Influencer Marketing Platform or Agency?
Many brands struggle to decide whether to use an influencer marketing platform or agency for their influencer campaigns.
An influencer marketing agency tends to offer more professional services, including strategy and campaign management. Whereas an influencer marketing platform will offer you tools to help you find creators, assess their profiles and manage your collaboration activities.
Which option you go for will depend on your budget, your marketing capabilities and how complex you want your campaign to be.
By understanding the differences between an influencer marketing platform and agency you can select the best option to meet your campaign goals and save unnecessary spend.
Quick Answer
An influencer marketing platform can aid in finding and profiling creators, collaboration management, and maintaining full control over campaigns. On the other hand, an influencer marketing agency offers professional help in all processes, from strategy development and outreach to negotiating and executing the campaign. Platforms can be more effective for brands that have marketing teams of their own, while agencies are better suited for those brands that require professional help and management.
What is an Influencer Marketing Platform?
An influencer marketing platform will help brands and creators come together.
You won’t have to do as much manual research as you can use the tools within the platform to manage your creator search, assess their profiles, find potential partners and manage your collaboration activities.
Influencer marketing platforms will typically offer:
- Creator search – Search creators within relevant categories, niches and content.
- Profile assessment – Assess content, engagement stats and audience.
- Campaign management – Manage collaboration requirements, deadlines and communication.
- Connections – Help brands and creators find relevant partnerships.
- Review – Allows you to review campaign performance.
A key benefit of an influencer marketing platform is that brands will have more control over the process of finding creators.
However, you will still need to assess whether creators are suitable, agree expectations, approvals and review campaign performance.
What is an Influencer Marketing Agency?
An influencer marketing agency will help brands plan and run their influencer campaigns.
You will typically receive more professional support from an agency. Depending on what services they offer, they can help with campaign strategy, finding creators, communication, negotiations, content management and reporting.
Typically an influencer marketing agency will help with:
- Campaign strategy – Understand your campaign goals and create an influencer marketing strategy.
- Finding creators – Find relevant creators for your campaign.
- Communication – Communicate with creators and negotiate.
- Campaign management – Manage deliverables, deadlines and approvals.
- Content management – Review content for your campaign.
- Reporting – Review campaign performance.
An agency can be a great option if you don’t have an in-house team managing your influencer marketing or need extra support for complex campaigns.
However, the level of involvement, cost, access to creators and reporting can vary greatly.
Influencer Marketing Platform or Agency – Key Differences
Whilst both options will help you with your influencer marketing, they do operate differently.
| Comparison Factor | Influencer Marketing Platform | Influencer Marketing Agency |
|---|---|---|
| Business model | Digital tools and workflows | Professional services |
| Creator discovery | Platform-based search and discovery | Agency research and network |
| Campaign control | Greater direct brand involvement | Often shared with the agency |
| Management | Brand manages activities using available tools | Agency handles agreed responsibilities |
| Communication | Depends on platform capabilities | Agency coordinates communication |
| Cost structure | Subscription, usage-based, or other platform pricing | Project fees, retainers, commissions, or other arrangements |
| Flexibility | Brands can manage workflows internally | Depends on service agreements |
| Internal resources | Requires an involved brand team | Can reduce the brand's operational workload |
| Best suited for | Teams seeking direct campaign involvement | Brands needing professional execution support |
As you can see there is a key difference between the two. Whilst a platform will help you manage your influencer marketing, an agency will give you access to people and services to help you run your campaigns.
Neither option will automatically be better for your business.
Benefits of an Influencer Marketing Platform
If you want more control over your influencer marketing, then an influencer marketing platform can offer some benefits:
- More direct creator search
Manually searching for influencers can take time. You’ll have to look at their social profiles, check their content quality, understand their audience interests and contact them.
Using an influencer marketing platform can help you manage some of this process. You can search for potential creators and shortlist profiles based on your campaign needs.
It will help you to have a more structured search but you will still need to check whether they are suitable.
2. More control over your campaign
By using an influencer marketing platform, your in-house teams will have more control over finding creators, communication and campaign decisions.
This can be useful if you want to keep your brand voice, build relationships and make changes to campaign requirements.
3. Consistent processes
If you’re running multiple campaigns, having a consistent process for finding creators, planning collaborations and managing your campaigns can be useful.
An influencer marketing platform can help you manage your activities.
4. More flexible resource management
If you already have marketing staff in place, an influencer marketing platform can be a good option.
You can use the tools to help you manage your existing processes.
However, you will need to think about the cost of the subscription, extra services and labour.
Benefits of an Influencer Marketing Agency
An agency can offer some benefits outside of software.
- Strategic support
If you’re new to influencer marketing, you may not know how to find creators, plan collaborations and campaign deliverables.
An agency with experience can offer you strategic support to help you make decisions.
2. Reduce your workload
Finding creators, communicating with them, negotiating, content approvals and managing your campaigns can take up a lot of time.
An agency can help manage agreed activities to free up your time.
3. Additional support for complex campaigns
If you have a large campaign with multiple creators, multiple types of content, varying deadlines and detailed approvals, you may need extra support to manage it. An agency can help with additional resource.
4. Relationships and negotiation support
An agency may have relationships with creators and experience of negotiating collaborations.
They can help you with your outreach, deliverables, expectations and campaign management.
However, this will depend on how experienced they actually are and what creators are available.
Influencer Marketing Platform or Agency – Which is More Cost Effective?
Cost can be an important factor but it can be misleading. An influencer marketing platform may charge a subscription fee, have a limit on usage or other charges. Whereas an agency may charge project fees, monthly retainer, commission or other charges.
You should consider the overall cost:
- Subscription or service fees.
- Labour costs.
- Creator fees and collaboration costs.
- Campaign management and content creation.
- Extra reporting or management.
- Number and complexity of campaigns.
If you’re a small business and have the occasional collaboration, using an agency to manage everything can be useful if you don’t have a dedicated marketing team. However, if you’re a growing brand with an in-house marketing team, an influencer marketing platform may be better so you can manage relationships with creators directly.
Ultimately the most cost effective option will be whichever gives you the support you need without adding unnecessary costs.
When Should You Use a Platform or Agency?
By thinking about your resources and campaign needs you can decide which option to use.
| Business Situation | Recommended Approach |
|---|---|
| A startup exploring influencer marketing | Platform or agency, depending on available expertise |
| A brand with an internal marketing team | Influencer marketing platform |
| A business with limited campaign management resources | Influencer marketing agency |
| A company running recurring creator campaigns | Influencer marketing platform |
| A brand managing a complex multi-creator campaign | Agency support |
| A business wanting more direct creator relationships | Influencer marketing platform |
| A company needing external strategic guidance | Influencer marketing agency |
These are just general recommendations. Some businesses may benefit from using both.
Can I Use Influencer Marketing Platform and Agency?
Yes! Using an influencer marketing platform and agency can be a practical option if you have multiple campaign needs.
You can use the platform to help you find creators and manage your campaigns. Meanwhile the agency can offer you strategic support, communication, negotiation and support.
For example, if you’re a fashion brand looking to run a seasonal campaign, you could use an influencer marketing platform to search for creators with content relevant to your target audience. An agency can help you shortlist suitable profiles, manage collaboration terms and deliver content.
However, you should ensure that the roles are clear. You should know who will be managing communication with creators, approving content, tracking deliverables and reviewing results. Otherwise using two solutions can cause unnecessary complexity.
If you are planning creator collaborations or exploring partnership opportunities, you can contact team to discuss your campaign requirements.
How to Decide Which Option to Use
Before you invest in an influencer marketing platform or agency, you should consider what you actually need from your campaign.
- Clarify your campaign goals
What do you want to achieve from your campaign? This could be increasing brand awareness, product discovery, engagement, driving traffic or sales.
This will impact what type of creators and support you’ll need.
2. Know your target audience
What are their interests? Where are they located? What are their demographics? What type of content do they like?
Just because a creator has lots of followers doesn’t mean they are right for you if their audience isn’t relevant to your customers.
3. Consider your creator search needs
How regularly will you need to find creators? How much research will you need to do?
If you need to search for creators regularly, a structured process using a platform can be useful.
4. Consider your resources
Can your team manage communication with creators, negotiate, plan campaigns and approve content? If not, using an agency could be beneficial.
5. Consider features and services
For a platform, consider what creator search options are available, what profile information is available, what processes can be managed, what reporting is available and how easy it is to use. For an agency, consider what services they offer, how they communicate, how transparent their pricing is, how they find creators and what their reporting is like.
When comparing creator platforms, also check how account information, creator data and campaign details are collected and used. Review Privacy Policy to understand its published data-handling practices.
6. Review creators
No matter which option you choose, you should carefully review creators. Ensure they have relevant content, their audience is relevant, their engagement is quality, they have worked with your brand before and they are genuine.
Don’t just look at how many followers they have.
7. Review campaign performance
Once your campaign has been completed, review how it performed against your goals. Consider what metrics are relevant to your campaign (engagement, reach, website traffic, conversions, quality of content and audience response).
This will help you understand what worked well and improve future collaborations.
Final Thoughts
Whether you use an influencer marketing platform or agency will depend on how you want to manage your campaigns.
An influencer marketing platform can provide tools, direct creator searches and more involvement from your in-house marketing team. Whereas an agency can help with professional support, campaign management and additional resource.
If you have an established marketing team and regular campaigns, an influencer marketing platform can be useful. Whereas if you need more hands on support or don’t have the resources in house, an agency can be beneficial.
Ultimately there is no ‘winner’. The best option will depend on your campaign goals, resources, budget and how much control you want.
If you want to discuss working with creators, partnership opportunities or business enquiries, get in touch with the Vitaay team.
Follow Us on Instagram to find out more about creator partnerships and updates.
