Automation is capable of revolutionizing a huge range of activities. Influencer campaign management is the perfect example of one of these, as many are beginning to realize. So, you’ve come to this just at the right time. It’s a hot topic, and you don’t want to be left behind.
We’ll talk you through a number of steps you can take to use automation to bring influencer campaign management up to speed. We’ll also take a look at why you should do this right away. After all, you’re busy. We get it. You don’t want to be wasting your time on something that sounds okay in theory but is a bit of a letdown in practice. Rest easy. Read this and you’ll see what a colossal benefit is awaiting your business courtesy of automation.
Before we get started on any of that, we’ll begin with a definition, just so we’re all clear.
What is Influencer Marketing Automation?
Automation in general is suitable for doing routine stuff that we don’t particularly relish doing, usually because it’s dull or inefficient. Happily, it excels at this kind of thing. This is the case with automation in social media, particularly influencer marketing. What we’re looking at here is the deployment of software-enabled processes that streamline the influencer marketing operation.
What can this look like in practice? You might use automation to search for an ideal influencer in the first place. You can use it to run a check on the nature of the followers that an influencer appears to have. Once you have an influencer on board, you can use automation to manage content workflows. You can use it to monitor campaign success and to deliver reporting and analysis.
Before you know it, you’ll find that automation brings to your influencer campaign management a complete business process transformation.
Make no mistake: influencer marketing automation has a huge amount to offer. Let’s turn now to have a close look at those benefits.
What can Influencer Marketing Automation Deliver?
The list of potential benefits from influencer marketing automation is huge. We only have space here to cover the most significant ones.
Efficiency
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Being able to use automated processes to take on various tasks is a huge gain in terms of efficiency. When it comes to influencer marketing, you can use it to take over labor-heavy operations such as identification of suitable influencers for your business.
This is a major benefit. Do you know how many influencers there are out there to research your way through? Well, it’s an extremely rough figure, but it’s thought that there are between 3.2 million and 37.8 million influencers operating around the world. Wow. Imagine how much effort you’re saving if automation can do the job of sifting through them in order to find the ones that can really zing with your brand.
You can also use automation to take the repetition out of negotiating agreements with influencers, as well as measuring results. You can use automation to streamline workflows and see to it that results get put on the table far quicker than a team slogging through a sea of repetitive duties would be able to manage.
Being freed up from these often quite unexciting tasks also gives you the time and energy to devote to far more interesting and varied pursuits, such as dreaming up new angles for your products or for marketing campaigns.
For example, you might consider developing interactive quizzes that influencers can use to engage their audience, thereby deepening the audience’s connection with your brand.
Boosting Performance
Automation is now at the stage where it’s not just about taking the reins with the dull tasks. Generative AI can step up to the plate and help out in all manner of more creative areas too.
If your workflows are struggling because there’s a dearth of new content coming out on time and not even your Kanban software can keep up, you can use generative AI to kickstart some ideation. Give it some parameters regarding product profiles and marketing demographics, and it will put out ideas that your marketing team may take longer to come up with, or might not produce at all.
Of course, you can then throw the ideas over to your influencers to inject some more human qualities. Influencers are very much about what makes them tick as individuals, so it’s important for them to be able to add some idiosyncratic elements to what they’re putting out.
Keeping the Comms Going
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Communication can be like spinach. We all know it’s good for us, but it can be difficult to stick with it sometimes. We’re all busy, and we all have a multitude of demands coming at us throughout the day, often with urgent deadlines and crushing importance. No wonder we can forget to let people know what they need to know from time to time.
Influencer campaign automation will take this on for you. Real-time communications are maintained so that influencers and business management are totally in the loop at all times. So, figures on performance or insights from social media tools, such as social listening applications, are automatically fed to those who need to know, and information on current thinking disseminates likewise. And all without having to remember to do it.
Another benefit is that the communications can be rendered as individual as you like. Not everyone needs to know everything. What’s more, some people favor infographics over text. You can see to it that comms goes solely to who needs it, in the form they prefer.
Scale it up
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No matter what area of marketing you’re in, and no matter what the product or service you’re trying to promote, it’s vital to be able to match the size of the operation with the demand. This is the case whether you’re all about B2C or you’re more in the arena of dealing with business leads. If you’ve got a mega-launch of a new app, say, and this is bigger than anything you’ve attempted before, you need to size your marketing campaign accordingly.
Automation can handle this. Using the recruitment and monitoring we mentioned above, you can recruit as many more influencers as you need, and all with speed and ease. And you can then retain them for as long as you need to. Should the business cycle dictate that you need to throttle back a little, you can use automation to shed the influencers you no longer need. Until things start to ramp up again, when automation can once more come to your aid.
How to use Automation in Influencer Campaign Management
Here’s what you do to start enjoying those automation benefits.
Think about the What and the Who
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Every campaign needs an objective, and every piece of marketing needs an audience. You need to stop and consider these facts before you go about launching into the automation side of things.
So, ask yourself some pretty key questions. Are you intending to boost sales? Or boost brand awareness? Or just raise to prominence one particular aspect of it, or one product? Are you looking to discover new customers?
On the subject of customers, who are you targeting? You have to have a clear idea of your target customer profile. Otherwise, you won’t necessarily be able to identify the right influencer to talk to them. For instance, if you’re targeting healthcare professionals, maintaining an updated healthcare email list can complement your influencer marketing strategy by helping you identify key industry contacts and ensure that your campaigns reach the most relevant audience.
This profile needs to include demographics, tastes, ambitions, problems, and their preferred social media platforms.
Defining your customers and goals will also help you work with your selected influencer to create the most effective strategy. For example, if you focus on educational content, you will need to understand your customer profile so they can target the right users and tailor their content to appeal to the right local learning strategies.
Spot the Right Influencer
This bit’s easy. Just pick the influencer with the most followers and your job’s done, right? Not so fast. Yes, it’s good to team up with an influencer with a big voice and extensive reach, so that your message can spread with a little gusto. However, size isn’t everything.
You also have to consider the identity of the influencer. Part of an influencer’s stock in trade is a pronounced identity. It’s how they build followings of a particular character. This identity and the resulting following has to chime with your brand and with your campaign’s goals. If you have a mismatch, your efforts together will not synergize, and you’ll not reap the benefits that you might.
There are other elements to consider, too. One of them is the rate of posting that the influencer demonstrates, as well as what happens to their posts. Do they generate much engagement? Do they get shared much? What kind of impact are they having?
In addition, you need to spot the bogus influencers. These are the accounts that businesses can fall foul of, wasting enormous sums on teaming up with apparently thriving influencers with massive followings, who turn out to be fakes.
As we’ve mentioned, you don’t do this influencer selection manually. You employ a social media automation tool so you can get the best pick from all those millions out there easily and effectively.
When your automation tools find you a good bet, start engaging with them. Like and comment on their posts. This kind of interest-signaling will help with the next stage.
Reach out
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Once you’ve identified the right influencer for your campaign, you now need to make the approach. This is a step you can take manually. Automation can be transformative, but there are still some steps that benefit from the old-fashioned approach.
Reaching out to an influencer tends to be one of these kinds of steps. Why is this? Because influencers have a deeply personal connection with what they do. Their appeal is built around their profile and identity, which construct a personal brand. Therefore, they take a keen interest in maintaining the quality and relevance of any link-ups they agree to.
An off-the-peg, overly corporate approach is not necessarily going to cut it with an influencer. Unless they’re just starting out, they’re going to be relatively picky with which offers they go for.
They’re likely to respond more favorably to a well thought out pitch that makes it clear how the two of you are a good fit. Also, bear in mind that email or DM are good choices. Then, if you need to make offers to others, don’t succumb to the temptation to send out the same pitch. Tailor it to the individual influencer. Quiz them on their specific approach to branded content, and demonstrate that you’ve taken the time to familiarize yourself with their work.
Onboarding
When you start out with an influencer, there are factors that are common with any new relationship. One of the key ones is setting out parameters. What do you expect of each other?
This can all be set in place via negotiation and listening to the other side. But you don’t need to do all this manually. Automation can be used to send out what’s needed in the way of standard agreements, and invitations to hear from the influencer regarding particular concerns.
This is a good example of where automation lives very happily with manual activity. The automation takes care of the routine end of things, in terms of making sure all parties get what they need to cement the relationship. Any idiosyncrasies that crop up can be dealt with by manual input where necessary.
Relationship Management
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This is where automation really hits its stride. Good relationships with influencers depend a great deal on making sure everyone remains informed about what everybody else is doing. Automation can see to it that everyone’s well and truly kept informed, by scheduling updates and reminders of important dates and deadlines.
On the subject of schedules and deadlines, automation can also assist by putting content out when it needs to go, cutting out the risk of forgetting an important campaign date, either by the influencer or the business. Campaigns (and relationships) are so often about timing more than just about anything else, so this really can’t be allowed to fall into the cracks of somebody’s busy schedule. Automation will ensure that you never miss a posting date again.
Finally, a key aspect of relationship management is measuring results and the ensuing discussion. Use automation to see to it that reports are thorough and up to date, and that the right figures are sent out to all concerned parties. These can be short, snappy round-ups of data or a lengthier and more descriptive narrative report. Knowing how things are proceeding is a key part of relationship management, and automation will keep everyone on the same page.
The No-Sweat Way to Streamline
Influencers can be hugely helpful when it comes to delivering a potent marketing strategy. But they can also be quite labor-intensive, with all that identifying the right one, then having to do all that relationship management once you’ve found the identifier that’s right for you. Using automation opens the way to much easier collaboration, so that working with influencers is a dream, not a drag.
Just remember the following. Firstly, make the most of the time savings and efficiency boosts automation delivers, so your business can really benefit. Second, remember to sometimes use manual processes in conjunction with automation. There are times when a blend is the best way forward. Just like the blend between you and your perfect influencer partner.