Being data-driven is in our DNA at Cure Media. But, it hasn’t always been that way. As pioneers in the influencer marketing industry, we have seen the improvements in technology and data collection first hand and want to share what we have learned so all brands can capitalise on the benefits of a data-driven approach.
There is no one-size-fits-all when it comes to influencer marketing platforms. Depending on a myriad of factors–such as your influencer marketing goals or the types of influencers you would like to work with–there are a few different things to consider when choosing the right platform.
The dark ages of influencer marketing are over
During the influencer marketing industry’s infancy, most brands and agencies made do with the low-tech options available to them: excel sheets and email. This manual way of working took a lot of time and had very little payoff. Not only was it difficult to manage campaigns and influencer relationships with this method, but it was also impossible to track how campaigns performed and whether the influencers were a good fit for the brand.
There’s a reason very few brands and agencies still work this way. Unless your brand only collaborates with a few celebrity influencers, excel and email are simply not comprehensive enough to manage influencer marketing activities. Without a dedicated influencer marketing platform, you cannot scale your activities, work with micro-influencers, or track the progress of your campaigns.
This raises the question: What should brands look for when choosing an influencer marketing platform to work with?
Influencer marketing platforms: The basics
An influencer marketing platform is a software solution that makes it easier for brands to run influencer marketing campaigns and activities. Unlike an influencer database–which only helps you find influencers– an influencer marketing platform organises and streamlines every step of the influencer marketing process. However, not all platforms are made equal. In the next section, we’ll dive into the details of influencer marketing platforms and what you should look for when deciding which platform to work with.
Prefer to listen? Tune in to hear Babak Faramarzian, Co-founder and Head of Product at Cure Media sort out what brands need in an influencer marketing platform.
What to look for in an influencer marketing platform
Many brands face the same challenges when it comes to influencer marketing: it takes too much time, it’s complicated to measure, and it’s tricky to find the right influencers to work with. A good tech platform solves these problems by taking out the guesswork and backing up all decisions with data.
1. Data-driven influencer selection
The authenticity and humanistic approach of influencer marketing is what makes it so successful. But if your brand doesn’t work with the right influencers, these strengths can quickly turn into liabilities.
When it comes to selecting influencers, do not settle for a platform that only allows you to search for influencers based on aesthetics or vanity metrics. This can be a costly mistake. For example, imagine your brand wants to reach millennial women in Germany. After looking at a few profiles, you decide to work with Anna, a 30-year-old Munich-based influencer who has 100,000 followers. On the surface, Anna is a perfect fit. She’s a millennial, German, and gives you access to 100,000 potential customers!
If you would have used a smarter discovery tool, however, you would have seen that Anna is far from a good fit. 80% of her followers are actually based in Brazil and the true reach of her posts is only 10%. Because your decision was not data-driven, you wasted money and the campaign results will be irrelevant. This is why it is important to work with a platform that recommends influencers based on data points like brand fit, target audience, and campaign objectives.
At Cure Media, the influencer selection process doesn’t end here. We also analyse extensive historical data around the influencer’s performance, audience, and engagement. This eliminates the risk of choosing somebody with fake followers and inflated vanity metrics, and also ensures that every influencer we choose is the absolute best match for your brand’s strategy.
To optimise your influencer marketing activities, the platform you use should also help you discover “lookalike audiences”. With the aid of AI and data, these tools identify influencers with similar audiences who have historically performed well and are therefore safe bets for your campaigns. In short, the more data you have at hand when selecting influencers, the better opportunities you have for optimising the results.
2. Comprehensive performance tracking
A good influencer marketing platform’s capabilities go beyond the initial task of finding the right influencers. The second element you should look for in a platform is its performance tracking tools.
To get the highest return possible, influencer marketing activities need to be consistently monitored, adjusted where necessary, and optimised at every opportunity. This is only possible if you use an influencer marketing platform with strong performance tracking capabilities.
The influencer marketing platform that you choose should offer the same level of performance-tracking as any other analytics platform, such as Google’s Ad Manager. In the same way that you monitor your paid ads to see which are performing well and which need adjusting, you need to frequently review your influencer activations to achieve strong results. For example, if your goal is to increase e-commerce sales, the influencer marketing platform needs to continuously review which influencers are driving conversions. If some influencers turn out to be a bad fit, the platform should leverage AI to recommend new influencers and make the best decisions for the campaign.
3. Transparent communication functions
If you choose to work with an influencer marketing agency, it is important that your brand maintains open communication with the agency and influencers you are working with. The best way to do this is to ensure that all three parties involved have access to the influencer marketing platform.
At Cure Media, we have created a proprietary influencer marketing platform that has three separate views depending on the end-user. The first view is accessible by our Campaign Managers (and the rest of the Cure staff) to support us in our daily work. This means the brands we work with can sit back and relax knowing that we are catering for things like audience changes, influencer trends and market changes, in real-time.
The second view of our proprietary platform is for the client. The client dashboard updates in real-time to give the brands we work with the most up-to-date metrics and a transparent overview of how their campaigns are performing. They can also approve influencer recommendations, content drafts, and other campaign activities.
The third and final view of our influencer marketing platform is for the influencers. Just like the staff and client views, influencers can communicate in real-time on our platform. Influencers can also directly accept or decline invitations to participate in campaigns, as well as upload drafts of their social content.
Final thoughts…
For too long, influencer marketing was a channel shrouded in mystery. Traceable ROI was evasive, content was king, and audience size was practically the only metric that mattered. And while creativity and aesthetic might still reign supreme for most of the influencer marketing industry, at Cure Media, we look at things a little differently.
For us, content is the foundation of a great campaign, but without an intelligent approach to optimisation, clear KPIs, and a defined end goal, you might as well be running blind. With data on our side, we are better equipped to build and optimise the activations we run and report on the successes we deliver.
Unless your brand only works with a few celebrities, and can therefore manually handle all influencer marketing analytics and relationship building, using an influencer marketing platform is a must. The ideal platform will help identify which influencers are the right fit for your campaign, optimise your strategy along the way, and most importantly, account for the return on your investment.
Data is in our DNA at Cure. If you want to learn even more about our data-driven approach and proprietary influencer marketing platform, check out our podcast! Each week, we cover industry topics and trends to help you take your influencer marketing strategy to the next level.
