The Job of Tech in Influencer Marketing

Tech is the connective tissue that binds the influencer marketing ecosystem. So much so, that without it, the niche would be an episode out of Black Mirror. But when people think of influencer marketing tech, their imagination limits it to social platforms and apps that help create content.

While they form the very bedrock of the niche, it is not the extent to which technology plays a role in influencer marketing. This has become even truer in the past year and more. It is Technology that solved the most fundamental problem in influencer marketing - how to cast a broader and deeper net, i.e., scale.

With maturity comes problems

When influencer marketing was still at its nascent stage, collaborations were easy like Sunday mornings. You got in touch with the most prominent social media celebrity and compensated them for a post or two.

As the niche grew, it began having teething problems. The biggest influencer didn’t bring you engagement, only vanity metrics such as “likes.” The industry quickly found a solution – content creators.

Creators could actually influence the purchase decision of their followers. They gave brands harder engagements such as post saves, story taps backs, genuine comments and replies.

The niche matured further and with it came to an almost insurmountable impediment - weeding through the ever-expanding creator community to find the one person with brand synergy.

67.7% of marketers blatantly accept that finding the right creator for a campaign is one of the most consequential challenges. It is similar to looking for a needle in a haystack, and if you end up with the wrong one, all effort flush down the drain.

The solution is technology.

Like most modern disciplines, technology became the saviour. Influencer marketing platforms like the now-defunct FameBit by YouTube smoothened the wrinkle. These software-based firms take on the labour-intensive task of searching for creators.

A few of them are simply self-service platforms. They put to use algorithms that help brands crawl through a massive creator database for the correct fit. Others work as branded content marketplaces where creators have more power. These tend to personally match-make brands with creators.

But no one can limit the use of technology, so these platforms do more than getting pairings right. They offer a whole gamut of additional management support to creators and brands.

Some platforms are even equipped to deliver aid throughout the influencer campaigning process - from uploading a practical and creative brief for the creators to managing campaigns on multiple channels to generating the campaign’s success report.

With influencer marketing snowballing further, it is clear that marketers face a new problem - using a single creator is not effective anymore. They need to rope in more creators for the same influencer campaign to achieve profitable gains.

It lets you scale

The problem is influencer marketing is inherently human. How do you scale something like that? Leveraging multiple well-known creators is out of option. They are too heavy on the wallet. The answer lies in micro-influencers. These are creators that have a smaller following, but a highly engaged and targeted one. A brand can collaborate with dozens, if not hundreds, of micro-influencers and shell out less than what they would be a popular creator.

Instead of putting all the eggs in one basket, or more accurately in one creator, a brand diversifies. It does so at a lesser cost, and it reaches a broader audience while achieving more engagement.

It’s this need to collaborate with a battery of micro-influencers that has given rise to a new breed of influencer marketing platforms. These platforms allow brands to share the campaign brief with all creators registered on the app. Creators submit their content. The brand buys as many or as little of it they like. The paid-for content is then posted on the social profiles of the creators.

Since there is no limit to the number of creators who can participate in the campaign, in one go, the brand gets perpetual rights to an eye-popping volume of content. And if the platform makes use of brand advocates (creators who are also product users), then the brand also experiences organic surge in traffic and sales.

More than that, the platforms tend to have CPE based pricing. With Cost Per Engagement, brands get more for their buck while shaving down marketing budgets.

Putting people and tech together.

The level of complexity in influencer marketing is surging, and brands have their work cut out. They have to churn out more campaigns and do it faster. Also, they have to maintain a presence in each of the ever-burgeoning media channels and do it well. They continually have to adapt to emerging trends and do it at lightning speed.

Tech helps manage and streamline every strand of this complicated web. And this is just the beginning. Scott Brinker estimated that the AdTech and MarTech space had about 350 companies in 2012. 8 years later, the landscape is 50X the original size. Take a bird-eye's look, and you’ll see the tech evolution in influencer marketing is very similar to the rise of tech in advertising and promotion.

Sooner than you think influencer marketing tech will have its own ecosystem too. And rather than shying away, brands will scramble to embrace it!

The article is written by Ankit Agarwal, Founder, Do Your Thng