You’ve probably seen the job title floating around LinkedIn. “Influencer Marketing Manager.” Or maybe you’ve gotten a cold email from an agency promising to connect your brand with “the right creators.” But what does that even mean? What are these agencies actually doing behind the scenes?
The short answer: a lot more than you’d think.
The Matchmaking Part
An influencer marketing agency’s main job is connecting brands with creators. Sounds simple. It’s not.
Finding someone with a big following isn’t the hard part. The hard part is finding someone whose audience actually cares about your product category, who creates content that fits your brand’s vibe, and who won’t ghost you three weeks into a campaign. Agencies spend a lot of time building databases and relationships. They know which creators are reliable, which ones have engagement that’s mostly bots, and which ones are about to blow up before the rest of the internet catches on.
There’s also the awkward money conversation. Creators often don’t have set rates, and brands often don’t know what’s reasonable. Agencies sit in the middle and figure it out.
Contracts and Legal Stuff
Nobody talks about this part because it’s boring. But it matters.
When a brand works directly with a creator, someone has to handle usage rights, exclusivity clauses, FTC disclosure requirements, payment terms, and what happens if someone doesn’t deliver. Most creators aren’t running their DMs through a lawyer. Most small marketing teams aren’t either. Agencies have templates and processes for all of this. They’ve seen the ways partnerships can go sideways, and they build protections into the paperwork.
Strategy and Planning
Some brands come in knowing exactly what they want. “We need three TikToks and an Instagram Reel by Q2.” Cool. Agencies can execute that.
But a lot of brands show up with something vaguer. They know they want to work with influencers. They’re not sure which platforms make sense, what kind of content performs, or how to measure whether any of it worked. Agencies help figure that out. They’ll look at what competitors are doing, what’s trending in the category, and where the target audience actually spends time. Then they’ll build a plan around it.
And sometimes that plan is “actually, influencer marketing isn’t the right move for you right now.” Good agencies will tell you that.
Campaign Management
So you’ve picked your creators and signed the contracts. Now someone has to make sure things happen on time.
Agencies handle the back and forth. Briefing creators, reviewing drafts, requesting edits, scheduling posts, tracking deliverables. It’s project management, basically. A lot of spreadsheets and Slack messages. Not glamorous, but it’s where campaigns fall apart when nobody’s paying attention.
Creators are busy. They’re juggling brand deals, their own content, maybe a day job or school. Things slip through the cracks. Having an agency that stays on top of timelines keeps everything from turning into a mess two days before launch.
Reporting and Analytics
After the posts go live, someone has to figure out whether they actually did anything.
Agencies pull together performance data. Views, engagement, clicks, conversions if tracking is set up properly. They’ll compare results against benchmarks and tell you what worked, what flopped, and why. Some of this is straightforward math. Some of it requires reading between the lines, understanding that a post with lower views might have driven more actual sales because the creator’s audience is just more likely to buy stuff.
The reports also help plan the next campaign. You learn which creators are worth rebooking and which content formats hit differently than expected.
Why Brands Use Them (Instead of Doing It Themselves)
Time, mostly. Running influencer marketing in-house takes a lot of bandwidth. You need someone who knows the space, has relationships with creators, and can manage a dozen moving pieces at once. For brands doing this occasionally, it doesn’t make sense to build that capability internally. Agencies let you tap into that expertise without hiring a full team.
There’s also the network effect. Agencies like Factory PR work with a ton of creators across categories. They have reached that most individual brands can’t match on their own.
What They Don’t Do (Usually)
Agencies aren’t going to fix a bad product. If your thing doesn’t resonate, no amount of influencer content will save it. They also can’t guarantee virality. Anyone who promises that is lying or doesn’t understand how social media works.
Most agencies also won’t manage your brand’s owned social channels. That’s a different service. Some larger shops offer both, but a dedicated influencer agency typically focuses on paid creator partnerships.
How to Tell If an Agency Is Legit
Ask about their creator vetting process. If they can’t explain how they evaluate authenticity and audience quality, that’s a red flag.
Ask for case studies with actual numbers. Vague claims about “increased brand awareness” don’t mean much. If available, you want to see engagement rates, click-through rates, and conversion data.
Ask about their fee structure. Some agencies take a percentage of creator fees. Some charge flat retainers. Some do project-based pricing. None of these is inherently better, but you should understand what you’re paying for.
And honestly? Ask who you’ll actually be working with. Agencies sometimes do the pitch with senior people and then hand you off to someone junior. That’s not always bad, but you should know upfront.