Enterprise Tech Takes the Guess Work Out of Influencer Marketing Influencers have been a shot in the dark for companies making a play on social media. That's changing in important ways.
By John Rampton Edited by Dan Bova
Opinions expressed by Entrepreneur contributors are their own.
Enterprise technology has made its way into the social media influencer marketing space and it is making the medium more powerful than ever. Over the past couple months I've been studying what Enterprise companies are doing to work with social media influencers. I want to push my company on social media like the big boys.
Once upon a time, influencer marketing was done primarily as an agency model, where influencers' posts were sold by agents and managers, in much of the same manner that celebrities are hired to make appearances at events. The pricing was largely arbitrary and there was no correlation to an actual value, but the arrival of enterprise to the world of influencer marketing has leveled the playing field and shifted the paradigm for how this segment measures accountability.
Changing of the guard.
The old model of influencer marketing was done via traditional communication methods like phone calls, emails, and text messages, making for a very cumbersome and circuitous route to reaching influencers. These influencers, especially the younger ones, communicate a different way though, and attempting to reach them through these "older" forms of communication can prove futile.
Enterprise technology has solved this dilemma by communicating with influencers through something that they're very familiar with - apps. Now influencers can receive push notifications for campaign opportunities, making it as simple as selecting "yes" or "no" when they want to opt in or out of an opportunity. Entire campaigns can now be run through an app without the influencer ever having to speak to an agent or manager. All details can be sorted out through the enterprise, making for a seamless and stress-free experience, for both influencers and the companies whose campaigns they are participating in.
Safety first.
Another huge benefit of enterprise technology is brand safety. One of the main fears of companies that use influencer marketing is getting the messaging correct and releasing it in a timely fashion. In the early days, companies had to rely on the influencer to post what they requested and launch it at the right time. That gave influencers a lot of control, which could ultimately blow up in the client's face, if the influencer changed the messaging or forgot to release it at the appropriate time. These concerns are a thing of the past now with enterprise.
Companies with enterprise technology have created brand-safe gateways that essentially remove human error from the equation. The enterprise acts as a moderator between the brands and the influencers to get the correct messaging in place. Once this occurs, through an API token, the enterprise takes over the influencers account and launches the messaging on their behalf, guaranteeing safety in both the messaging and its launch timing.
Related: Why Influencer Marketing Pays Off for Small Businesses
It's all in the numbers.
The biggest difference that enterprise has brought to the influencer marketing space though, is metrics.
"Our Enterprise technology allows us to have control of campaigns like never before, allowing us to easily reach our influencers and deliver highly targeted results through unique, in-demo impressions," said Ryan Detert, CEO of Influential, a leading company in the influencer marketing space that I've used before and love.
Through third party analytics that use thousands of different data points, including gender, age, ethnicity and affinities, enterprise can identify the ideal influencers for a particular campaign. This approach allows for precision and accountability that was once unfathomable in the influencer marketing space, but is now making social media marketing a true media buy. Basically, this is how the big boys are doing social media, through proven metrics.
Changing the game.
The influencer marketing space is growing exponentially year-after-year and the use of enterprise has upped the stakes and made it possible to run powerhouse campaigns for the biggest companies in the world. What was once a cottage industry has exploded into a multi-billion dollar media cornerstone, largely due to the systems that enterprise technology has put in place.
