You’re now a few years into your talent management journey, and things are looking up. You’ve run many successful campaigns for clients. You have an impressive roster of creators who’ve consistently delivered. And you’ve found the sweet spot for distributing talent between managers.
But now that your agency’s growing, so is your client roster. That means you’re bound to need more creators to meet rising campaign needs and run larger campaigns for your clients.
With that comes a few additional challenges that are entirely new to your agency. Scaling your creator roster isn’t as easy as simply recruiting more influencers.
In this post, I break down some of the biggest pitfalls to scaling your talent roster. I also help you navigate how to scale effectively without losing the personal touch. Let’s get started.
Part of the reason why influencers love working with your agency (and why your campaigns are such a success) is that you’ve been able to work closely with them. You’re coming to them with personalized opportunities, following up regularly, easy to reach if they have any questions, and negotiating with their interests in mind.
But that’s not hard when you have just a handful of influencers to manage. Double the numbers, and you’ll instantly feel the pressure to keep up.
The GOAT Agency put together a campaign for Minor Figures to promote the brand’s Hyper Oat range. It was a fairly large campaign involving 24 creators, who produced 56 pieces of content.
Imagine you have to run a similar campaign when you’re used to smaller activations involving 5-10 influencers. Your work doesn’t stop at simply identifying and recommending which creators to work with. You’ll have to handle negotiations, stay on top of contracts, and ensure your talents are delivering.
Now meetings have to be rescheduled multiple times and emails go answered. And your talent managers are constantly stressed and burnt out.
Having been part of a freelance network that went through this type of growth, the pattern is very familiar. As much as I enjoyed working with the talent team, it was becoming increasingly difficult to reach them. I had to ping them on Slack multiple times to get an answer, which led to delays in content delivery.
So with that said, here are some of the pitfalls that you might experience when scaling your influencer roster:
Connections aren’t formed over brief messages and occasional emails.
As agencies scale from five to 50 talents, communication is the first thing that will break down. When you lose the personal touch, you ultimately lose the connection.
The connections come easily when you’re regularly talking to each talent for 30-40 minutes over video chat, discussing things beyond contracts and opportunities. Now you have to cut your calls off at 10-15 minutes as you try to spread the time evenly across multiple talents. That leaves you with little time to bond with the creators in your roster.
And losing the connection means you’re also likely to lose them to another agency. So even as you scale, you might experience lower influencer retention.
More emails and messages to answer mean something’s likely to slip through the cracks. One missed email will turn into two, and then three, and then four, and the next thing you know, you’re losing track of what you’ve discussed with a specific talent.
This could affect the quality of work, with creators turning in content that doesn’t meet specifications because you failed to share the details or thoroughly review their draft. Or they could miss important deadlines, which will push back campaign timelines and cause further delays.
Delays are one thing. Missed information and mix-ups can also lead to costly mistakes. For instance, failing to get usage rights from a particular influencer could mean expensive fines.
A larger talent roster can be complicated and time-consuming to manage, especially if you’re doing most of it manually.
Previously, you might have stored the contracts for all of your influencers in a folder and tracked important details in an Excel sheet. But as your creator roster grows, you’ll find it increasingly difficult to track down important documents and information.
For instance, does a particular creator refuse to work with certain brands even if they’re in the same niche? Or do they prefer to work with a specific type of brand?
That’s why it helps to invest in talent agency software that lets you keep track of everything—from contracts and contact details to tiny influencer-specific details—in one place. Influencity makes it easy with a Notes feature where you can note down important details about each creator in your roster, such as their clothing size.
The key to successful talent management is figuring out the ideal manager-to-talent ratio. Managing more influencers than you can handle means you can’t pay close attention to each talent, which will affect the quality of their work.
Here’s a general benchmark based on how top agencies are distributing talent between managers:
So what’s the “Dunbar’s number” of talent management? And how many influencers can one manager actually handle? There’s no single right answer because there are plenty of factors that will influence a manager’s talent capacity, whether it’s the intensity of support they offer or the types of influencers on their roster.
Let’s look at some of the main factors that will help you figure out your ideal manager-to-talent ratio:
If your roster consists of influencers with large followings, you’ll typically want to assign no more than five creators to each manager.
Larger influencers on the macro and mega scale require more time for complex negotiations, especially since they involve major brand deals and high-ticket partnerships. They’ll need more intensive support and hands-on management.
On the other hand, if you’re mainly dealing with smaller micro-creators and nano-influencers, partnerships are often more straightforward. These creators might need more help finding opportunities, but less hands-on support through negotiations.
This leaves managers free to take on more creators. So you might be able to assign up to 10 talents per manager.
Not every major influencer needs intensive support. And some smaller creators may need more hands-on management to grow their careers. That’s why influencer size alone isn’t enough to decide on the capacity of your talent managers.
Instead, think of the actual scope of work involved when managing each talent.
When talent managers have access to tools and resources to streamline their workflow and agency operations, it leaves them with the capacity to handle a larger roster. Having junior agents and talent coordinators to handle day-to-day admin tasks will give them more time for strategy and planning.
Similarly, automated tools and talent management software will help them manage their tasks more efficiently, freeing up time to handle more creators.
For instance, platforms like Influencity can help talent managers automate influencer discovery and outreach. This makes it easy to recruit hundreds of influencers in just a few clicks. It also simplifies day-to-day admin tasks with tools to track interactions, content, and payments in one place.
That’s why larger talent management agencies have the capacity to keep scaling their roster. They have the resources and tools needed to streamline every aspect of their operations.
Even with a smaller talent roster, some managers may still struggle to keep track of all their creator data. That’s why centralized talent management tools are so vital to the process, as it helps you store all your influencer data in one place and easily manage talent without having to switch between platforms.
Platforms like Influencity come with powerful Influencer Relationship Management tools to centralize your talent management.
You can use the influencer database to keep track of all the creators in your roster, along with all their necessary details like:
It even gets down to the nitty-gritty, like their clothing size, shoe size, and favorite color. This helps you stay on top of talent-specific info and skip the back and forth. So you won’t have to verify a creator’s shoe size multiple times for a brand to send them a free pair.
Got any additional details that you must remember about an influencer? Influencity lets you add notes about each creator, so it’s easy to highlight the most important bits, like whether a certain talent doesn’t do alcohol brands or whether they only work with vegan brands. So even if another manager takes over as you scale your roster, the hand-off is as seamless as possible.
The IRM also lets you keep track of every interaction with your entire talent roster. That means you won’t have to switch between emails and messaging apps to see what you’ve said or who’s opened your email.
It’s easy to look back at your communication history and verify certain details or check if you’ve missed any important info. And you can quickly pick back up on your previous conversation, which streamlines communication.
So you’ve scaled your roster, and you want to pitch it to a brand. Having a template to follow will help you standardize the process. Your email pitch should include:
Influencity lets you scale your roster and talent management efforts with ease. Sign up for a tailored demo to see how it works.
Influencer talent managers manage brand partnerships for the creators they represent. This often involves finding and vetting partnership opportunities, negotiating deals, overseeing contracts, and planning career strategy.
Factors like influencer size, scope of work, and support resources play a key role in a manager’s talent capacity.
One manager can typically manage between 5 and 10 influencers, depending on various factors like the intensity of support and the size of influencers.
You can scale your influencer talent roster by using a centralized talent management platform to streamline data tracking, influencer outreach, and negotiations.