By Ritesh Ujjwal
Social networking has triggered a revolution in digital marketing, with India registering over 700 million active internet users, according to Nielsen’s India Internet Report 2023. Given how heavily people use internet as well as social media in today’s society, digital marketing has become the most prevalent form of advertising for businesses. As a result, organizations are now able to reach a wider audience in targetted manner with intelligence across multiple attributes.
What has entirely changed the face of digital marketing has become the new-age buzzword for today: influencer marketing. In fact, influencers have taken over all fields of interest in our digitally-dominated society. And it is modern-day technological disruptions that have expedited the expansion of influencer marketing, allowing marketers to track metrics and accomplish desired objectives. Here, artificial intelligence has proven invaluable, enabling brands across the facets of value chain ranging from planning, discovery, and negotiation, scheduling, publish, analyze along with look for lookalike creators which worked best for brands.
Artificial intelligence has further enriched the process of filtering while giving brands precise findings. To ascertain whether an influencer will be fit for a certain kind of demographic, AI-powered analytical tools validate millions of data pieces across influencers’ profile, content, audience and past performance. Based on the brands and campaigns’ persona, AI model matches to the apt creators’ persona to maximize success factors set by the brand. Along with AI, machine learning (ML) further allows them to pinpoint areas of concern, acting as the feedback loop and derive an ideal course of action to target better improvement. Together, the dynamic combination of AI and data science has made it simple for organisations to conduct predictive analysis and develop intent-based audiences and target increased visibility and exposure.
Influencer marketing: How AI is changing the game
Matchmaking: The biggest challenge brands and marketers experience today is finding a suitable influencer. An influencer’s potential cannot be determined solely by looking at his/her subscriber base. Finding an influencer that fits your brand’s offering and has a suitable following that appeals to your target audience is crucial. Here, artificial intelligence-driven influencer marketing platforms come into play, performing numerous integrations and building creator persona based on a variety of parameters such as location, genre, and content relevance. Along with developing the creator persona, the brand persona is put together and the two are then evaluated to find the best match. With the right influencer, brands can target a wider audience and elicit the best response from the general public.
Predictive analysis and metrics assessment: Artificial intelligence has made it possible for brands to assess the success of their campaigns and conduct predictive analysis in real-time. By directly linking real-time data like brand mentions, traffic, and conversions to an influencer’s particular conduct, AI-powered analytical tools have aided firms to go beyond vanity metrics and analyse the impact of campaigns and influencer performance. According to a Deloitte report, 26% of all respondents and 45% of seasoned AI users claimed that AI technologies have helped them gain a sizable advantage over competitors. In addition, brands can leverage these tools to perform predictive analysis to forecast the success of campaigns, anticipate future content needs, and implement data-driven decision-making based on actionable insights. Also, with ML serving as the feedback loop, it has become simple to identify problem areas and determine the scope of improvements in an effort to improve campaign performance for better results in the long run.
Managing multiple campaigns together: An influencer marketing campaign has several moving elements. However, since automation has taken over, it has become easier for brands to track all campaign components independently using AI platforms. In fact, these AI-led analytical tools have provided marketers the opportunity to conduct creator persona sentiment analysis with a motive to figure out the best match in line with business offerings, evaluate campaign metrics and engagement rates. 61.4% of marketers have reportedly incorporated AI in their marketing initiatives, according to a report from Influencer Marketing Hub. Additionally, these tools offer end-to-end campaign lifecycle management, enabling brands to plan, carry out, and track their campaigns from start to finish. The fact that AI gathers all the data points in one place to produce insightful conclusions and give marketers more transparency makes it much easier for them to analyse their campaign performance and benefit from automated decision making.
Scalability: Running and overseeing campaigns of all sizes was deemed to be a challenging endeavour before the development of AI technology. However, it has now become possible for brands to run multiple campaigns and for influencers with various follower counts to manage those campaigns successfully, thanks to AI-powered analytical tools. Additionally, these tools carry out audience profiling thereby, offering perceptions into the tastes and habits of the audiences, allowing creators to better target their content to the public. More creator liquidity is produced as a result, which enables influencers to participate in more projects and yet deliver positive outcomes. And to further expand the catchment area, AI-enabled solutions identify lookalike creators for businesses as an alternative.
Shift to B2B: Primarily a B2C (business to consumer) activity with the top three categories being beauty, food, and fashion, influencer marketing is gradually expanding to the B2B (business to business) space, which is growing in industries like financial services, pharmaceuticals, and technology and enabling businesses to scale their operations widely. B2B marketers who have redirected their budgets towards influencer marketing over other traditional channels have profited from the association with high-quality thought leadership and competency, better-value leads, more relevant traffic, greater visibility and reach, and higher ROI.
Virtual influencers: The rise of influencer marketing has made it more challenging for marketers to find the right influencers. Thanks to AI, the concept of virtual influencers has emerged, providing brands with an alternative approach to creating their own distinctive form of expression, exercising more control over the content, and targeting higher visibility. 200+ active virtual influencers have been recorded on social media as of 2022, according to a study by VirtualHumans.org.
Expansion of the creator economy: As more businesses rely on reputable internet personalities, the creative economy is redefining marketing and business practises. Additionally, the fact that AI is now an essential part of the sector has sparked new developments resulting in expansion of the creator economy. Given the importance of content in the creative economy, AI-powered solutions conduct content predictive and brand persona sentiment analysis, allowing creators to build their strategies around those findings in an effort to raise their visibility and target more traffic.
AI and influencer marketing: The unbeatable match
According to a Statista report, as of 2022, the influencer marketing industry in India was valued at over ₹12 billion and projected to grow at a CAGR of 25% over the next five years. This data highlights how influencer marketing has attained center stage and brought a wave of change in the perception of consumers over time, impacting marketers, brands and influencers. Today, a key component of brand differentiation is customer experience. Hence, obtaining customer insights and developing influencer marketing strategies based on it has now become indispensable. AI-enabled tools have consistently acted as a catalyst for brands, enabling them to streamline and run their influencer campaigns and gather pertinent data insights.
It cannot be denied that data is the key to a successful influencer marketing campaign. AI has made it possible for businesses to collect data that goes beyond simple vanity metrics. And the enriched data can be put to use in predictive analysis to forecast campaign success and foresee future content requirements. In fact, marketers can run several campaigns concurrently and perform creator persona sentiment analysis to choose the most appropriate influencer to target guaranteed campaign success. Due to its ability to analyse and evaluate enormous volumes of data and uncover valuable indicators, AI is greatly assisting in this pursuit and seems destined to become a big instrument in the Marketers’ arsenal in the near future.
The author is founder and CEO, Kofluence