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Investing in an influencer marketing team could be the smartest marketing decision you make this year! If you’ve seen first-hand the results of high-performing influencer campaigns, you’ll no doubt want to replicate your success with a hands-on influencer marketing team to help you scale.
Depending on the size of your current team you might want to hire at least one (or several) Influencer Marketing Managers. Creating a brand new team takes preparation and planning in order to be effective right from the start. We’ll take you through the key roles of an influencer marketing team, what skills to look for, plus share some tips for how to put together a winning team.
Whether you want to manage all your influencer campaigns in-house or outsource campaign management to an agency, we’ll explain all the considerations for building your dream team!
What does an influencer marketing team do?
If you’re creating a new division in your marketing team, it’s important to clearly understand why, and how they’ll impact your broader marketing strategy. Are your marketing resources somewhat overstretched but you want to scale your influencer marketing activities? Then it’s time to recruit a dedicated team! Let’s break down a typical expectation from an influencer marketing team:
- Defining your influencer marketing strategy to support your other marketing channels and reach your growth goals.
- Influencer marketing budgeting. They decide how to allocate funds for creator partnerships, whether that’s budgeting for an agency, paying for an influencer marketing software, or compensating influencers.
- Nurturing creator partnerships. This includes building strong relationships with your influencer network to create long-term partnerships that deliver for your brand.
- Campaign management. They will ensure the smooth running of influencer campaigns from influencer identification to outreach, briefing, product shipping, content approval, campaign tracking, and payment.
- Performance tracking. Your influencer marketing team will analyze the performance of influencer campaigns, measuring KPIs, tracking sales and calculating ROI.
What skills do you need in your influencer marketing team?
Now that you understand what the main responsibilities of your team will be, it’s important to consider the skills needed to accomplish them. You don’t necessarily need to hire someone with years of experience, or a particular qualification. Someone with experience in another marketing function, and deep knowledge of social media will have many transferable skills to bring to an Influencer Marketing Manager role.
Let’s take a look at the main skills to prioritize when building your team:
| Communication |
This includes interpersonal skills as well as written communication. Influencer Marketing Managers will need strong communication skills to coordinate with other members of the marketing team, as well as communicate effectively with creators. They’ll also need to be confident in writing documentation such as briefs, outreach emails, campaign guidelines, and checklists, etc. |
| Relationship building |
Influencer Marketing Managers will need to build strong relationships with your brand’s influencers. Relational skills will be needed for creating new partnerships and maintaining long-term collaborations. This includes influencer outreach, negotiations, and providing feedback to create fruitful, transparent, and mutually beneficial partnerships within your creator network. |
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Analytical & critical thinking
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These skills are needed for evaluating influencer profiles to decide if they will be a good fit for the brand, as well as analyzing campaign metrics and assessing the success of influencer marketing campaigns. They will also be important for identifying problems with campaigns and finding timely solutions to make sure influencer marketing campaigns are reaching expected goals. |
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Social media
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Your influencer marketing team will need to have a deep understanding of the social media platforms you’ll be using for campaigns, including knowledge about your online audience, content formats, and trends. They’ll need to know how to optimize influencer campaigns on your chosen platforms and how influencer activity will impact your brand’s broader social media marketing. |
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Project management
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This skill is about managing the many moving parts of influencer campaigns. It will be especially important for managing several influencer campaigns at once, or for working with agencies that will manage certain aspects of your influencer campaigns. |
Top tips for building your influencer marketing team
There are important considerations to think about when putting together your influencer marketing team. We’ll take you through some top tips to make sure the process is as smooth as possible.
- Plan how influencer marketing will impact other marketing activities. Influencer marketing is a very versatile strategy that can be adapted to support other marketing efforts such as paid social media campaigns, PR, social commerce, and events. Don’t forget that influencer marketing should be part of an omnichannel marketing strategy, so dedicate some time to planning with your CMO how your different marketing divisions will work together.
- Include an influencer marketing budget as part of your overall marketing spending plan. This may sound obvious, but it’s important to calculate your influencer marketing costs when you are deciding to scale. Think about how increased spending on influencer campaigns will affect other areas of your marketing.
- Invest in the right tools, and the right people. To maximize your chances of success, you want to make sure your team is fully-equipped right from the start. That means choosing the right people, whether you decide to recruit new team members or restructure your current team. You should also set up your team with the tools they’ll need to scale your influencer activities. If you’re planning to manage campaigns in-house, investing in an influencer marketing platform such as Upfluence, will help you manage every aspect of your influencer campaigns in one place, saving your team valuable time and energy!
Next steps: share these top resources with your team
- The Ultimate Influencer Marketing Guide. A one-stop shop for influencer marketing campaign planning from A to Z. A must-read for Influencer Marketing Managers everywhere.
- Influencer strategy checklist. Learn how to optimize each stage of your influencer marketing campaigns with this handy checklist.
- The ultimate guide to using influencers for eCommerce. Explore how influencers can be activated for product discovery strategies, to drive web traffic and increase sales.
