With the rapid rise of influencer marketing around the world, brands of all sizes are now allocating more of their marketing budget on social media compared to traditional channels. 

A key part of influencer marketing revolves around finding the most relevant creators to represent brands and their products in front of a targeted, highly engaged audience. 

In return, brands can increase brand awareness, create positive associations and connections with their target audience, and drive conversions in ways that are more authentic and effective than other marketing strategies. 

However, getting this process right requires expertise and cannot be left to chance. This is where influencer marketing agencies come in.

If your brand is based out of the UK or wants to connect with a UK-based demographic of potential customers, working with influencer marketing agencies who know the market inside out will go a long way.

Recap: what do influencer marketing agencies actually do?

Influencer marketing agencies work with brands and businesses to get their products and services in front of the right audience, via social media. 

These agencies will typically:

• Select and vet creators to meet creative briefs based on the brand’s specific needs, tone of voice, and values.

• Set up contractual agreements with clear campaign deliverables, timescales, and associated costs.

• Assist brands in planning their campaigns depending on target metrics, such as reach and engagement, and help them formulate a clear content strategy to maximize those metrics.

• Act as the conduit between influencers and brands throughout the campaign process, ensuring deliverables are completed on time and match quality standards.

• Provide some degree of analytics and reporting on the branded content produced by the influencers, along with recommendations on how to optimize it as part of the campaign.

In short, influencer marketing agencies help brands reach the right audience, create engaging campaigns, measure their success and optimize content based on insights.

Many top notch influencer agencies operate out of the UK, working with leading brands on global campaigns. Here are some of the top UK-based influencer marketing agencies for your brand to consider.

1. House of Marketers

House of Marketers, based in Nottingham, is a TikTok marketing agency focused on helping brands succeed on the platform. 

Their Managing Director, Inigo Rivera, was previously a Strategy and Partnerships Manager at TikTok. He understands the potential of the app and drives ambitious global brands to achieve outstanding results through TikTok: “As one of the first TikTok employees, I truly discovered how much more powerful TikTok influencers and TikTok ads can be in achieving growth metrics for brands.”

The agency has worked with the likes of Red Bull, Baidoo, Hello Fresh, Paris Saint-Germain, and Playstika. It not only offers influencer campaigns, TikTok brand profile building, and influencer strategy development but also paid ads management.

When starting a campaign, House of Marketers takes a deep dive into the brand, audience, and industry to find the most suitable influencers to collaborate with, and create content that resonates with the target audience.

2. Socially Powerful

Socially Powerful connects brands with top influencers from all over the world and across a variety of niches, such as sports, lifestyle, gaming, entertainment, fashion, beauty, food and tech. 

Partnering with over 5,000 influencers on multiple social media platforms (YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, and Twitter), Socially Powerful enables companies to spread their message via the right influencers. The agency matches businesses with suitable influencers, and provides content curation and analytics to measure the ongoing success of any campaign. 

The agency also doubles as a talent management agency, providing training, guidance and workshops to help influencers grow their personal brands.

3. Urban Nerds Collective

Urban Nerds Collective began as a group of young friends promoting underground parties in London. 

Since 2013, they’ve branched out into youth marketing, aiming to reach target audiences between 11 to 35 years old via culturally relevant content. 

This agency offers content strategy, influencer engagement, content creation, social amplification and branded experiences. 

The focus is on making sure brands stay culturally relevant via content that resonates with today’s youth and street cultures.

Urban Nerds Collective has worked with a variety of brands, including G-Shock, Heineken, BBC, Converse, The North Face, Red Bull, Dr Martens, and Lynx. 

For example, they ran a campaign for the UK launch of Dr Martens' #DMsLITE product, which involved product seeding, user-generated content, branded content, and live music activation. The campaign resulted in a reach of 7 million and 200,000 views.

4. Instrumental

Instrumental, part of the Blenheim Chalcott business portfolio, uses cutting-edge technology to save brands time and money on their influencer marketing. 

The agency started off by scouting music talent on social media, and has since evolved to identify music creators in all industries and across YouTube, Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, TikTok, and Snapchat. It operates on an invite-only basis, inviting creators with fast growth and engaged fan bases to join their network.

Instrumental works with an impressive range of businesses: consumer brands, e-commerce companies, digital and communications agencies, game and app publishers, music labels, promoters, TV and YouTube networks.

5. TIKTAL

TIKTAL is a TikTok influencer agency that specializes in connecting creators with top brands across the globe. For creators, the agency takes the hassle out of finding brands to work with and sources the most relevant brand deals for them. For brands, TIKTAL handles the full campaign process, from start to finish.

Since their inception, they’ve worked with over 500 brands, including the likes of Nike, Samsung and Estee Lauder, and have managed over 100 creators on an exclusive basis, with a combined reach of 50 million followers.

TIKTAL offers brands:

• Talent verification and cultural fit.

• Campaign management, from A to Z.

• Data-based analysis and campaign reporting.

6. Goat Agency

Goat Agency, based in London, creates campaigns for global brands such as Malibu, Formula E, KFC, British Airways, Asics and Adidas. 

Their young founding team is dedicated to crafting data-backed, impactful influencer marketing campaigns.

To ensure their campaigns meet brand needs, Goat analyzes the best performing influencers in their pool, and ranks them according to the brands’ chosen KPIs - namely average views, engagement rates, number of clicks, conversion rate, average sales value from previous promotional posts, etc.

The agency then discusses the campaign with the pre-selected influencers to find the optimum match. From there, Goat manages the entire influencer marketing process for the brand.

7. Disrupt

Disrupt positions itself as an “agile youth marketing agency” based out of London. It specializes in content creation, influencer marketing, and media planning. 

Founded by Matt Thorne and Phil Kemish, the agency has become a key player in the UK urban scene in terms of pioneering branded content. 

Their team, known as Disruptors, consists of experienced content creators, bloggers, artists and social media influencers. 

Recently, Disrupt created a successful campaign for Alize, building a network of over 100 influencers and arranging product placement in music videos featuring artists such as Big Narstie, Angel, Skepta and Cadet. They’ve won several industry awards, such as integrated content campaign of the year by UK Content Awards.

8. Fanbytes

Fanbytes is a top TikTok talent agency worldwide, providing comprehensive solutions to brands for creating content and running influencer campaigns. 

They “create and deliver scroll-stopping campaigns for brands on social” and aptly describe themselves as a “leading Gen Z Marketing Agency”.

Their services include influencer marketing focused on Gen Z audiences; creative strategy and content production for industry-beating engagement rates; and campaign management (both organic and paid to maximize reach as well as engagement). 

On top of this, their centralized platform provides brands with detailed analytics on the campaign and on each creator they’re working with. It also includes a clear approval workflow to make the overall sign off process as smooth and transparent as possible.

Fanbytes has an extensive network of over 3,000 influencers with over 2,000 campaigns delivered for leading brands such as Casio, Boohoo, Warner Music Group, Deezer, and the UK Government.

Conclusion

Brands in the UK, or who want to target specific UK demographics, can choose from a wide range of agencies to work with relevant influencers and run social media campaigns successfully.

Each agency will offer a slightly different suite of services, so have a think about what your brand really needs (influencer campaigns only or paid ads also?), and pick an agency that suits your needs.

On TheRostr, we empower ambitious talent agents to manage their roster, communicate with brands on deals and run branded campaigns all in one place. Check us out!