These Social Media and PR Firms Are Turning Influencer Marketing Into a Science

Influencer marketing can be a challenge for business owners. Working with content creators can be expensive, time-consuming, and—worst of all—risky. It’s not uncommon for marketing teams to shell out thousands of dollars to influencers in exchange for social media posts that result in sparse engagement and shockingly few sales. 

Still, if done right, influencer marketing can help elevate a small business into a household name. Just this year, better-for-you soda brand Poppi sold to PepsiCo for $1.95 billion after blowing up on TikTok. 

Fortunately, plenty of social media startups and traditional public relations firms are making it easier for brands to navigate this space and turn a profit.

Agentio co-founders Arthur Leopold and Jonathan Meyers, for example, know the creator economy can be a confusing place. That’s why, in 2023, they launched a platform that solves many of the pain points businesses face when partnering with YouTubers. The Brooklyn, New York-based company uses AI to match brands with pre-vetted YouTube creators and allows them to place a bid for an ad read in one of their upcoming videos. When the video goes live, brands can use the platform to track their ad’s performance and license the content to use in their own advertisements.

Leopold, Agentio’s CEO, says YouTubers are so valuable because they keep their audience’s attention for long stretches of time. “You sit down to watch a YouTube creator for 30 minutes—you’re not just doom-scrolling,” he says. “And because of that, they have incredible conversion power.” After switching from traditional YouTube ads to Agentio-powered ad reads, sock brand Bombas achieved a 5.3 times higher return on ad spend. 

Venice, California-based Superfiliate, meanwhile, aims to help marketing teams spend their budgets more efficiently. Co-founders Anders Bill and Andy Cloyd launched the influencer marketing platform in 2021 as a tool for brands to track the success of affiliate marketing campaigns in which content creators earn commissions through product links and discount codes they share with their audiences.

Superfiliate has since expanded to become “a full funnel management system for all the ways that brands work with creators,” according to Cloyd, the company’s CEO. Through the platform, businesses can find creators to work with, manage partnerships, view performance analytics, and automate payments. 

Last year, Superfiliate introduced new technology that allows brands to quantify which high-consideration purchases are influenced by creator-led campaigns. It allows businesses to track—“within the realms of privacy,” Cloyd says—if customers buy an item up to 30 days after getting exposed to an influencer marketing campaign. According to Cloyd, one Superfiliate client discovered that “the old tech paradigm” missed more than 40 percent of the purchases prompted by influencer campaigns. “If all I had was that initial technology, my ROI on that partnership would be very different,” he adds.

Founders who don’t want to spend thousands of dollars on paid posts can generate buzz online through other avenues. That’s where Analog Events comes in. Founded by Jordan Kaye in 2016, the Beverly Hills, California-based company plans brand events and gifts its clients’ products to influencers. 

Analog goes above and beyond when dealing with influencers. The key, according to Kaye, is to “give them space to play.” For example, the company has in the past created at-home dinner party sets to send to content creators on behalf of a streaming service client. Influencers received re-heatable, chef-made food served in Le Creuset cookware, as well as table settings presented on a bar cart. As a result, 85 percent of the content creators posted about the experience without being paid to do so.

Traditional public relations companies are embracing influencer marketing too. At New York City-based Kite Hill, this often means working with journalists, content creators, and podcasters for the same campaign. Tiffany Guarnaccia, the PR firm’s founder and CEO, says she’s also seen sharply rising “demand for executives to almost be influencers in their own right.” Kite Hill has met this demand by helping create social media posts for CEOs. Guarnaccia says she often tells executives: “Your LinkedIn is better than your press page.”

Meanwhile, Rye Brook, New York-based Illumination PR vets influencers for its health care- and wellness-focused client base. Founder and CEO Robyn Bordes isn’t afraid to tell clients when they’re inking a partnership with the wrong influencer. When a medical spa business told her it wanted to work with a celebrity rather than partnering with influencers, she recalls telling them, “You’re not going to see the ROI that you’re looking for.” 

The company went through with the partnership anyway, she says, and didn’t get results. For its next influencer campaign, the med spa came back to Illumination, and Bordes instead gave a discount code to a local mom who had a small social media following. That, she says, netted the client its biggest-ever influencer marketing ROI. 

Sometimes, it’s not about partnering with the most-followed creator you can afford, but rather working with “the more attainable type of person,” Bordes says—because consumers can look at their content and say, “I can do that too.”