Speaker A
Hi guys, it's Sue, and welcome back to the channel. After watching this video, you will not only know how to start an influencer marketing agency in 2024, but you'll also have 10 actionable steps on how to do so.
Learn how to start an influencer marketing agency in 2024 with 10 actionable steps, including naming, choosing services, and client onboarding.
Ask about this video. Answers come from its transcript only — with the timestamp, so you can check them.
Generated from the transcript and can be wrong — check the timestamp.
Key Takeaways
- Choosing a unique and legally available agency name is important but don't overthink it initially.
- Decide on a clear service offering and niche to increase agency success and client targeting.
- Building a brand separate from your personal identity helps with long-term growth and potential sale.
- Professional communication setup and LinkedIn outreach are essential for client acquisition.
- Understanding different influencer marketing business models helps tailor your agency approach.
What the video covers
- Step 1 covers naming your influencer marketing agency, emphasizing considerations like uniqueness, trademark, domain availability, and long-term branding.
- The importance of separating your personal name from the agency name for future sale and longevity is discussed.
- Different types of influencer marketing agency business models are explained: talent management, influencer partnerships, and creative solutions.
- Step 2 focuses on choosing the right service to offer based on your knowledge, learning goals, and available team members.
- The concept of niche and why agencies should focus on one service in one market to simplify client acquisition and service delivery.
- Practical advice on setting up professional email communication and using LinkedIn to connect with potential clients.
- How to pitch influencers exclusively to brands and align campaigns with brand KPIs such as visibility and customer acquisition.
- The client onboarding process, including payment collection and service delivery, is introduced as a critical step.
- The video promises a future in-depth guide on service delivery and campaign management.
- Tracking and measuring campaign results through links and influencer content is briefly mentioned.
Chapters
- 00:00Introduction and Naming Your Agency
- 01:15Longevity and Branding Considerations
- 02:25Personal Story and Internet Safety
- 03:42Types of Influencer Marketing Agencies
- 05:03Choosing Your Service Offering
- 07:20Importance of Niche Selection
- 08:46Professional Communication Setup
- 10:02Client Outreach Using LinkedIn
- 12:30Selling Influencers to Brands
- 14:40Client Onboarding and Service Delivery Overview
Full Transcript — Download SRT & Markdown
Speaker A
exciting step I think of beginning a business or beginning an agency naming your agency and ultimately a lot of people spend a lot of time on this step but it really doesn't matter too much you can name your agency whatever you
Speaker A
Step one, the first most exciting step, I think, of beginning a business or beginning an agency: naming your agency. Ultimately, a lot of people spend a lot of time on this step, but it really doesn't matter too much. You can name your agency whatever you want. It doesn't matter too much, but there are some considerations.
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confuse the buyer and also it's probably not going to do so well for you because we're very established right you want to be calling something that isn't already existing in the market or that's far away from something already existing in
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Are other agencies called the same thing? You don't want to be starting an influencer marketing agency that's called Serson because I'm already called Serson. It's just going to confuse the buyer, and also it's probably not going to do so well for you because we're very established, right? You want to be calling something that isn't already existing in the market or that's far away from something already existing in the market.
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trademark just legally can't use that name so you need to obviously have some of these considerations in your mind a lot of people also tend to name their agency similar to their names to make it quite personal and build that personal
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Also, are you going to be able to get the .com domain name? Because that is super important to get a good domain name for your agency. And finally, is the name trademarked? Because if the name is trademarked, you legally can't use that name. So you need to obviously have some of these considerations in your mind.
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company it would then cease to exist or not necessarily cease to exist but not do as well without your involvement so you also do need to think about the longevity are you wanting to start an agency to sell if you wanted to start an
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A lot of people also tend to name their agency similar to their names to make it quite personal and build that personal brand around it, which is great. But there are long-term implications. If your agency is too associated to your name and to your brand, then it makes it harder for a buyer to value it well because if they were then to buy your company, it would then cease to exist or not necessarily cease to exist but not do as well without your involvement.
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did just name it after my first name like I mentioned to you not to do a second ago not the first name you know obviously it's I'm Sue mean but when I was 13 I used to go under the Alias Saul
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So you also do need to think about the longevity. Are you wanting to start an agency to sell? If you wanted to start an agency to sell in the future, you might not want to name it too close to your own name because then it doesn't separate it as easily for a buyer.
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stuff up and my parents were quite worried about internet security at the time because I was ultimately like a 13-year-old kid playing games and The Gaming Community if you know is pretty toxic it can be that sometimes they were
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I named my agency Serson. The way I actually named my agency is quite funny because I did just name it after my first name, like I mentioned to you not to do a second ago, not the first name, you know, obviously it's Sue mean. But when I was 13, I used to go under the alias Saul Anderson when I was a kid because I have a very uncommon name.
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that's very separate to Su but that's just a kind of explanation of like how I did it related to my name but I definitely would say if you are trying to go longterm and not just make it a
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And obviously, I'm also Scottish, so if you were to type in Sue in Scotland on the internet, my name, my school would post a bunch of blogs and stuff up. And my parents were quite worried about internet security at the time because I was ultimately like a 13-year-old kid playing games. And the gaming community, if you know, is pretty toxic. It can be that sometimes. They were worried about my internet security and internet safety.
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be doing that for a period of time you don't really need to worry about your brand name and put too much effort into it come up with something make sure you it match the criteria I mentioned before and just get started onto step two step
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So I named my name Saul Anderson, and I just got known in the space as that. So then I just ultimately merged Saul Anderson into Serson and created the brand name. But obviously, that's very separate to Sue, but that's just a kind of explanation of how I did it related to my name.
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are various types of influencer marketing agencies and services you actually can offer and within this business model there are sort of three main types and that is talent management which is essentially managing a roster of talent exclusively to you the
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But I definitely would say if you are trying to go long term and not just make it a cash cow business, then name it something separate. Ultimately, as much as I'm talking about names and everything here, it doesn't really matter. When I was just starting Serson, I was running as a contractor, and you probably will be just doing that for a period of time.
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with Brands who are already running influencer Marketing in house they're already doing the services and the strategy managing of the creative inhouse and all they need from agencies is to just sort of do media buying in a sense and when I say media buying I mean
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You don't really need to worry about your brand name and put too much effort into it. Come up with something, make sure it matches the criteria I mentioned before, and just get started.
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big dog I think of the influence of marketing agency Services is the Creative Solutions and manage service where you are essentially signing Brands and doing the full service from strategy creative all the way through to conception of the campaign and
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Onto step two. Step two is now ultimately choosing your service. And you might be thinking, so why is this even a step? Why don't you even need to choose a service? Surely I'm just going to be offering influencer marketing services.
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before you decide from here you want to ask yourself three things what do you already know what can you or what would you like to learn and do you have someone in mind who could do the service delivery aspect of that service so that
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Well, yes, but there are various types of influencer marketing agencies and services you actually can offer. And within this business model, there are sort of three main types. And that is talent management, which is essentially managing a roster of talent exclusively to you. The influencers are your clients. They're the ones that you send to your company, and then you are working for them and helping them commercialize and grow.
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you have to be basically not in a partnership solely for very long because it's not going to be a very sustainable business model you have to use it quickly as to entry point to focus to get into talent management or Creative
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And there's a second type of business model, which is influencer partnerships, where essentially you are going to be working with brands who are already running influencer marketing in-house. They're already doing the services and the strategy, managing the creative in-house, and all they need from agencies is to just sort of do media buying in a sense.
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your Niche and before we jump into this I just want to quickly explain to you what a niche actually is and very simply a niche is simply just the industry that you operate in and the worst mistake that you can make as an agency owner is
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And when I say media buying, I mean influencer media buying. So you're simply going to go partner with influencers and pay them money to deliver content for that brand, and that's how you're going to kind of run your agency and get paid.
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services to gaming and orts Brands Tech Brands and entertainment Brands but to me these have like a close enough Affinity to each other where it makes sense we work with tech Brands mostly around their gaming products and also
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And the final one, which is the sort of big dog, I think, of the influencer marketing agency services, is the creative solutions and managed service, where you are essentially signing brands and doing the full service from strategy, creative, all the way through to conception of the campaign and completion and reporting.
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affinity and also when I first did just start we also just solely offered gaming and orts services so we were very much niched down at that point when choosing a niche you want to ask yourself two questions firstly what are your
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And you basically get budgets from brands on a project basis or retainer basis and help them manage their whole influencer marketing spend. So you need to understand which service level you want to choose.
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good business model it definitely helps and and as an example for me I started my business within the gaming space because I was a gaming YouTuber before I started doing gaming content playing FIFA Minecraft fantas fredes whatever it
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Then when picking the service before you decide from here, you want to ask yourself three things: What do you already know? What can you or what would you like to learn? And do you have someone in mind who could do the service delivery aspect of that service so that you can simply focus on sales and growing the business?
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their jargon and their way of work and the second thing you want to also have to consider when you're choosing your Niche is where is your experience if you've never done marketing or worked with influencers before it's very useful
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Now, for my advice, I would always recommend people start with influencer partnerships. It's ultimately the easiest to get into. However, you must quickly use that as the entry point, and you have to be basically not in a partnership solely for very long because it's not going to be a very sustainable business model.
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this section is a little bit like your agency name it's really fun to make but not the be all and end all it's not important to have the most responsive SE optimized backlink website with tons of pages as soon as you start out it just
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You have to use it quickly as an entry point to focus to get into talent management or creative solutions. As I say, it's not a long-term service that runs by itself, and it's also not predictable revenue every single month. I'll talk a little bit about that later in this video.
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all the money it won't and at first it just really doesn't matter most of your business will not come organically through your website and you're going to have to basically do a lot of Outreach and cold Outreach to begin with so I
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Now we move to step three, which is choosing your niche. And before we jump into this, I just want to quickly explain to you what a niche actually is. And very simply, a niche is simply just the industry that you operate in.
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of the agency you obviously also need to buy a domain though so make sure you can purchase a professional domain which has your agency name .c or your sort of country dot for example RS is sol.com and you can buy these off of things like
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And the worst mistake that you can make as an agency owner is offering your services to everyone. The best agencies start by offering one service in one market, and it makes finding clients and delivering services far easier.
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to add credibility that you are a real agency and a real person when reaching out to Brands and influencers if they click the link to your website or they search your website up and see nothing it doesn't really look legit to them and
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I actually break this rule a little bit with my agency as we offer services to gaming and esports brands, tech brands, and entertainment brands. But to me, these have like a close enough affinity to each other where it makes sense. We work with tech brands mostly around their gaming products, and also gaming is a form of entertainment, right?
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worry about creating something super comprehensive when I started I simply just built a terrible one pager in WordPress and it lasted me years and did well and if I can find it cuz I'm not sure if I'll still be able to find it it
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We work with brands like Netflix who tap over into gaming, and we also work with sort of brands like Asus and Acer, and we promote a lot of their gaming laptops, gaming peripherals. So it's a very close affinity.
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it is a must to get yourself good email address and a good domain name as I mentioned influencers and Brands will simply just not respond to any personal email addresses like @gmail Outlook there are tons of scams around the space
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And also, when I first did just start, we also just solely offered gaming and esports services, so we were very much niched down at that point.
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emails then make sure you set your email up with your first name or first and second name at your domain name you should then also make sure to set up a professional looking email signature like you can see mine on the screen
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When choosing a niche, you want to ask yourself two questions. Firstly, what are your interests? You don't have to love or be interested in the niche that you're selling in, right? Because I know, for example, guys that have companies where they sell oil probably don't love oil. They're just doing it because it's a good business model.
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Google apps like Drive docs sheets Etc which to begin with you can run majority of your Agency on for about £10 per month which makes it really affordable to get into the space now that you've done all the setup part we get into the
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It definitely helps. And as an example for me, I started my business within the gaming space because I was a gaming YouTuber before. I started doing gaming content, playing FIFA, Minecraft, Fortnite, whatever it was. So I understand how brands speak to gaming consumers. I had a previous interest in it, so I loved what I was doing even when I w-
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in the form of name email address and phone numbers the best way to do this within the influencer marketing space is by using social media and specifically influencers content let's say you're an agency starting in the fitness Niche go
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to fitness influencers profiles and see who is already sponsoring them you can see this easily from content attaining hash ad and also potentially the paid partnership logo on various platforms that now offer this functionality take a list of these companies and you want to
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head to LinkedIn to find out who the decision maker is going to be at these Brands if it's a massive company for example my protein it's never going to be the owner right they have people working for them it's generally going to
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be someone dealing with influencer marketing or someone on the marketing team so maybe like an influencer marketing manager head to LinkedIn and type in the name of the brand and then also influence a marketing manager and as you can see here in the screen we
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found Georgina Cooper and now you can go and use Google to find her email and then reach out to her if you're struggling to find emails for your prospects and your leads I recommend using tools like apollo.io or snov.io
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both of these tools are free and they allow you to scrape emails from LinkedIn profiles or or from other sort of Google Search apollo. iio is also really handy because it allows you to find targeted Brands and leads through their own
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Search tool so you may not even have to go to the influencer's content you could simply just create like an ideal customer profile you know say it's like Fitness brands that have 5 million in Revenue every year get that onto
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apollo.io and then you can actually search for Brands similar to this and leads within those brands on Apollo directly great now you found your leads want to move into to step seven which is Outreach it's time to put these leads
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into use the main three ways you can Outreach the lead is via direct message phone call or email and for me my favorite ways to reach out to Le with influen marketing is via email and Linkedin finding someone's email isn't
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hard and it also goes directly to the top of their inbox and for their job they generally will be using emails right if they're working in marketing and with an influence of marketing at a brand they will be using their emails
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LinkedIn is also great as this is the hub for professionals and also marketing professionals are very active there you can also get directly into their messages after connecting with them so they will see that at the top of their
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message inbox one thing to note when sending your initial Outreach you're not trying to sell them your service that's super important you don't try and sell them your service right off the bat you're trying to sell them on coming
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onto a call with you a meeting or being able to send over more information on a follow-up message you don't want to come off invasive and shove your services down their throats in the first time speaking to them you want to get them
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responsive first and then do that in the meeting or follow-up when you get these leads to book a meeting try and collect as much information on them as such as their phone number which you can collect basically if they book into to a
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calendar link so for example with my calendar link we have a section that says please insert your phone number and that means that that way if they stop communicating with you via email or LinkedIn you have a direct line to
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continue up on the Outreach okay moving on to step eight which is selling your service now basically you need to sell them on your service and not only this we need to sell them on why they need your service and why you're the one to
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provide it now this is easier dep pending on which of the services you choose to offer if it's trying to sell the brand or an influencer that you manage all you simply have to do is them why the influencer will be a good fit
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for that brand you have to be the one to provide it as the influencer is exclusive to you right so you have to sell them and why you're the one to provide it it's just why this influencer is good for that brand if you're trying
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to sell them influencer Partnerships you have to sell them and why the influencers you provide will be a good fit and why then they should allocate that budget percentage to you and the influencers that you partner with if
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you're trying to sell them on a managed service it's much more tough and you need to follow the following structure but if you're new to sales I would also recommend before following the structure practicing it with a partner a friend or
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someone else so that when you jump on a call with the brand you you don't get nervous right so the structure is as follows and there's three main steps of the structure firstly you want to build report you want to establish information
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that you can then use later in the call or during your sales process and it's very important to get to know personal things about the prospect like where they're from their interest what they get up to and any shared commonalities
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that you might have with them if you can bring these up during the sales process or find a shared interest it goes a long way in getting the client to like you and trust you and then Ely buy from you
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then you want to move into diagnosing their problem this is the chance to let the prospect actually sell themselves on your service you need to understand the goals of the business and also the marketing team's kpis found out what is
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stopping them from achieving those kpis most of the time the marketing team will have a pretty simple fundamental goals and these will be one to be seen by more people and ultimately get more customers at the bottom of the funnel then you
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basically want to offer them solution which is actually your service they've already told you they want more people to see their products and services and they want to get more customers and this is where they explain that your
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influenc and marketing manag service can do just that you can deliver more people to their brand now sales meetings are generally as simple as these three kind of points in the structure you just basically have to make sure that you
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cycle back through the structure during the meeting right when a client has a specific objection build that Rapport again remind them of the problem and then why your service is that solution now I know this was an extremely high
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level run through right but this is a very big topic that I can't fit into just one video so on this channel I am going to be uploading multiple videos doing tons of sales training for you guys so whether this is me doing live
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sales calls or meetings for my own agency and showing you how I live sell or step-by-step sales guides which are packed with information scripts plugs and plays templates you know stay tuned because I'm going to go super in depth
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in this Channel and now we're on to the penultimate step which is Step n and that is getting paid right you've got your first client which is fantastic it's time to finally get that money in the bank because in my eyes a client
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isn't a client until they've actually paid you now this is an interesting step as it can actually be done now as Step n or actually after service delivery which is the next step the influence and marketing space differs from a lot of
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the traditional smma ones you'll probably see a bunch of smma content if you find influ and marketing content where they're like get the money PID through stripe on the call majority of time in this space you actually receive
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money after the services are rendered right I repeat that after the services are rendered this is because in this industry we are generally relying on influencers deliver the service for the brand and there is a high risk the brand
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to pay in advance in case the influencer doesn't deliver so typically the brand pays about 30 days after the influencer campaign goes live and this is standard for talent management and influencer marketing Partnerships generally now if you sell them on a managed service you
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can often include in your contract either money up front so they'll pay you up front because you know kind of it's a f managed service and they're paying you for a lot more than just the influencers or you can get money up front on
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contract signing so about 50% on contract signing and 50% after the services are rendered this is a very typical one that we do we get money 50% on contract signing and 50% after the content has gone live in the influence
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of marketing world the vast majority payments also are done via bank transfer so make sure when the client signs a contract you send them a properly made invoice which can be done via Finance platforms like zero uh and include your
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bank details for the client to pay the amount that is due immediately then you can start onboarding the client and start the next step which is Service delivery the actual fun part now I'm going to make a super in-depth video on
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this on the channel in the coming weeks and I I'll also leave a link below in the description to my first video that I ever did in this channel which breaks down a step-by-step guide on how to run
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an influencer marketing campaign but here I'm going to break down the sort of easiest and best ways and essential steps to get going cool okay so when you get the client on board you want to define the strategy for the campaign and
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how you plan on spending that budget the budget spend should match the goals of the campaign you should look at creators who have demographics that match the Brand's target audience you can then do this generally via email where you can
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reach out to them there because most creators will have their emails in their bios or about Pages as they obviously want business as well right they need to make a living then you want to reach out to influencers to invite them to the
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campaign and offer them a certain amount of money to upload certain deliverables on their social media channels and this money should match the CPM goals of the campaign once the creators are on board you then want to get them to sign a
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contract and start creating the content which matches a Creator brief that you make the brief should always contain an offer for the Creator to promote with a strong CTA once you start making the content you can make sure it's correct
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and approve it then get it live and you can start seeing results for the brand in the content a tracking link to the brand sales page should be listed so that influencers audiences can go and buy the product or service that you guys
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promote the whole way through you should make sure you're tracking the metrics of this and you can do this manually by getting the influencers and Brands send you screenshots of their data or you can use an influencer marketing platform
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like tagger which will track all the metrics for you and that's what we personally use at our agency as I say I'll link below a step-by-step guide of running a campaign and delivering the service but you know as this video
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covers a lot of ground already we're going to oversimplify some things other this video is going to be like 3 hours long and that's it that's your step-by-step guide on how to start an influencer marketing agency now for this
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video I wanted to leave a few action steps so firstly I want you guys to leave a comment on what you learn from this video or what excites you most about influencer Marketing in the coming year and I'm going to choose one person
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who will win a small cash prize for the giveaway or an item equivalent from a client of Arts right and the next thing I want you to do is I want you to head to the description and as I said at the
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start of this video I want you to join my free telegram Community where I post more in-depth influenc and marketing knowledge daily so you have to keep waiting for more videos and in there you can also reach out directly to me and my
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team for support and help and if it's the right fit you know you guys can learn directly from us on a few programs and opportunities that we offer and we also bring people onto our team from there I hire usually directly out of the
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influenc of marketing Community for some of our entry level roles so make sure you're definitely in the telegram group but other than that thanks for watching this one and make sure you obviously like And subscribe the video comment if
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you enjoyed it and there's going to be a lot more influence of marketing content coming soon see you in the next one
Topics:influencer marketing agencystart influencer agency 2024agency naming tipsinfluencer marketing servicestalent managementinfluencer partnershipscreative solutions agencyclient onboarding influencer agencyinfluencer media buyingagency niche selection
