Alexis Kestler
As a leading social media marketing guru with over 10 years of experience boosting brand awareness through influencer partnerships, I am often asked – what exactly does an influencer marketing manager do day-to-day?
Influencer marketing has exploded in adoption, with over 90% of marketers planning to dedicate budget to influencer efforts in 2023 according to Influencer Marketing Hub.
And as more brands invest in leveraging social talent, dedicated influencer marketing managers have become indispensable for ideating, executing, and optimizing influencer campaigns.
In this comprehensive guide, I‘ll break down the role and responsibilities of an influencer manager leveraging insider knowledge from managing over 100+ influencer campaigns.
Here‘s what we‘ll cover:
What Does an Influencer Marketing Manager Do?
An influencer marketing manager leads a brand‘s end-to-end influencer strategy, including:
Finding Relevant Influencers
- Identifying potential influencers through manual research and AI-driven tools
- Vetting influencers based on audience fit, engagement metrics, content style and brand alignment
- Curating a managed influencer network spanning nano, micro and macro tiers
According toLinqia, the ideal influencer network has influencers with follower counts ranging from 5k to over 1 million.
Relationship Management
- Serving as the key contact for all communications pre, during and post-campaigns
- Briefing influencers on campaign expectations, messaging, assets, timelines and compensation
- Ensuring influencers have the products, information and support needed to create compelling content
- Maintaining positive, productive long-term relationships even after campaigns wrap
Campaign Management
- Developing creative influencer activation ideas tailored to partnership goals
- Creating detailed campaign briefs outlining deliverables, guidelines, metrics and timelines
- Overseeing content creation and activation across owned social channels and websites
- Monitoring campaign execution and performance in real-time
Performance Measurement
- Tracking 70+ metrics across reach, engagement, conversions, sentiment and more using analytics tools
- Identifying optimization opportunities – from better targeting to content tweaks to improve results
- Modeling attribution to quantify sales directly driven by influencers
- Reporting on results and insights gained to guide future influencer marketing strategy
In summary, the influencer marketing manager oversees the entire process – from scouting talent to measuring ROI – required to continually refine and enhance influencer campaign performance.
Key Skills and Experiences Needed
Succeeding as an influencer marketing manager requires diverse strategic, creative and analytical skill sets. Here are the most important skills needed:
Influencer Marketing Expertise
- Deep knowledge of influencer tiers, pricing models and campaign structures
- Understanding of emerging social platforms and influencer marketing technologies
- Ability to identify high-potential influencers and campaigns for a brand
Communication Abilities
- Build strong rapport with a diverse roster of influencers
- Write compelling and detailed creative briefs and campaign collateral
- Convey performance reports and recommendations to wider marketing teams
Analytical Skills
- Extract insights from 70+ campaign metrics using analytics platforms
- Connect influencer effort impact to broader marketing KPIs
- Model incrementality to quantify performance accurately
Project Management Excellence
- Plan detailed influencer activations covering complex logistics
- Track progress across 20+ concurrent influencer campaigns
- Take decisive action to keep campaigns on time and on budget
The influencer manager role straddles creative marketing, analytical optimization and strategic talent partnerships – making it a complex but invaluable role as influencer marketing matures.
The Rise of the Specialized Influencer Marketing Manager
Dedicated influencer marketing managers have become commonplace at brands spending over $100k in influencer marketing annually.
As an example, leading consumer brand Neutrogena employs a Global Director of Influencer Marketing overseeing a team of specialists focused exclusively on leveraging social talent.
This specialized function allows them to continually refine and enhance their influencer efforts driving measurable impact – with their #NeutrogenaSisters campaign generating over 2 billion impressions in 2022.
Here are some key drivers of specialized influencer marketing roles emerging across consumer, retail and media brands:
- Influencer marketing budgets expanding 5x between 2019 and 2023 as brands quantify strong ROI – Forrester predicts influencer spend reaching $20 billion by 2027
- Need for dedicated personnel to manage increasingly complex logistics covering legal, creative, production and measurement
- Lack of specialized knowledge – from latest platform algorithms to measurement best practices – in wider marketing teams
- Requirement for continually optimizing performance given dynamic nature of social platforms and content
As more brands invest in influencer marketing, they are realizing the need to appoint dedicated managers to plan and handle unique needs like legal compliance, multi-platform activations and incremental sales modeling.
This enables them to maximize ROI from influencer budgets that often rival spends on traditional channels like print and TV.
The Influencer Manager Career Trajectory
Given rapid category growth, influencer marketing management offers an exciting career path for digitally-savvy marketing professionals.
Here‘s a look at the typical career progression:
Influencer Marketing Coordinator
Entry-level role supporting influencer identification, communications and campaign management processes. Focuses on tactical execution and surfaces insights to inform strategy.
Average Salary: $45,000
Influencer Marketing Manager
Owns end-to-end influencer activations from strategic planning to relationship management to performance analysis. Identifies new partnership and campaign opportunities.
Average Salary: $65,000 – $90,000
Head of Influencer
Leads an in-house team of influencer marketing experts across strategy, campaign management and optimization. Accountable for program ROI and growth.
Average Salary: $120,000
VP/C-Level Influencer Marketing
Member of senior marketing leadership defining and championing influencer marketing. Sets influencer budget and headcount. Drives category innovation and adoption.
Average Salary: $150,000+
The career growth from a supporting coordinator role to leading all influencer efforts mirrors the strategic value increase of influencer marketing.
Brands investing in dedicated influencer personnel today will gain a sustained competitive advantage as influencer marketing becomes a $20 billion industry over the next 5 years based on projected growth rates.
Key Takeaways
As influencer marketing evolves into an always-on brand building engine, influencer marketing managers play an indispensable role in ideating, executing and optimizing partnerships.
Their responsibilities span identifying relevant talent, maintaining relationships, overseeing activations, tracking 70+ metrics and continually refining efforts based on performance and insights.
Influencer marketing management brings together creative marketing, analytical, technical and strategic competencies – making it a complex but valuable specialty accelerating brand growth through social talent.
