Creating meaningful collaborations: How brands are leveraging AI to collaborate with right influencers

Most brands are using influencer marketing as the first and foremost tool to make their campaigns impactful in terms of ROI, and drive success in today’s digital-first world. But the real question is, how do they find the right kind of influencers that best suits their budget and who can help achieve this target? Well, this is where AI steps into the picture.

Have you ever wondered how you get personalised recommendations on various OTT platforms while you search for content or when you have just finished watching something (a movie or a TV show)? Or how online shopping platforms only display relevant products based on your previous purchases, searches and views? That’s AI in the simplest sense. AI engines or algorithms behind these platforms constantly analyse what you search and watch — the data and input — and come up with a personalised offering that is perfectly in sync with your taste.

But here’s a challenge!

The influencer marketing industry is largely unorganised, with most brands still being reliant on guesswork for their influencer marketing activities. Although social media is full of influencers, it is difficult for brands to choose the right influencer who can make a desirable impact on a particular set of audiences. As a result, most brands end up collaborating with the same influencers and failing to attain the results they deserve.

However, by leveraging AI, they can streamline processes such as problem-solving, data analysis, planning and researching. Doing so will give them more time to innovate their marketing strategies further through data-driven decisions and approaches, add efficiency to their influencer campaigns, and win the trust of their audience. The same process will also help brands eliminate their dependency on guesswork at the time of searching and selecting the right influencer.

What’s next?

The next crucial step after finalising the right influencer is measuring their performance. Here AI acts as a mentor who collates and evaluates individual posts of the influencer to understand his potential and how he or she can contribute to the campaign. Through this process, the AI gives the marketer clear insights about the influencer regarding numerous factors, including the fees and quality of content, among others.

We all know that the world of social media is filled with content. For instance, Instagram records 95 million picture posts every day. Hence, to ensure that brands are not lost in the sea of data, they must focus on attracting the attention of potential customers by finding out the most meaningful content. With AI in place, brands can easily cut through the noise, examine audience sentiment by going through millions of comments and finally identify which posts are doing well and gaining the most traction.

Similarly, by analysing the performance of an influencer, studying the quality of content they produce, and reviewing its impact on a specific campaign, marketers can calculate the actual ROI in terms of revenue. Thanks, again, to AI. Now imagine a human performing all these tasks. You will be astonished to know the amount of time and efforts they would put to finish each of these activities. However, AI can accomplish all these objectives within a few minutes, without ever getting tired! That’s the power of AI!

Final word

Influencer marketing has grown exponentially in the wake of lockdowns as it made more people explore their passion through posting videos related to hobbies such as cooking, gardening, DIY, singing, dancing, etc., across social media channels, mainly YouTube and Instagram. As we go digital, the role of influencers will become more significant from an online marketing perspective, and more than that, the role of AI will be vital in shortlisting and selecting the right influencer from the noise. Given its growing importance, we can say that AI is changing the way influencer marketing is done by simplifying and adding more accuracy to the process — thereby helping brands to craft and launch more effective and successful marketing campaigns.