Influencer Marketing: Should You Contact Influencers Yourself or Outsource It to Agencies?

While social media ads are extremely powerful, many companies invest a lot of money in influencer marketing. That’s because, with influencers, they get a warm audience ready to buy anything their favorite influencer recommends.

However, finding great influencers takes time! So you might find working with an influencer marketing agency attractive. However, is it a good idea or should you do it yourself? Continue reading to find out.

Pros & Cons of In-House Influencer Marketing

In-house influencer marketing is marketing where you do everything yourself. While that takes way more time than with agencies, there are many benefits to doing that:

Able to find better influencers: When picking influencers, you’ll always be better at picking than an agency. That’s because you know your brand better than anyone else.

Direct Communication: That is extremely important if you’re looking to create long-term partnerships. You won’t have to ask your agency to communicate with your influencers for them. Instead, you’ll chat with them on a dedicated channel.

More Budget-friendly: Since you’re not paying for an agency to find your influencer, you’re guaranteed to get a better deal.

However, you shouldn’t be blind to its cons:

Takes more time to find them: Since you’re doing all of it yourself, it takes way longer for you to find the perfect influencer! That will take away time from more critical tasks.

Harder time with negotiation: If you want to get the best deal from your influencer, you must negotiate the price. However, that can be extremely tough if you don’t have anyone helping you with it.

Risk of hiring fake influencers and getting scammed: Another con of in-house influencer marketing is that you’ll risk getting scammed. Some social media accounts boost their engagement with fake likes and comments. So you’ll have to be more careful.

Pros & Cons Of Influencer Marketing Agencies

Now that you’ve clearly understood in-house influencer marketing, it’s time to see the benefits and flaws of using agencies to do the work for you! Let’s start with the strengths:

Easier & quicker to find the perfect influencer: Instead of doing all the work yourself, you can let professionals handle it. That way, you can focus on working on other aspects of your business.

Agencies stay updated with the latest trends in social media: Since these agencies focus on influencer marketing, they need to keep updated with the latest trends to remain competitive. That way, they can give you better advice on what content to provide your influencer.

Legal Teams will take care of negotiations and contract writing: Besides having an easier time finding an influencer, the best influencer agencies also have legal teams that take care of negotiations and contract writing. With them, you’re guaranteed to get the best price.

However, just like with in-house influencer marketing, agencies also have a couple of cons:

Challenging for new companies to hire: When hiring agencies to do the work for you, it might be nearly impossible for new companies to work with the top agencies. That’s because of high fees and high minimum budgets.

Limited Control Over the Campaigns: Another thing you should know is that you’re trading convenience over control. That means when it comes to campaigns, you won’t have as much control over them, which could lead to underperforming campaigns.

Not a great long-term solution: Working with agencies is a blast in the short term. However, since you’re not building any relationships with the influencers, you might not be able to get the best deals from them.

Which One Should You Pick?

Now that you know the strengths and flaws of both influencer marketing methods, you might be wondering which one is smarter to do.

As much as it sucks to say, it depends on you and your company. For some, it might be better to use agencies as they are only looking to use it for the short term. However, if you’re looking to use influencer marketing as a long-term solution, you might want to do it yourself. You can use influencer marketing tools like COZMOX, Refersion, Everflow, LeadDyno, etc.

There are many ways to leverage influencer marketing, and there are no right or wrong answers here! It all depends on your objectives and which solutions work best for you.

(Contributed by Andreas Ojala & Hermes Fang)