Find the Best Influencer Agencies in the UK
Choosing the right influencer marketing agency is not always easy. It’s a real jungle out there! Everyone claims to be an influencer … just as everyone claims to be able to sing, cook or play football. But whilst contacting an influencer is within everyone’s reach, managing a campaign or better yet, defining an influencer strategy is not so simple.
The different types of influencer agencies
Specialised agencies
These are agencies that ONLY do influencer marketing and know the industry perfectly. Naturally, they are the ones you should turn to for a successful campaign. Here are some names: Find your influencer, Bee Influence, Disrupt Marketing, Influence4You…
These agencies generally offer tailor-made services designed for you by a Strategic Planner (basically someone who will identify the most suitable influence strategy to meet your communication goals) and which will be implemented by a project manager. The project manager will then choose with you the most relevant influencers and will negotiate the terms of the contract with them. This person will manage the whole operation up to the reporting phase.
Some agencies such as Influence4You have developed their own tool for influencer marketing and thus ensure a more professional follow-up (casting management, reporting, etc.). We recommend you choose an agency with the appropriate tools. For example, Influence4You aggregates data from HypeAuditor to identify fake influencers and measure the quality of an influencer’s followers.
Large Advertising Agencies
Some have launched influence divisions (Socialyse at Havas, Fuse at Omnicom, Unsigned ID at Unsigned Group, etc.), which centralise most of the internal briefs depending on the size of their teams. The idea is to have a global communication strategy. In any case, these agencies are serious and sometimes subcontract to specialised agencies for more in-depth operations.
Smaller structures: digital communication agencies
‘Small’ digital communication agencies can offer influencer marketing services, but they often have neither the tools nor the experience and rarely know which influencers are trending, as it constantly changes. If they know how to manage your global communication, but don’t have the right tools or the experience, they may not have the time to manage your influencer campaigns. Make sure they use platforms that allow them to identify fake influencers for the success of your campaigns.
Influencer agents
Some influencers have an agent or have talent management companies that represent their interests or are part of a network. Sometimes agencies like Colossal Influence, The Ministry of Talent, Sixteenth, Sharp talent, networks such as Ritual Network and TikTok agencies like Fanbytes can offer to set up an operation with their talents for you. They know them inside out and can manage them. The downside is that they often uniquely manage their talents. Sometimes it’s better to mix it up and work with, let’s say, 2 talents from The Ministry of Talent, 2 from Sharp talent and 1 from Fanbytes.
PR agencies
Many PR agencies have (belatedly) entered influencer marketing. They know how to manage relations with journalists and bloggers and can transfer their skills to deal with influencers (invite them to your events, etc.). Here we could include Clarity PR, Whiteoaks PR, Rooster PR, Cow PR, Engine Creative… They are used to this type of relationship.
Influence platforms
You may ask yourself if it’s not better to manage your own campaigns using platforms. If you have a little bit of experience and time, you can actually use tools like Influence4You, Grin, CreatorIQ, #paid. These platforms are great drivers for your campaigns, especially for micro-influencer marketing.
What are the criteria for choosing a specialised influencer agency?
As you would expect, understanding your needs, knowing the prices as well as the important actors in your sector will help you choose the right fit. Above all, ask yourself if the team is REALLY made of experts in influencer marketing (do they really know the influencers) and do they REALLY allow you to adopt a strategy that will meet your communication goals (which can be summarised as ‘building awareness’, ‘building goodwill’, ‘driving purchases’). Make sure the agency highlights client cases, technologies and studies.
In short, find out more by visiting the agency’s website.
More specifically, what brief should you give to agencies?
To write a good brief, start by describing the context around your request/tender. Tell the agencies about your needs, deadlines, format, presentation, budget, people in charge of decision-making, evaluation criteria.
Then give them information about your company, brand and the product to promote. How do you differentiate yourself from your competitors, what are the key points you focus on?
Finally – and this is the most important – describe your expectations for the campaign: targets (socio-demographic, geography…), communication channels, how familiar you are with influence marketing, how the campaign needs to fit in the global communication plan you are implementing, what your deadlines are and what objectives you want to achieve.
Do not hesitate to give as many guidelines as possible. The more info you provide, the better agencies will be able to meet your needs. And it forces you to ask yourself the right questions.
Now it’s up to you to choose the best influencer agency for your next campaigns. And to go further, don’t hesitate to download our books on influence marketing or buy them on Amazon.
