How to Start an Influencer Agency

Thinking about starting an influencer agency is one thing, actually doing it is another. The creator economy is booming, and brands are dedicating serious budgets to influencer marketing, creating a huge opportunity for sharp, well-connected agents. This guide gives you the practical, step-by-step roadmap to launch your own influencer agency, covering everything from finding your niche and signing talent to landing your first brand deal.

Define Your Niche and Services

You can’t be everything to everyone. The most successful influencer agencies are specialized. Trying to serve every industry and every type of creator will stretch you too thin and make it hard to build a strong reputation. Instead, focus your efforts.

Find Your Niche

Your niche is your agency’s home base. It’s the area where you’ll become the go-to expert. Consider specializing by:

• Industry: Focus on a vertical you know and love, like beauty, gaming, tech, parenting, food, or sustainable fashion. This allows you to build deep relationships with brands in that space.
• Platform: Become the ultimate expert for a specific platform. You could be a TikTok agency that understands trends inside and out, an Instagram agency that nails aesthetic content, or a YouTube agency specializing in long-form video.
• Creator Size: Decide which tier of influencer you want to represent. Working with micro-influencers (10k-100k followers) often means managing high-volume campaigns, while representing macro-influencers (500k+) involves bigger, more complex deals.
• Geography: You might start as a local agency connecting creators and businesses in your city or state before expanding.

Your choice of niche will define your talent roster, the brands you pitch, and your agency's entire identity.

Decide on Your Service Model

What will your agency actually do? There are two main models, and you can offer one or both.

1. Talent Management

In this model, you represent a roster of influencers. You are their agent. Your primary job is to find them paid opportunities, negotiate contracts, and manage their calendars. A brand comes to you looking for talent, and you connect them with a creator on your roster. You typically take a commission (usually 10-20%) on all deals you secure for your talent.

2. Full-Service Campaign Management

Here, your client is the brand, not the influencer. A brand hires your agency to create and execute an entire influencer marketing campaign from start to finish. This includes:

• Developing the campaign strategy and concept.
• Sourcing and vetting the right influencers (who may or may not be on your talent roster).
• Negotiating contracts and managing all payments.
• Overseeing content creation and approvals.
• Reporting on campaign performance and ROI.

This model is more involved but often comes with higher-paying retainers or project fees.

Set Up Your Business's Legal and Financial Foundation

This is the less glamorous part, but skipping these steps can cause massive headaches later. Get your house in order from day one to operate professionally and protect yourself.

Handle the Paperwork

Treat your agency like a real business, because it is. This means taking care of the fundamentals.

• Choose a Business Name: Pick something memorable, professional, and check to see if the domain and social media handles are available.
• Register a Business Entity: Form an LLC (Limited Liability Company) or another appropriate business structure. This protects your personal assets from business debts or lawsuits. Don’t operate as a sole proprietor if you can avoid it.
• Open a Business Bank Account: Keep your agency's finances completely separate from your personal money. This makes bookkeeping, taxes, and tracking profitability much, much easier.

Draft Your Standard Contracts

Never, ever do business on a handshake. You need clear, legally sound contracts to protect your agency, your clients, and your creators. It's smart to have a lawyer draft or review your templates. You'll need at least two main types:

Brand Agreement (Your contract with a client brand)

This document outlines the scope of your work for the brand. It should include:

• Clear deliverables (e.g., "three Instagram Reels, six Stories").
• Campaign timeline and key dates.
• Payment terms (How much? When will they pay you?).
• Content approval process.
• Usage rights (how long can the brand use the influencer's content?).
• Exclusivity clauses (can the influencer work with competitors?).
• Reporting metrics.

Influencer Agreement (Your contract with the talent)

This outlines the creator's responsibilities for a specific campaign. It should specify:

• Compensation and payment schedule.
• Exactly what content they need to create and post.
• Posting dates and platform requirements.
• FTC disclosure guidelines (making sure they label posts as ads).
• Deadlines for drafts and revisions.
• What happens if either party terminates the agreement.

Having solid templates ready makes you look professional and helps you close deals faster.

Find and Onboard Your First Influencers

Your agency is only as good as its talent. But finding and vetting creators is about more than just a big follower count.

How to Find Promising Talent

Start scouting for creators who align with your chosen niche.

• Manual Searching: Spend time on the platforms. Search relevant hashtags, look at who competitors are working with, and see who is getting great engagement in your industry.
• Creator Marketplaces: Platforms like Upfluence or Grin can help you discover talent, though they often come with a subscription fee.
• Check Out Your "Who To Follow" Lists: Social platforms are great at suggesting similar accounts. When you find a creator you like, check their "suggested for you" section to find more like them.

What to Look for in a Creator

A good influencer partner is more than a vanity metric. Here’s your vetting checklist:

• High Engagement Rate: A creator with 10k engaged followers is far more valuable than one with 100k silent ones. Look at the ratio of likes and comments to their follower count. An engagement rate of 2-5% is generally considered good.
• Audience Demographics: Does their audience match the target customer of the brands you want to work with? Ask creators for a screenshot of their audience analytics (age, gender, location).
• Content Quality: Do they produce high-quality, creative content that fits a brand's aesthetic? Are their photos clear and videos well-edited?
• Professionalism: When you reach out, are they responsive? Do they have a media kit? Professionalism is a strong signal that they’ll be easy to work with on a campaign.
• Brand Safety: Scan their past content. Are there any red flags or controversial posts that would make brands hesitant to partner with them?

Curate a small, high-quality roster to start. It’s better to have five amazing, reliable creators than 50 who are just okay.

Build Your Agency’s Brand and Find Clients

With your niche defined and a handful of potential creators identified, it's time to build your own brand identity and start pitching.

Create Your Agency’s Online Presence

Before brands give you their money, they’ll want to see who you are.

• Website & Portfolio: A simple, professional website is a must. It should explain your services, showcase the talent you represent (if you’re managing talent), and feature case studies of successful projects (once you have them).
• LinkedIn Profile: Position yourself and your agency as experts in your niche. Share industry insights, connect with brand marketing managers, and post about your agency's work and philosophy.

Pricing Your Services

How much should you charge? There are three common models:

• Commission Basis: For talent management, the industry standard is 10-20% of the value of any deal you bring to the influencer.
• Monthly Retainer: For campaign management, you might charge a brand a monthly fee to be their ongoing influencer marketing partner. This provides you with consistent, predictable income.
• Project-Based Fee: This is a flat fee for managing an entire campaign from start to finish. A good way to calculate this is to estimate your total costs (influencer fees, your time, any software costs) and add a markup of 20-30%.

How to Pitch and Land Brands

Now, the final piece: getting paid. It’s time to find and pitch brand clients.

1. Create a Target List: Brainstorm 20-30 brands in your niche that are already active in influencer marketing or could benefit from it.
2. Find the Right Contact: Look for titles like "Marketing Manager," "Brand Manager," or "Social Media Manager" on LinkedIn. These are usually the people who handle influencer budgets.
3. Craft a Killer Pitch: Your pitch, usually sent over email or a LinkedIn message, shouldn't be about you. It should be about them.
   • Identify Their Need: Show that you understand their brand and have observed their current marketing. For example, "I saw your latest summer campaign and had an idea for how you could expand its reach with a few key lifestyle creators on TikTok."
   • Offer a Solution: Briefly introduce your agency and a specific idea. You could suggest a few hand-picked influencers from your roster who would be a perfect fit.
   • Include a Call to Action: End with a simple request, like "Would you be open to a quick 15-minute call next week to discuss this further?"

Your first client is always the hardest to land. Don’t get discouraged. Focus on providing value, building relationships, and showing brands that you understand their goals.

Final Thoughts

Starting an influencer agency is a step-by-step process that combines savvy marketing skills with solid business operations. By choosing a specific niche, building a strong legal foundation, curating a roster of high-quality talent, and learning how to effectively pitch brands, you can build a thriving business in the heart of the creator economy.

As your agency grows, you’ll be juggling your own agency's social accounts and content calendars for dozens of clients across several platforms, which can get complicated fast. When we built Postbase, we focused on making a tool to solve that exact problem. Our platform makes it simple to manage multiple accounts from one clear, visual calendar, schedule content for all your clients at once, and keep all your DMs and comments in a single unified inbox, giving you back the time you need to focus on growth.