How is technology making its way into influencer marketing in India

By Dharika Merchant

The rising popularity of influencer marketing in the digital ecosystem has matured in a way that has established seamless, creative transactions between brands and influencers. It has now become a critical component in marketing strategies for brands, no matter the industry. From content generation by macro-influencers to leveraging the brand value and engagement of micro and nano-influencers, influencer marketing has seen drastic changes in terms of the parties involved in brand collaborations. Currently, the influencer marketing industry is witnessing developments in technology-driven interactions that are bound to bring in a new phase of growth within the industry. 

Brands now understand the difference between ‘just getting likes’ and ‘genuine engagement’. They are more educated about the metrics that determine the success of influencer campaigns; something that wasn’t initially the case. 2020 is all about destructuring creative ideas in a way that generates outcomes in terms of building ROI-positive brand campaigns. Innovative, data-driven technology, therefore, has found its way into the system to make it effortless for brands to analyze the success of their campaigns. Influencer marketing agencies have stepped up their game to make data the new oil through new-age tech. 

The growing power of data analytics that has taken over the influencer marketing industry digs deeper into the loopholes present in the industry. It has helped provide instant information about consumer behaviour and perceptions, that act as brownie points in the value chain. Technology that provides necessary data to brands has proven to be key in every influencer collaboration. Having access to deeper layers of data-sets that gives leverage to succeed in the market has perhaps become more important than ever. One of the benefits of getting access to data through a tech-based platform is the real-time information that can be secured, which can be used by brands to optimize their own value in the market.  Now, brands can identify their campaign success beyond social media impressions. 

Furthermore, the rise in technology in influencer marketing has broken the ‘one size fits all’ myth that exists in the industry. With every second person being an influencer today, finding the needle in the haystack becomes difficult for brands. But, the technology that screens real influencers from the lot can help brands be mindful of the influencers they collaborate with. Brands can stand to benefit from detailed and targeted analysis of influencers that tech-based, data-driven influencer marketing businesses provide. Automated analysis can also help classify the audience of the influencers. Data technologies in influencer marketing, therefore, arm brands with expertise and technology that can enable them to make decisions backed by data. 

Every investment made in developing technology that improves the influencer marketing process, whether to better the current experiences, provide better quality services or ensure measurable improvements in analysis, is a step towards modernizing influencer marketing. 

A handful of industry leaders are continuously innovating to make decision-making power more flexible in influencer marketing by creating platforms that act as service providers to their users. The platform-based model accelerated by specific tech provides an end-to-end solution to a manually existing process. Focussing on user-experience and design thinking while establishing a smooth application program interface in conjecture with the needs of the market makes platform-oriented technology necessary. With that in mind, influencer marketing businesses have introduced automation in their offerings to empower both influencers and brands to choose their own collaboration. The traditional way of manually managing the end-to-end process in influencer marketing is slowly moving towards automation to make the process easier and faster in terms of turn-around time. It goes to show the importance of technology in bridging the need-gap in the influencer market. More and more influencer marketing businesses are choosing to bring a technology operating model into the picture, keeping the core principles in mind. In other words, they have turned to technology to improve customer experiences.

The key to success in the influencer marketing space is having a competitive advantage over others with cutting-edge technology that solves for new-gen audiences. We should understand that as influencer marketing grows, we all get to learn and unlearn various processes that can change the influencer game altogether. The influx of new technology is a display of how we can better brand-influencer collaboration in ways that are beneficial to all the stakeholders involved.

The author is COO, WORD and Alchemy Group

Read Also: Why brands are leaning towards CPA model for influencer marketing

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