IN-HOUSE, AGENCY OR BOTH: WHICH IS BEST FOR INFLUENCER MARKETING?

It’s no secret that influencer marketing is at the forefront of many businesses’ marketing strategies in 2022, with Hubspot listing the channel as the #1 marketing trend for this year. However, brands face a seemingly difficult question: should influencer marketing be done in-house or through an agency?

In the current climate, most B2C brands outsource their influencer marketing. Some of the reasons behind this are not having enough influencer marketing staff in-house, as well as being unsure as to how the channel can be best utilised. With this in mind, it’s important to weigh the pros and cons of in-house vs agency for influencer marketing to determine which options are best for which brands.

In-house influencer marketing: Possible but not ideal

One aspect that will always be advantageous for brands is their knowledge of their customers. This allows in-house influencer marketing teams to pick out influencers that really resonate with what their customers want. Having this know-how is essential to establishing authentic relationships with influencers that are more likely to convert their audiences.

Although it’s not always easy, brands can directly build relationships with influencers for the long term. This gives the influencer more time to understand and optimise their content together with the brand. Doing so can improve the brand’s top-of-mind status among the influencer’s audience as they will become accustomed to seeing the brand featured in the influencer’s content.

To successfully do influencer marketing in-house, however, brands need to have the right processes and resources in place to measure and scale the channel. This involves having a functioning and scalable influencer database or CRM, as well as collecting relevant data and keeping systems up to date.

Doing this effectively in-house is challenging, especially if there’s only a small team of in-house influencer marketers. That’s not to say it’s impossible, but there are a lot of potential risks associated with undergoing and maintaining this amount of content and relationship-building in-house.