Businesses need a lot of background data to launch a successful influencer marketing campaign. Just because influencers have a lot of social media followers doesn’t mean they’ll bring the results a company needs. Their content might fall flat, their audience may not be engaged or worst of all, their followers may be primarily bots. Similarly, an influencer with a small audience may have high engagement, leading to better sales for his or her business partner.
Therefore, businesses need data that singles out the influencer who will bring the strongest return on investment. But that leaves one question: Where do companies get this information?
Strategizing campaigns with first-party data
Experienced businesses know that first-party data can greatly enrich a data set, delivering better results and helping out maneuver the rest of the market. Information generated directly from the source paints a more accurate portrait of the company’s user base and target market than second- or third-party data alone. But if the company has limited experience with influencer marketing, it may not have a lot of details to fall back on.
That’s why a marketing partner with who has access to data, especially years of first-party data, is such an asset when creating influencer marketing strategies.
Partnering with a data-driven influencer marketing platform
Influencer marketing is still relatively new for the majority of businesses, and they wisely partner with a third party to help them navigate this unfamiliar territory. The choice of partner is extremely important, as this is where most of the data driving influencer-related marketing decisions will originate.
When considering a potential influencer marketing partner, businesses must understand what data that partner is using, what insights it’s drawing from that data set, and the methodology for doing so. First-party data is good, but if the quantity is too small, then it is simply anecdotal and really manifests itself in the form of expertise, not data. Make no mistake, expertise is very important in the influencer marketing industry, but so is data, given the huge number of influencers, constantly evolving ecosystem, and metrics-driven nature. Therefore, to be successful, a partner must understand how to draw meaningful insights from the publicly and privately available data that’s out there.
First-party data, which includes information like influencer pricing, ratings, categorization, tagging, and performance mapping, is crucial. It ensures that the partner is properly navigating the industry, optimizing performance for its clients relative to the competition. Though many firms gather data from their operations, they often don’t structure this information properly to make it meaningful or useful. According to research from Salesforce, only 23 percent of marketers are extremely satisfied with their ability to use the data they generate. Imagine how low this number would be if the question asked was about using second- and third-party data from marketing partners.
Clearly, an influencer marketing platform with plenty of first-party information is the best option, both for businesses new to influencer marketing and experienced with this strategy.
Open Influence is one of the world’s longest-running influencer marketing agencies, and we’ve got the information to match our experience. Having executed tens of thousands of transactions between businesses and influencers, we’re experts at predicting campaign results and keeping influencer costs within clients’ budgets. We use our years’ of demographics data to see which influencers’ audiences align with our clients’, down to details like income and education level. We also analyze each piece of content created to see which influencers will bring the best results. Furthermore, our influencer score and ratings ensure brands only match with individuals who will truly boost their ROI.
Open Influence has over 100 million videos and images with billions of proprietary records for classifying and identifying influencer content. Combined with our A.I. and machine learning technologies, we allow clients to better search for the influencers that match their brand. The filters are incredibly targeted — a pet food brand, for example, could narrow their search down to find an influencer posting a specific breed of dog.
Successful marketing is all about data: having lots of it and using it to the company’s advantage. Marketers should keep this in mind when choosing a partner for their influencer campaigns.
