How to Build a High Performing Influencer Marketing Team

Marketers are willing to spend over $4 billion on influencer marketing, with 60% stating that  influencer-generated content performs better than branded content. 

However, successful influencer marketing is dynamic and complex — you can't automate success. Every stage, from selection, to campaign management, to reporting requires a team that is well-equipped with multiple skills and tools.

In this article, we’ll address all your questions about building and structuring an influencer marketing team that can help deliver on your goals. 

What does an influencer marketing team do?

Influencer marketing can either be a one-person job or function as a sizable team, depending on the brand size, budget, and goals. 

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Influencer marketers perform a diverse range of tasks like:

• Creating an influencer marketing strategy: This includes laying out the goals, means, and metrics for the influencer marketing strategy and aligning it with larger business goals. It’s also about creating a structure for how influencer marketing can amplify or interact with other marketing tactics like PR and paid ads. 

• Finding, vetting, and partnering with influencers: Sourcing relevant influencers requires strategic decision-making, in-depth knowledge of content trends and platform uses, and strong communications skills to build relationships. 

• Executing and managing campaigns: Running each campaign from start to finish requires a high level of organization and diligence. Your team will need to handle everything that comes after the contract is signed: seeding product, reviewing content, reporting on results, optimizing for future campaigns, and beyond.

• Nurturing influencer relationships: Building healthy relationships with influencers can set you up for long-term success. So, it's crucial for the team to maintain active communication and nurture a bond with all influencers to get them on board for future campaigns. 

• Tracking KPIs and performance: Once a campaign is executed, the team collects data through first-party and third-party tools to pinpoint what worked and tanked to make informed decisions about future partnerships and campaigns. 

3 best practices to build a high-performing influencer marketing team

Businesses and marketers are increasingly eager to tap into the power of influencer marketing, which explains why 75% set aside a dedicated budget for influencer campaigns. But without a strong team to start and scale your efforts, the results might remain underwhelming. 

Here are three strategies to build a high-performing influencer marketing team. 

1. Set your influencer marketing goals and outline significant roles and responsibilities

Before you start, outline your strategic goals to identify the positions you need to fill. Given the interdisciplinary nature of influencer marketing, these roles might spread across multiple departments in your organization. 

Here are some tips for setting SMART goals for influencer marketing:

• Specific: Make your objective as specific and detailed as possible. 

• Measurable: Choose a metric for each goal to monitor performance consistently. 

• Achievable: Add a practical method or channel to achieve your goal. 

• Relevant: Make your goals relevant to your marketing strategy. 

• Time-bound: Attach a timeline for each goal to track your progress. 

For example: Drive a 20% increase in conversions through influencer marketing by offering referral discounts within the next 6 months. 

For this goal, you might need to hire a professional in the social commerce or affiliate marketing space. You might also need help from an eCommerce specialist to strategize these campaigns. The key is to bring a diverse set of people together (make sure they sit on one cohesive team and aren’t siloed from each other!) so they can address the broad scope of needs.  

2. Measure performance and create a culture of experimentation

A performance-based approach to influencer marketing with specific metrics can eliminate guesswork and help align budget/spend with tangible results. However, it’s important to remember that influencer marketing evolves at a much faster pace because it follows social media trend cycles. 

To keep your team inspired and ambitious, you have to give them the flexibility to test risky ideas and fail fast. This will enable them to find relevant, impactful ideas that add value to your audience while moving the needle towards your goals. For example, Beekman 1802 wanted to figure out how to sell products in Ulta using TikTok — they figured out the right content types and influencer tierby asking their diverse employee network to experiment and test things out. 

To promote this culture when hiring, dig deep into a candidate’s past performance. Ask them to talk through past creative strategies and illustrate how they build fast but deliberate experiments. The goal is to build a team that isn’t afraid of breaking the rules to get better results. ‍

3. Invest in a robust tech stack

Building a team prepares a solid groundwork for your influencer marketing efforts. But setting up a stellar tech stack empowers this team to succeed. 

With so many details involved in the process, such as drawing up contracts, vetting and hiring influencers, sending briefs, aligning campaigns, and tracking performance, you can’t rely on your team to do everything manually. 

Instead, you can create seamless workflows at every stage using the right tools:

• Early-stage: Social listening tools can give you a simple way to track brand mentions and identify potential partners, templated spreadsheets can help you track each activity and campaign result, and existing customer relationship management (CRM) tools can also be used for tracking influencer relationships. 

• Mid-stage: Basic subscriptions with true influencer marketing tools like Traackr will help you combine all functions - from influencer discovery, to campaign management, to reporting into a single dashboard. This gives you a holistic view of your activities and partners, and saves your team from gathering information from multiple sources (time is money!).

• Full stage:  Influencer marketing tools often offer higher-level subscriptions. For example, Traackr offers competitor intelligence, performance benchmarking across multi-market, and other features that help take your program to the next level.

An influencer marketing platform like Traackr allows your team to manage your campaigns from start to finish in one place. Learn more about the different types of influencer marketing tools here.

Build the A-team

Influencer marketing can bring proven results—but not without a well-organized team to strategize, execute, and track every campaign. If you’re gearing up to build such a team, make sure you're attracting the right talent by crafting a job description that stands out. Next step, post your open positions on Traackr’s Influencer Marketing Job Board!

Setting your overall goals and metrics is a great starting point to outline your team's structure. Then focus on cultivating a culture of experimentation to allow your team to try, fail, and deliver. While hiring people for your team, pay equal attention to picking the best tools—considering your tech stack as an extension of your team and the driver to get a return on your investment in influencer marketing. 

‍Already built your team? Learn more about how Traackr can help support large teams and their agencies with tools to keep everyone on the same page.