Always consider client satisfaction when you’re choosing an agency.
Conclusion
Finding and working with a reliable influencer marketing company in NYC can give you great results. Besides saving time, the influencer agencies offer convenience and opportunity for greater ROI for your campaigns. The process can be demanding, but the results will be worth it. By doing your research and understanding the requirements of your business, you can identify the company that will deliver the results needed on your specified timeline.