The Rise of Influencer Marketing Platforms: Navigating the Landscape
Influencer marketing has become an important aspect of the marketing industry over the last several years and it continues to grow. So it comes as no surprise that many brands want to work with influencers.
It can be time consuming and even difficult to manage all aspects of influencer marketing, from choosing the right influencers to work with, to building a relationship with them, managing and tracking any campaigns, and more. While you can certainly do this yourself, there are resources to help you run successful marketing campaigns, such as working with an influencer marketing platform or an agency.
Influencer Marketing Platforms
Let’s talk a little more about Influencer Marketing Platforms and what they offer. Platforms like Later and Sprout Social’s Tagger are platforms that help businesses & brands at all stages of influencer marketing, from discovering influencers/creators, to connecting them with you, and even measuring results. These two platforms in particular, are reputable in the social media industry as a whole (they also offer services such as social media management) and they have advanced search and filter capabilities to help you find the perfect fit when it comes to choosing the right influencers to work with. Having a platform that streamlines all of your influencer marketing into one making it easier for you is certainly a helpful tool.
And although this is a great option for some, it won’t be the best fit for everyone.
Marketing Agencies
Working with an agency can be a great benefit for those with limited experience and knowledge. When you’re working with a professional at an agency, you get to tap into a wealth of experience and knowledge. In addition to that, when you’re working with an agency, there’s a good chance they’ve likely worked with some of the influencers that you would like to work with. Being able to work with someone who has built connections and relationships with influencers and creators that reach your target audience can be beneficial.
As an agency, we also understand that businesses and influencers are not all alike, so a cookie cutter approach is likely not going to work. A professional can help businesses shape influencer campaigns and find influencers who really fit with the personality and goals of the business.
What’s the best option?
Although influencer marketing platforms streamline a lot of the process for you to make things easier, you’ll still have to be a bit hands-on in your approach as you’ll have to search through influencers, find the right person, and more. So if you don’t have the time to do this and don’t feel confident in doing so, this may not be the best option for your business. However, when you work with an agency, you have the option of them managing all aspects, from finding and vetting influencers, to building a connection with them, to sending out products, tracking and measuring, reporting, and more.
If you decide you want to take a different approach and try doing influencer marketing on your own, here are several guides to help you get started.
3 things you need to know about small business influencer marketing
Influencer Marketing: The magic happens when you let content creators create
If you want to do it yourself but are interested in a crash course in Influencer Marketing first, check out our Influencer Relations DIY Training package for small businesses. This package will include guidelines for influencer selection, an actionable influencer campaign strategy, and more, so that you can feel empowered and confident to run an influencer campaign on your own.