Start with goals, not followers
A good agency’s first question isn’t “how many followers do you want to reach?” but “what should this campaign achieve?”. Launching a new product, driving footfall to a store, producing content for paid ads, supporting sales during a promotion: these are different goals, and each calls for different creators, formats and metrics.
Large-scale seeding, for example, puts a new product in front of a lot of people quickly; a handful of local creators may be enough to bring visitors into a store during a promotion; a steady social presence needs always-on activity with a content plan. If an agency offers you the same solution whatever the goal, treat it as a warning sign.
How it selects creators
This is the heart of the job. Follower count on its own tells you little: what matters is who those followers are, how much they engage and how credible the creator is when talking about a particular type of product. Ask the agency what its selection is based on and what data it will show you before the creators are confirmed.
- Audience: age, city and interests that match your customers, not just a big number.
- Engagement: genuine comments and conversations, not just likes.
- Fit: a tone, values and aesthetic close to the brand’s own.
- Recent collaborations: a creator who has just worked with a direct competitor is less credible.
- Integrity: sponsored content always disclosed as advertising.
Own roster or external creators?
Many agencies, ours included, run brand campaigns alongside talent management (representing influencers and creators). That’s an advantage, because they know the talent they work with every day inside out. But it’s fair to ask how they keep the selection neutral: whether the proposal can include creators from outside the roster, and on what basis each profile was chosen.
Who actually runs the project
Ask who your main contact will be, who will talk to the creators and who will approve content before it goes live. In a large agency a project can pass through many hands; at a boutique agency communication is more direct, but check there are enough people and processes for the size of your campaign. Seeding with hundreds of creators and a partnership with a single talent need very different set-ups.
Contracts, usage rights and transparency
Every collaboration should have a written agreement covering what content, on which channels, by when and with what approval process. It should also set out the usage rights – how long and on which channels the brand can reuse the content, including in ads – and any category exclusivity.
Then there is transparency towards the audience. In Italy, promotional content must be immediately recognisable as advertising. The FAQs on influencer rules published by AGCOM (Italy’s communications regulator) call for clear labels such as “Pubblicità” (advertising), “ADV” or “Sponsorizzato da…” (sponsored by…), whereas “in collaborazione con” (in collaboration with) is not enough when the content has been commissioned. A serious agency writes this into the contract and checks it before publication. We cover this in our guide to AGCOM influencer rules in Italy.
What you get at the end of the campaign
Metrics should be agreed at the start, not cherry-picked afterwards from whichever performed best. When the campaign ends you should receive a report with results against those metrics, an analysis of what worked and what didn’t, and an archive of the published content. Ask to see a sample report before you sign.
Questions to ask at the first meeting
A short list to take to your first call with any agency.
- Which projects similar to ours have you run, and with what results?
- How do you choose creators, and what will you show us before confirming them?
- Who is our main contact, and who talks to the creators?
- How do you handle contracts, usage rights and exclusivity?
- How do you make sure content is disclosed as advertising?
- Which metrics will we measure, and what goes into the final report?
- How is the quote broken down, line by line?
