The Tools and Tech You'll Need to Level Up Your Influencer Marketing

The influencer marketing space has radically changed over the past two years. Before 2020, influencers represented a small share of many companies’ partner marketing efforts. Then, when the Covid-19 pandemic hit and knowledge workers shifted to remote work, some brands found it difficult to create their own content. At the same time, emerging influencer platforms like TikTok grew exponentially. In 2021 alone, the influencer market grew 42% YOY and is projected to reach a staggering $15 billion by the end of 2022. Organizations continue to diversify their marketing spend to include partnership marketing programs. Given the opportunity potential, it is clear that influencer marketing will play an increased and significant role in brands’ 2022 outcome-based marketing programs. TikTok Is the Wild West of Brand Deals. How Do We Navigate the Unknown? Influencer marketing has largely been viewed as an interesting—but not integral—aspect of online advertising. However, today, it has become a critical component of a successful partnership marketing program. Influencer marketing is powerful because it allows brands to reach their target demographic, leverage the trust that influencers have built with their audience and more precisely track the results of their marketing efforts. Still, brands often struggle in this emerging space. In particular, companies often need help scaling their influencer marketing programs, measuring their reach and determining their return on investment. Technology—a catalyst for scale Even a very modest influencer marketing program—leveraging, say, five or 10 influencers on social media platforms such as TikTok and Instagram—can require a considerable logistical effort. Brands must scout talent, vet past content to ensure a fit with brand values and recruit new influencers. They must negotiate contracts (sometimes working through talent agencies), collaborate with talent on content, get the stamp of approval from their legal department and coordinate campaign timing. It’s really a considerable undertaking, and brands typically need to leverage an outside agency or dedicated internal team to pull it off. And that’s just for a partner program that involves a handful of influencers. To scale up influencer programs, companies typically need to leverage tech platforms and affiliate networks. These tools enable brands to streamline their processes (including backend workflows like payment processing), improve their efficiency and dramatically increase their volume. In addition to bringing these tools to bear, an agency with expertise in influencer marketing can “pre-scrub” content creators to ensure that brands aren’t inadvertently aligning themselves with toxic channels. One of the great opportunities of influencer marketing is the ability to efficiently reach a very specific demographic, but there are important nuances to consider. Two different creators might both have dedicated audiences of single men in their twenties—but one might specialize in fashion tips and interpersonal skills, while the other might promote manipulative dating strategies. To scale their programs effectively, brands need to know the difference. Properly measuring performance Especially when compared to traditional media like television and print advertising, influencer marketing programs offer companies enormous ability to track how their campaigns are performing. However, many brands fail to take advantage of current tools and instead rely on engagement metrics like views, likes and comments to estimate the value of their influencer campaigns. In my conversations with clients, I’ve found that marketing leaders tend not to place enormous stock in these figures. And yet, some continue to use them, following an earned media model that is frankly antiquated, at least in the influencer marketing world. One simple way to measure the performance of an influencer marketing campaign is through the use of affiliate links. These provide a much more powerful indicator of performance than mere engagement metrics because they signify whether someone actually clicked on an ad and bought a product. Promo codes and vanity URLs are two other ways to measure success. These tools can be combined with affiliate management platforms to track the journey of customers, almost from the point of initial awareness to the point of sale. In addition, influencer marketing programs can be fully integrated with existing affiliate programs, making it easy to analyze consolidated performance data. Understanding your ROI The ultimate goal of an influencer marketing program, like any marketing effort, is to see a positive return on the initial investment. In the past, some companies have assigned (arguably arbitrary) dollar values to engagement metrics such as views and comments—perhaps counting each like as a $100 return. But this doesn’t do much to determine how many more sneakers or toothbrushes a brand is selling as the result of its campaigns. The measurement tools mentioned above offer much more precision, but these tools alone often fail to capture the full value of influencer marketing. For instance, a YouTube viewer might see influencer-created content advertising the same product on a number of different channels but only purchase the item after seeing these ads a dozen times. If the viewer uses an affiliate link or promo code, that will capture the result of that one engagement, but it might not tell the whole story—because, after all, the viewer needed to see the product a dozen different times before buying. One way to capture this awareness value is to compare overall sales figures before a campaign and after it. Influencer marketing is a rapidly evolving space, and it’s only going to continue to grow in the coming years. By taking steps to optimize, scale and measure their efforts, brands can successfully manage this transition. Affiliate Content Is Bringing Brand and Performance Marketing Together