Over the last couple of years, more and more influencers have hired managers to handle the business side of influencer marketing, but now influencers are starting to understand why it's a bad idea for both the influencer marketing industry and the influencers themselves. Now, an increasing number of influencers are writing us notes saying, "I'm no longer represented by management. I'm representing myself again." Here's why this is good news for the brands, influencers, and industry in general.
Our experience has shown that managers are messing up the value equation. We're seeing influencer marketing shift to more performance-based models, and not in the form of compensation. Clients are expecting us and other agencies to deliver real, measurable business results, whether it's the number of clicks to a key page or true view impressions among a particular target audience. Through our numerous campaigns we've learned that about 20% of the content outperforms the rest, and as we're hiring influencers for specific campaigns, one of the key items we're looking at are people who can drive those business results for a particular dollar value, whether it's a CPM (cost-per-thousand-views) or a CPC (cost-per-click).
Now factor in a manager. Their fee's alone are going to jack up the influencers rates, and it's likely the influencer will no longer be able to drive enough value per dollar. So those influencers who are continuing to work without managers, I think you're on the right path, and more and more you collect data about your own campaigns, this is going to be valuable and help you get better rates when you can show that you can drive real business results.