Tag: influencer

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Outreach

Top Influencer Marketing Platforms to Tap Into

There are several top influencer marketing platforms to tap into this year. Leading influencer marketing platforms include AspireIQ, Upfluence, and CreatorIQ, offering tools to connect brands with relevant influencers. These platforms provide analytics for campaign tracking, influencer discovery tools, and ROI measurement capabilities. They cater to businesses of all sizes, facilitating effective influencer partnerships that align with brand values and marketing goals.

With the rise of the internet, new marketing practices are developing at a more rapid speed than ever before. Keeping up with the latest digital marketing trends is important to any business that wants to remain relevant and competitive. One trend that has been used consistently to deliver positive results is influencer marketing. In this practice, companies collaborate with individuals known as influencers to promote their brands in creative ways that resonate with potential customers.

Influencers can help your business to create a buzz, reach a wider audience and increase engagement. All of these things have the potential to help you reach your marketing and sales goals. In order to connect with relevant influencers, your best bet is to connect with an influencer marketing platform. These platforms can provide a number of resources to assist you in getting the most from your work with influencers. Along with matching you with the right influencers, a quality platform can also provide campaign monitoring and measure return on your investment. Keep reading below to some of the top influencer marketing platforms to tap into in order to make your collaborative efforts run more smoothly and  become more successful.

IZEA

IZEA is one of the originators in the influencer marketing sphere. They’ve been around since 2006 when they began paying bloggers to create content on behalf of brands. Because of this long history, IZEA is a platform you can trust. They have perfected the art of creating and managing influencer marketing campaigns. They can also help you to analyze and amplify your campaigns. IZEA’s platform allows you to connect with influencers within your preferred demographics. They also give you a convenient dashboard to manage every aspect of your campaign, from influencers to payments. You’ll love that you can measure influencer performance in real time across various social media platforms.

AspireIQ

AspireIQ seeks to help businesses identify influencers relevant to their niche. They ease this process with their recommendation engine that helps you connect with influencers similar to ones you’ve already engaged in campaigns with. In addition, they offer a unique feature that lets you see which influencers have been successful in other campaigns. Through the AspireIQ platform, you can also manage your communities and track how your campaigns are performing. Task automation for things like making payments, content reviews and product tracking is also possible.

Upfluence

Upfluence is powered by AI, artificial intelligence. It has the unique benefit of allowing you to search for influencers based on social media platform. You’re able to check out the accounts of individuals on the channels that are most relevant to your audience and customers. In addition, Upfluence pre-screens their influencers in order to determine the quality of their engagement and reach. Those wishing to work with global influencers are in luck, as Upfluence’s database contains professionals from 150 countries around the world. They have an extensive filter system that lets you search by various demographics and performance indicators, including engagement rates and geolocation. You can measure your ROI, obtain real-time updates and send bulk emails with their software.

Tapinfluence

Tapinfluence was founded in 2003 working specifically with brands and bloggers. They now connect with various types of creators and tout themselves as the world’s first Influencer-Generated Content Engine. This platform provides you with in-depth information on potential influencers of interest. You can check out such stats as their audience reach and the real-time cost per engagement (CPE). Their system can assist you in such aspects of influencer marketing as campaign briefing, content creation, communication, promotion and review.

Tidal Labs

Tidal Labs is a platform that automates workflow related to your influencer marketing campaigns. They have a robust AI-powered database that gives you the power to filter results in order to find the perfect influencer for your campaign. Automation is the name of the game. You can get so much more done in less time such as information gathering, product distribution, amplification of influencer content and payment release. Also, it’s easy to edit  and rate influencer content quickly through the use of this system.

Grapevine

Grapevine is a marketing platform that lets you tailor your campaigns in ways that best reach and engage your targeted demographic. You can find popular and well-performing influencers in your niche, scale your influencer programs as needed and measure your most relevant analytics. Grapevine staff have already vetted the influencers they promote, so you can feel secure in the quality of your relationships. In addition, Grapevine gives you a direct line to influencers to ease the negotiation process.

Captiv8

Captiv8 claims to be “revolutionizing how brands connect with the world.” And they give you the tools to do just that. First, they help you connect with the influencers who can best promote your business in the most relevant ways. A particular advantage of this platform is the ways in which it helps you track advanced metrics like sentiment analysis, EMV and deep engagement data to give you a broader picture of your ROI.

Trackr

As with other influencer marketing platforms, Trackr offers solutions to help you with a multitude of tasks. They stand out from the pack in a couple ways, though. You can get a look at the audience insights of individual influencers in order to determine which ones fit your most important campaign requirements. In addition, Trackr lets you track online conversations so you can validate the ways in which influencers engage with their followers.

Ambassador

Ambassador considers themselves to be a referral software platform. Their system can help you with referral marketing, affiliate marketing, influencer marketing and partner marketing. So, this platform is a fabulous choice when you’re looking for a comprehensive all-in-one solution for your marketing needs. Ambassador allows you to conveniently track all the advocates you partner with in one simple dashboard.

You have a lot of choices when it comes to services to help with your influencer marketing campaigns. These are simply some of the best influencer marketing platforms around. Check them out to see which one might be a good fit for your needs.

Categories
Outreach

9 Obsolete Influencer Marketing Practices to Avoid in 2019

Influencers spend a lot of time building an authentic voice that followers can connect with and relate to. The public views them as trustworthy sources of information. These influencers have built reputations for honesty and accuracy in reviewing products and services. It’s very “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” – so to speak.

Partnering with people who are considered influencers is a sure-fire way to generate interest in your own brand. That said, it’s time to review your own influencer outreach strategy and make some changes that will propel it to the next level in 2019.

Having Loose Guidelines

Gone are the days where you should choose an influencer simply because they work in your niche (or even a closely-related niche). You need to take some time to find influencers who have values and voices that closely match your brand. A good influencer isn’t going to do a one-and-done review of your product or service, they’re going to get involved with your brand because they like it.

If you have a strong plan, your influencers will become brand ambassadors that people recognize as related to your brand. Those influencers can’t be just anybody; you need to build relationships with them, as you would with any other business partner or customer.

Caring About Follower Counts

The influencer’s follower count isn’t the end-all-be-all test of their marketing power. In some cases, it’s not even the right measuring tool. What matters is how much engagement your potential influencer gets on their posts, especially in terms of likes and comments, because that’s what drives conversion.

When you take that number and compare it to the total number of followers they have, what percentage of people are engaging? That percentage is the number you should be looking for. Anywhere around five to 10 percent is usually decent.

As for larger followings – sure, they’re awesome. But those smaller micro-influencers are worth investing in, too.

That said, make sure you are taking a close look at the type of engagement. If you see a bunch of responses that are just emojis, or a lot of accounts posting very similar comments, you may be looking at an account that has purchased followers.

Not Researching Your Influencer’s Followers

Yes, you do need to spend a little bit of time analyzing your potential influencer’s followers. It doesn’t matter if they identify with your brand if they’re not old enough to buy your products. Worse yet, imagine setting up an entire influencer campaign only to find that most of their audience is in foreign market- and you don’t even ship there.

Don’t assume a female beauty blogger has a primarily female audience. Don’t assume that all of an influencer’s followers are real (hence, checking engagement rates). Go deeper and tuck in to create a firm persona of who’s following.

Using Cold Outreach Strategies

Cold outreach is like cold calling or cold emailing. It’s likely to get your inquiry tossed in the trash. And can you blame them? Good influencers get several emails per day and they can’t deal with them all. You need to warm your potential influencers up by following their pages, engaging with them, and showing interest in what they do. By getting involved, you become less of a “stranger” when you ultimately do try to pitch your company strategy.

Giving Influencers Exact Instructions

Ok, yeah — you should still give your influencer instructions, but they need to be needs-based in a way that addresses both your preferences and how your influencer gets results. You can’t just send out an influencer kit, give them strict instructions for what they have to do, and hope for results. Even if they agree, the attempt will come off fake and make it seem like they’re reading from a script.

What to do instead? Build better relationships and create marketing plans tailored to each influencer. We guarantee you’ll see a better ROI if your influencer is given some flexibility in choosing how they showcase your product into their own brand’s voice.

Winging It

It’s time to stop flying by the seat of your pants with influencer marketing. Yes, it’s cool to have influencers promote your products, but what’s your actual plan? Are you having them promote your product and run a contest to give a few away for free? Are you giving samples in phase two and then a coupon code in phase three? How are you going to roll out your product in a way that generates interest and creates a trackable end goal for sales and marketing?

Focusing on Instagram Only

Zzzzzz. Instagram is great, but you’re limiting your audience by only focusing on a single platform. It’s time to branch out. You don’t necessarily need to work with influencers who are popular on multiple platforms. You can focus some on Instagram and find others who are strong on Facebook, Twitter, or wherever else you feel is appropriate. 

Lacking a Solid Compensation Model

How are you paying your influencers? Are you giving away free product or are you paying them for each post they create? Maybe you’re paying for each click your links receive or commission per sale. You have options!

Paying per post may mean you have a lot of upfront costs but little ROI. Paying per click, on the other hand, may land you with a lot of leads, but few real sales (and a big bill due to the influencer). Each of these payment methods can be effective depending on the situation. Experiment to figure out what type of compensation is fair for both of you.

Hiding Your Relationship

Knock it off. Knock it off right now. Not only is it shady, it’s straight-up illegal to not disclose that an influencer has received your product for free or has been paid to review your product. We care about you and don’t want to see anyone go down this path (plus, we know there’s a better way).

FTC endorsement rules (or failing to comply, in this case) could get both you and your influencer into trouble. Your influencers have worked hard to maintain decent relationships with their audiences, which includes not reviewing products they don’t appreciate or want to support. An influencer is more likely to refuse a relationship with you than s/he is to lie to his/her audience or break the law.

Influencer outreach is here to stay for the long haul. Focus your 2019 outreach efforts on building stronger relationships and creating tailored plans for each influencer you partner with. You’ll be surprised at how well these relationships work when it comes to strengthening your brand’s awareness and sales.

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