At this point in time, most internet users are familiar with influencer marketing to some extent. Influencer marketing takes place when a content creator of any niche promotes products and services to their audience in exchange for monetary or non-monetary compensation, or to support the company out of goodwill.
Since the emergence of social media in the 2010s, influencer marketing has become an industry worth billions of dollars and has also become one of the most effective ways to market to the public. This is because influencers are so diverse, touching every possible niche, and also maintain very trusted relationships with their followers.
The world of cryptocurrency and blockchain is not exempt from this as even within this space, there are content creators who have been able to amass large followings of people who trust their word and recommendation. If you are an entrepreneur planning to launch a product or service into the often saturated and competitive crypto or NFT market, then influencer marketing should definitely be a part of your overall crypto & NFT marketing strategy. But when approaching marketing, and influencer marketing specifically, should you employ the services of an agency or should you go about it yourself?
Should You DIY Influencer Marketing?
Because most of us are at least fairly familiar with influencer marketing, we have an idea of what goes on behind the scenes; you reach out to an influencer by email or DM, offer them money or free products to promote your product and the publicity comes rolling in, right?
With this assumption, it is easy for an entrepreneur to question the value of an agency for influencer marketing and might want to do it themselves. The truth is, however, that influencer marketing is far more complex than we often give it credit for.
First, influencer marketing is not as simple as just going about messaging influencers. Not every influencer operates in the crypto and blockchain space and even among those that do, their audience might not be appropriate for your token or NFT. Before you even begin outreach, you’d have to curate a list of influencers to approach and conduct research on their audiences, engagement rate, promotion tactics, and so on. This can be a lengthy process and one that an entrepreneur might not have the time for and might prefer to outsource. Even when you reach out to an influencer, there is no guarantee that they will respond, especially to an individual. The influence marketing sector has evolved to the point that most influencers would only respond to messages from agencies that professionally curate the relationship between them and the brand they are to promote.
Most entrepreneurs often wonder, what influencer campaigns work and what doesn’t? There are multiple ways to approach influencer marketing strategy, and it’s constantly changing on a month-to-month basis. Unless an entrepreneur has experience running hundreds of campaigns to understand what has effectively worked in the past, they would be at the whims of an influencer to tell them what they should do. It can often work in the favor of the influencer who wants to get paid, and do as little work as possible. A 3rd party can help ensure both sides are happy with the deliverables.
Throughout the promotion process, you would also have to deal with things like posting deadlines, managing payment to the influencer, tracking results of campaigns, and so on. All of these might be too difficult and taxing for an entrepreneur and this is where influencer marketing agencies come in.
As explained, influencer marketing is a far more complex and time-consuming process than many of us give it credit for but influencer agencies exist specifically to get through these processes while securing the best results for customers.
First, there are different types of influencer agencies by sector. Take Crowdcreate, for example, a marketing agency with deep experience in the blockchain, crypto, NFT, and gaming sector. As opposed to an agency that deals with multiple industries, they have been able to hone in on these sectors over the last 6 years.
When it comes to influencer marketing, they have developed a long-standing relationship with crypto & NFT influencer agencies and thus, will be able to secure partnerships for clients with much more ease. While working on a campaign for Star Atlas (NYSE:ATCO), an NFT-based game and one of the most successful Solana projects, the agency saw an influencer email open rate of over 50% and a response rate of 11.19%, which is far more than an influencer going about it themselves would have done. They were also able to select the best influencers for that campaign and guided the promotion of Star Atlas across multiple platforms. In the end, Star Atlas’ token sale saw not only massive publicity but was oversubscribed, exceeding its funding goal.
An entrepreneur, especially in the fast-paced world of blockchain and crypto, likely does not have the time to manage influencer marketing campaigns and should not attempt to do so by themselves. Instead, an agency can come in and manage the entire process from compiling appropriate influencers and reaching out to them to tracking and delivering results. As the industry grows, even more, these sorts of crypto & NFT influencer agencies will become a part and parcel of the launch process and entrepreneurs and their projects will be all the better for it.