Understanding Influencer Marketing Technologies Help Marketers Effectively Apply This Amorphous Marketing Strategy
“A brand is no longer what we tell the consumer it is — it is what consumers tell each other it is.”
– Scott Cook
What is Influencer Marketing?
Jennifer Polk who is a research director for marketing leaders at Gartner states that Influencer Marketing is a core component of Social Marketing. It is a powerful tool to mold the audience’s beliefs and behaviors towards brands.
An Influencer is an individual who is famous and has has a large social media following. Essentially, brands engage influencers to market products for a targeted audience set.
‘Influencer Marketing’ as a term is coined exclusively when marketing is implemented on digital mediums.
Involving key people in marketing campaigns took roots from the late 18th Century with the pope endorsing patented medication.
Today, Influencer Marketing has evolved. 67% of Marcomm professionals want their content promotion to happen through influencers.
Evidently, Influencer Marketing hints loudly at having tremendous potential. Marketers should consider this capability to be very critical and absorb it at the earliest.
Influencer Marketing is also challenging!
Marketing professionals should know
- Who are Influencers?
- Why is Influencer Marketing fun?
- Which platforms to leverage for a strong Influencer campaign?
Also Read: Influencer Marketing Software Soon to Be a Part of Every CMO’s Stack
Who are Influencers and why is Influencer Marketing on the rise?
Influencers are people who have made a huge impact on their audience. Influencers add tremendous value to people’s lives via their area of expertise. This value can emerge from spheres ranging from spirituality to business.
Hence, Influencers can be
- Celebrities:
- They are individual media contributors who have amassed massive fan following across all age groups throughout the world.
- They don’t always personally connect with their audience because of a very high follower count.
- Celebrity Marketing is the strongest on Instagram due to the tremendous following.
- Industry stalwarts
Industry achievers are influencers because:
- Their thoughts are extremely valued and respected
- They have a huge following which is engaging and meaningful
- Enterprises truly cash in via their firebrand
- Enterprises also automatically empower their own brand
- Bloggers
Original content creators that create text which deeply relates and connects with their fans are popular influencers. This also includes microbloggers. Enterprises center their marketing strategy around them because
- They have the maximum connect with their followers
- They have personal relationships with their fans
- They do create original content for the brand
- Micro Influencers
Micro Influencers usually start their Social Media journey from scratch. They influence their followers because-
- They have a personal relationship with all their followers
- Their followers completely resonate with them
- Companies can target their fans and initiate personalized marketing campaigns.
The genesis of Social Media has fairly democratized the process of ‘being famous.’ Before Social Media, people had movies, magazines, television etc. dictating celebrity lists.
Now, anybody can become famous and amass following. Influencers are spread out in diverse subjects. This is excellent for Influencer marketers because they can incorporate marketing campaigns for a range of products.
Influencer marketing also works because
- Teenagers, 70% of them, find YouTubers more relatable than celebrities
- After family and friends, 88% people trust the verdict of Influencers
- Other formats of online marketing are getting saturated
What makes Influencer Marketing Platforms so exciting?
Influencer marketing has visibly added a dimension to the big blue marble of digital commerce. Backed by a strong theory and successful in practice, marketers are eager to adapt to and learn methodologies about the nature of Influencer marketing.
The sentiment of marketers around the globe is abuzz as they are eager to apply new and functional capabilities to future marketing campaigns. In order to do so, marketers would need tools to maximize digital strategy reach.
The digital market today is assisted by a plethora of functional software tools. A big set of these tools are dedicated to Influencer marketing platforms.
Hence, the combination of a stylish and new marketing platform coupled with the need to absorb a key method in marketing strategy has generated a lot of excitement within the marketer community.
Learning something new and applying it quickly may be stressful, so here are a few tools to make the marketer’s life easy.
Also Read: Influencer Marketing is the Fastest-Growing Online Customer Acquisition Strategy
Influencer Marketing Platforms
Retaining the excitement around Influencer marketing
Platform Influence
Famebit wants to attract brands that cater to a younger audience. This is visible from the platform’s bright color theme and pictures of millennials having loads of fun.
How does it work?
Famebit provides information about potential influencers for a brand and their follower count on every Social Media Platform. Their analytics are not as deep as other platforms but their goal is to provide fun content. They want to make reach their content to all targeted users for brand promotion. The best part, it’s inexpensive!
Platform Influence
An upstart that wants to completely define itself. Their website uses PewDiePie’s images liberally which says a lot about their affinity towards influencers.
How does it work?
They have two models for creators-
- Self-Service
- Influencer campaign management
They possibly house the entire Influencer database which amounts to over three million users. That’s across all Social Platforms including follower demographic information. Hence, they have an edge over the competition, because other platforms only display specific Influencer information. Creators can manage their campaign on an end-to-end basis on NeoReach.
Platform Influence
Webfluential has an Influencer first approach. Influencers can host their profile on this platform. Webfluential then becomes a matchmaker between Influencers and brands that they can associate with.
How does it work?
Webfluential allows Influencers to put up their entire portfolio along with previous statistics allowing them to approach brands. This helps Influencers be proactive about which brands to work with. Basically, any influencer who knows his/her creative forte will eventually find good work. They can also manage their bids on this platform, putting creative in the driver’s seat which is not really a unique selling point of any other Influencer Marketing platform.
Platform Influence
Upfluence is an Influencer content-centric Platform which focuses on content marketing and Native advertising.
How does it work?
Upfluence works via their ‘Reachr’ and ‘Publishr’ programs. Reachr is where brands can reach bloggers and brief them about the content that needs to be created. Contracts and payments can be managed through the platform itself. Bloggers from almost 200 countries specializing in several industries are registered on Upfluence.
Publishr allows companies to throw content out there and collaborate with Influencer bloggers who already have relationships with the press in order to get the writing pieces published.
Platform Influence
Speakr’s philosophy revolves around connecting brands with ‘made’ Influencers. Influencers who are a huge authority in their area of interest find a place with Speakr.
How does it work?
Speakr is in entirety ‘made out of data-analysis’ over a long period of time. With 20,000 dynamic and authoritative influencers, Speakr allows brands to create content that can reach millions of people.
Platform Influence
Traackr’s exclusive Influencer Relationship management feature helps it stand out from the rest of the platforms.
How does it work?
Traackr believes that a short-term relationship between an influencer and a brand is solely based for a monetary benefit. What Traackr truly wants to do is build everlasting relationships between the holy trinity of brands, Influencers, and their followers. Their philosophy is fundamentally based on the element of trust. Traackr even goes a level up to loop into the network, people who influence the influencers.
Platform Influence
Based on the principle of streamlining and making content easier to make and publish.
How does it work?
Essentially a do-it-yourself platform containing a list of 150,000 influencers, Revfluence is perfect for agencies who are making an Influencer Marketing campaign in-house. They provide a Collaboration Toolkit to help facilitate easy and meaningful content creation.
The work ethic of Influencer Marketing is fun because marketers get to collaborate with a diverse set of people. Influencer marketing promises a creative pilgrimage for marketers as well as Influencers. Further, as a number of platforms are available, the possibilities of designing marketing campaigns are endless. Hence, enterprises should take maximum leverage of this emerging and steady marketing stream.
Recommended Read: Influencer Marketing & Your Customer Journey
