There’s a new player in digital marketing: the virtual influencers; they are virtual characters who publish content and act like human influencers. They are not standalone and are almost managed by a person, agency or company.
Read more about virtual influencers.
This article discusses various ways to connect with virtual influencers, hire them, and use them in your marketing.
3 Ways to Hire or Collaborate with Virtual Influencers
You can use three primary approaches to collaborate with a virtual influencer for your marketing campaigns. Each method has its own advantages and considerations, so let’s explore the three quickly and then discuss each in depth.
1. Direct Communication with Virtual Influencers
Virtual influencers are on social media. Naturally, the first method of communication that comes to mind is messaging them directly.
You can DM virtual influencers like human influencers. However, it’s important to note that many virtual influencers exclusively work with specific brands.
Try a direct message, and some virtual influencers may respond to you. We’re not saying that it won’t work. But we do daresay that most (with top virtual influencers among them) won’t reply. In the latter case, you might try to track down the agency or company that created the virtual influencer to see if they’d be open to a collaboration. Some of them are missing any links or descriptions to help us identify the manager or owner!
Direct communication itself is self-explanatory: you send messages or emails, work out a plan, and it’s done.
The initial challenge is to receive a response or uncover the owners.
The second challenge is that working directly with virtual influencers is sometimes expensive. Their pricing isn’t consistent across all brands, and their managers may increase rates for famous companies or according to campaign size.
Based on our experience, we have found that reaching agreements and communicating with agencies or intermediaries in charge of influencer marketing campaigns is simpler, quicker, and less expensive.
Another challenge arises with large-scale campaigns. Imagine a campaign where you must collaborate with 150 or more virtual influencers simultaneously. Coordinating with each one, managing communications, and executing the campaign can be daunting and time-consuming.
In such cases, other options may prove more practical and cost-effective for more extensive campaigns.
Keep in mind that creating content with virtual influencers can be more challenging compared to real influencers. A real influencer can easily record a video with their phone, and the entire editing process may take just a few hours. However, for virtual influencers, the content creation process, cost, and time heavily depend on the underlying technology.
Currently, the biggest challenge is to create videos featuring the influencer herself.
While high-quality, realistic virtual influencer content can take time to produce, the availability of AI-powered tools has significantly shortened the production time for simpler projects.
Direct communication with virtual influencers is a good option when you want an exclusive Long-term Relationship with one influencer to hire them as a brand ambassador.
You can strengthen your relationship and potentially get more authentic content from virtual influencers if you offer them exclusive opportunities, like early access to products or services. Remember that while the influencer is virtual, the team managing them is very real! nurture those human relationships to have them by your side in the long term.
In conclusion, if you want to collaborate with a few virtual influencers, try to connect directly with their management team and establish a long-term relationship with them.
2. Virtual Influencer Platforms
There are several platforms out there that have a vast list or database of human influencers. They provide influencer profiles, audience engagement data, and tools for managing campaigns. You can compare influencers in terms of price, engagement metrics, target demographics, etc, and choose the one or more that best fits your business.
So, the second option that may come to mind is to find one of these platforms just for hiring virtual influencers.
This could be a great option for collaborating with virtual influencers in the future, but virtual influencer platforms are relatively new and still in their early stages. Some traditional influencer marketing platforms include virtuals, which are helpful in creating a mixed campaign.
If this option is available to you, remember that it could be more straightforward than direct outreach. However, you should carefully evaluate every choice to find those that align with your brand and marketing goals. Read our complete guide to virtual influencers for more tips like this!
As we mentioned in the direct outreach section, most virtual influencers today are made with specific ends in mind, so they don’t respond to you at all or won’t work with your brand. They’re also rare. As a result, a virtual influencer platform won’t even have a large number of personalities to list.
Virtual influencer platforms are a great choice for extensive campaigns and for connecting with unresponsive virtuals!
3. Virtual Influencer Agencies
Our experience shows that most businesses can’t handle implementing virtual influencers-oriented campaigns from scratch mostly because lack of technical expertise, and not having a strategy in this Emerging marketing channel.
As a result, we give you a better option.
Virtual influencer agencies (Like us) primarily provide a range of marketing services, including virtual influencer marketing.
These agencies typically consist of many experts in various fields, including marketing, content creation, creativity, campaign management, etc.
They have collaborations and business relationships with several virtual influencer managers and owners. They can easily add as many virtual influencers as needed to your campaign and create suitable content.
For instance, we have a segmented list based on content topics, languages and target countries, follower count, engagement rate, and their overall performance in previous campaigns. We choose between them depending on your campaign type and concept.
If your brand is new to virtual influencer campaigns, working with an agency can significantly reduce your learning curve, help design a comprehensive campaign strategy, and facilitate collaboration with the best virtual influencers. This can also help you avoid potential risks along the way.
At Dream Farm Agency, we specialize in creating and executing high-impact campaigns that drive real results. We handle everything from strategy to implementation. Let’s schedule a meeting about your first virtual influencer marketing campaign.
How virtual influencer agencies work
The collaboration process with agencies follows a specific order and procedure. Usually, during this process, you will also receive consultation to achieve the best results from your campaign.
Below, we briefly explain these steps.
1. Consultation Meeting
The first is setting up a consultation meeting. During this meeting, we’ll dive deep into understanding your brand’s goals, the target audience, and how virtual influencers can be effectively integrated into your marketing strategy. We’ll also explore creative concepts, campaign objectives, and content ideas to ensure alignment with your brand image.
At this step, we will send an RFI form to request detailed and documented information about your campaign.
2. Create and Send the RFI
This RFI outlines your expectations, preferred virtual influencers, the type of content to be produced, and the overall scope of the project. The RFP is then sent to relevant agencies or virtual influencer managers for their feedback and collaboration proposals.
3. Writing and presenting a Proposal
After receiving RFI, the proposal preparation process begins. This includes finalizing campaign details, pricing, deliverables, timelines, and any additional terms for the collaboration. We work closely with you to ensure the proposal meets your campaign needs and budget.
4. Agreement and signing the contract
After the campaign details are finalized, a contract will be prepared by the agency and signed after review.
4. Executing the Campaign
With the agreements in place, we move forward with campaign execution. This involves coordinating content creation, whether it’s posts, videos, or interactive elements featuring the virtual influencers. We manage the entire process from concept to delivery, ensuring the content is engaging and resonates with your audience.
5. Ongoing Relationship
A successful campaign can lead to a long-term partnership. We work to maintain a strong relationship with virtual influencers and their management teams, ensuring future campaigns can be executed smoothly. Continuous collaboration also allows for content that evolves with your brand and audience preferences.
This structured approach ensures a seamless and effective collaboration with virtual influencers, helping your brand maximize its potential in this innovative marketing space.
Why Not Create a Virtual Influencer?
Creating a dedicated one may be the best option if you are a brand that looks for truly unique and exclusive virtual influencer.
In other words, the great upside to this option is complete control over the influencer’s appearance, personality, and content.
Now, let’s take a look at this option in more detail to help you decide.
Benefits of creating a dedicated virtual influencer
Having a virtual influencer on your side comes with many benefits. In the following section, we will review some of top advantages of having a virtual influencer.
Unlimited Storytelling Opportunities
This is the most significant benefit of having a dedicated virtual influencer for a brand. We need to explain this benefit a bit to better understand it.
As emphasized in previous sections, the 3D appearance of a virtual influencer is only what is seen; the crucial part is its story, character, and strategy. Allow me to elaborate on these three essential components.
Also, keep in mind that 3D character generation platforms (almost with AI) that create multiple images and videos, do not support you in developing a strategy for presence and growth on social media, nor in creating a personality and story.
Be aware that merely having a model and producing videos alone doesn’t offer much benefit.
The character of a virtual influencer goes beyond its appearance. Before anything else, you need to design its character. You must determine what this personality likes, what their job is, what they hate, what good or bad habits they have, what upsets them, and many other aspects that all need thoughtful development.
The story of a virtual influencer encompasses its past and future. Where did they come from? What experiences do they have? What goals are they pursuing? How do they think about the world around them? And anything else that is important for people and builds the personality or world of this influencer.
Finally, a virtual influencer needs a strategy to gain fame in the online and offline world and to influence in alignment with the brand. This strategy might include teasing phases, unveiling, methods to increase followers on social media, communication and PR plans, advertising plans, brand image strategy, and many other components.
Full Control on Content and Appearance
Having a real (human) exclusive influencer or brand ambassador offers many advantages for brands, but it also brings numerous problems and costs!
For example, brands expect their influencer to adhere to brand guidelines and limitations. However, this issue, which might seem simple, consumes a lot of time and energy from marketing managers.
Some influencers do not stick to the scenarios you write, some don’t observe appearance etiquettes, and others don’t convey the tone and emotions you expect correctly.
Now imagine having an influencer with an appearance entirely similar to real influencers, over whom you have control down to the smallest details, and you receive exactly the images and videos you had in mind.
You control what clothes they wear, what makeup they have, the tone they speak with, what they say, and more.
Cost-Effective in the Long Run
Developing and launching a virtual influencer might be costly for brands initially, but note that the cost of producing content is low. More importantly, you can also use the virtual influencer in other marketing programs.
Higher Engagement
It might sound strange, but it’s true! The engagement rate of virtual influencers who have worked strategically and produced high-quality content has been higher than similar real influencers and has multiplied growth.
One clear and simple reason is the novelty of virtual influencers themselves, which makes people follow them out of curiosity.
The second reason is a bit deeper. Suppose a virtual influencer publishes content with the right strategy due to better performance and the absence of video production limitations. In that case, it generally attracts more attention, can produce more content, and its content is more appealing to new generations. Altogether, these factors help virtual influencers achieve higher engagement rates.
Keep in mind, this is not guaranteed for every campaign. Engagement depends on the quality of content, audience fit, and marketing strategy.
24/7 Availability
One of the most significant advantages of having a virtual influencer is their constant availability. You can produce content featuring the virtual influencer at any time, with no limitations on the number or volume of content produced.
Despite the advantages of creating a new virtual influencer for your brand, there are, of course, associated expenses. Lets explore the short-term and long-term costs associated with developing a branded virtual influencer. It is essential to balance these costs against long-term benefits.
Initial Costs
The upfront costs of creating a virtual influencer can be significant, considering the investment in character design, backstory development, 3D modeling, texturing, rendering, voice acting, and AI training. While there are shortcuts, such as using AI character generators with prompts, the results are often not suitable for brands. These tools may generate basic images, but brands require high-quality videos and customizable visuals where every detail can be precisely controlled—not a process that relies on tweaking prompts endlessly.
Luckily, we can handle all of that for you, from developing characters, strategy, and story to activating campaigns and making it a star. All you need to do is contact us!
Ongoing Costs
This is where your investments in the initial phase generate profits. The long-term costs of using a virtual influencer are much lower than hiring and working with a brand ambassador.
Content Creation
Creating visual content usually comes with a high cost, which often leads brands to look for cost-reduction strategies. You may have experienced the process of recording in an in-house studio or outsourcing video production to studios and agencies, and you know how challenging that can be. Now, imagine being able to produce videos featuring your own virtual influencer without needing equipment, studio space, and actors.
Content produced using the virtual influencers which we develop, combines 3D modeling with AI-powered video production and editing tools. The simpler the videos you need, the more cost-effective and faster the process becomes. Overall, the cost of creating content with a virtual influencer is significantly lower than if you were to film and produce content with a human influencer.
If your character is animated, the time and cost of producing videos and images using the virtual influencer will depend on the length of each video and the quality details. Most brands tend to prefer realistic, AI-based virtual influencers because they come with lower costs.
We have a range of content production options to choose from based on your strategy or ideas.
Social Media Management
Although you will have a virtual influencer, remember that this character will still need a manager to upload content according to the planned schedule, oversee content creation, and handle related tasks.
Some tasks, like responding to repetitive messages and comments, can be managed more quickly and cost-effectively with AI, but a human manager is still necessary in certain situations.
It’s worth noting that your brand’s existing social media manager can also handle the responsibilities of the virtual influencer.
We’ll walk you through all of it, of course! Once you have the influencer, content creation will be your main cost, but it is still lower than content production with real influencers. However, since a virtual influencer changes campaign strategies all around, you may also want to consider a raise for marketing, paid media, collaboration fees, etc.
Final Word
Collaborating with virtual influencers can offer exciting possibilities for your brand. Whether you choose to work with existing virtual personalities or create your own, this emerging field comes with its benefits, opportunities, and costs.
If you create one, you’ll have a long-term asset that doesn’t take off days, more campaign ideas, and complete creative freedom. And if you need help, we can do it for you.
With our extensive experience in virtual influencers marketing, we can help you create compelling content that resonates with your audience, whether you’re looking to collaborate with an existing virtual personality or build your own. Let us guide you through every step of the process—from character creation to campaign execution. Contact us today to start transforming your marketing with virtual influencers!
Arya
