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Influencer marketing is a rapidly growing part of the digital marketing space;both brands and influencers are looking to get the most out of these partnerships. Platforms exist to connect brands and influencers so both can mutually grow their followings. Artificial intelligence (AI) can help in this arena, reaching greater numbers of followers with more relevant content than other methods.
AI – heard frequently – refers to a class of technology meant to imitate human decision making. AI solutions are built on machine learning (ML) models, mathematical equations that take in data and learn from it to make increasingly better decisions in prediction and classification tasks.
This technology offers a host of benefits for marketers, who use it to build data-driven campaigns and reach target demographics in a more personalized way. We’ll look at some of the benefits of AI in influencer marketing and explore how you can use them in your business to boost your digital marketing strategies.
The Influencer Marketing Boom
The influencer marketing industry is currently valued at $8 billion. Experts suggest the pandemic will only cause greater growth. Businesses are looking to maximize their return on investment in their marketing, making digital strategies the most lucrative in the social media era, by far. And among digital marketers, no one does it better than influencers.
Utilizing influencers is a good way to build trust in your brand because their followers already trust what they say. Influencers do their research, so a positive review from an influencer is akin to an industry expert promoting your product. Popular influencers get a lot of engagement, making their content have the power to – that’s right, influence – thousands or millions of prospective customers to check out your brand.
What’s more, influencers can get your brand name out there for less time and money than it would take to build your own following. If you’re a new or small company, macro influencers might be out of your price range. But nano and micro influencers are great for getting exposure among a more targeted demographic, which might be just what your brand needs to establish itself in the industry.
Why Use AI?
There are several key ways AI factors into digital marketing in general – and influencer marketing specifically.
Natural Language Processing
NLP is a sub-discipline of machine learning which focuses on teaching computers to parse and interpret human speech and writing. NLP allows for two critical functions in marketing: voice recognition and sentiment analysis.
Voice recognition enables AI assistants like Google Assistant and Alexa to answer questions spoken aloud by users. This is important for marketers to keep in mind because search engine optimization (SEO) no longer simply requires getting at the top of SERPs with typed queries. For influencer marketing specifically, voice recognition allows analysts to pick up what influencers are talking about on TV, and particularly YouTube, the platform where many influencers do their marketing.
Sentiment analysis is all about parsing data – like tweets and Facebook posts – to determine how positive or negative the feeling of the text is. It attempts to quantify how people feel about issues, products, competitors, etc. – all valuable insights in constructing a marketing campaign and for assessing how a campaign is received.
Data-Driven Customer Insights
There is a reason why ML is overtaking the data science discipline – the ubiquity of data and the computational power of ML algorithms are a game changer for anyone looking to predict trends and behaviors. Fortunately for marketers, this is a huge part of generating and converting leads.
AI is a learning algorithm, so it requires data and auditing to improve. This is particularly true when attempting to predict something as potentially inconsistent or outright odd as human behavior. AI can take huge amounts of data about online users and predict what they will do, like, and share, which marketers use in content generation insights and to find prospects for relevant influencers.
Scalability and Affordability
Maximizing your ROI is all about making the most of every penny spent on marketing, and when it comes to budgeting, you need the right tools. You should look for accounting software that comes with crucial features, such as expense tracking, to ensure you’re sticking within your budget and customizable templates to better brand your business.
Similarly, your marketing solutions should be scalable and lucrative, and working with influencers is one way to get the right followers looking at your content at a lower cost than building your own following. If done properly, you can use AI and influencer marketing to deliver quality content to more people for a lot less money.
AI is also good for predicting the ROI of existing campaigns. You can collect engagement metrics to assess audience response and predict the revenue-generating potential of different campaigns. It’s scalable in the sense that algorithms can handle huge amounts of data from wide-spanning internet campaigns, but they can also target narrow content niches to hyper-focus on local campaigns or specific demographics.
A Mutually Beneficial Relationship
So far we’ve discussed the benefits for marketers, but it’s important to note that AI can also be a great tool for influencers. Influencers wouldn’t work with brands if it didn’t also benefit their own businesses. That’s why a platform like TikTok is great for influencer marketing because businesses can get their products on display and influencers can grow their followings with engaging video content.
Influencers can use AI automation to check themselves as they post. It’s easy to misplace or misuse links and hashtags, and AI algorithms can scan social media accounts for incorrect references and optimize linking to make sure everything is pointing to the right pages.
What’s more, influencer marketing is about finding a niche and targeting it with relevant messaging, and AI can help with this as well. Influencers can use these insights to understand what type of content is the most well-received, and brands can use it to find influencers with whom they are compatible.
And keep in mind that in order to build marketing relationships, businesses and influencers both must foster a unique online presence – including social media accounts and your own website. You can build trust with followers by showing that your website is secure, easy to use, and up to date. Also, look for web hosting platforms that integrate with your marketing strategies.
According to industry expert Gary Stevens of Hosting Canada, with platforms like Zyro, you can use plugins to harness AI for branding on your website:
“It consists of some neat features like Zyro AI Content Generator and Logo Maker and some good old ones – free SSL Certificate, unlimited SSD storage, and unlimited bandwidth,” says Stevens. “The new features seem really refreshing; they allow you to focus on your company.” Branded logos and AI-generated content will help showcase your brand and get influencers or other industry players interested in partnering with you.
Conclusion
When it comes to reaching your target audience, utilizing influencers is a great way to get your brand name out there. Look for intuitive, easy-to-use platforms to find partnerships and influencers whose online presence matches your brand identity. By harnessing technology for cost-reduction, personalization, and reach, both online businesses and influencers can benefit from the marketing boom that AI is ushering in.
