Influencer Marketing Tech Is Fragmented

With more than 133 vendors across five categories, influencer marketing is a highly fragmented industry. There is no one-solution-fits-all. Lighthouse3's Influencer Marketing Technology research report found that three primary trends are behind the growth in the influencer marketing technology arena.³

Key Trend 1: Decline of Advertising Due to the Massive Increase in Ad Blockers Globally

According to Mary Meeker's 2016 Internet Trends report (slide 47),⁴ there are nearly 640 million devices that are blocking online advertising. With iOS now allowing for ad blocking, there are currently over 420 million mobile devices alone that are blocking ads and that number will continue to grow. That being said, U.S. advertiser spending on digital advertising is expected to overtake TV in 2016 and hit $103 billion in 2019.⁵

However, not everyone is blocking ads. In fact, we are using Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter, Pinterest, Reddit, and Google AdWords ads to help clients retarget and amplify influencer marketing efforts. They can definitely work together.

Key Trend 2: Rise of Influencer Programs Is Leading to Greater Need for Efficiencies and Proving ROI

More than 83 percent of global respondents in a Nielsen survey say they trust recommendations from people they know, vs. just 42 percent for online banner ads.⁶

People don't trust advertising, but they definitely trust people they know. This is why customers and employees are such strong advocates for your brand. Also, people trust the CEO much less than they trust employees. We know, big shocker there, as the gap between the 1 percent and 99 percent continues to widen and be an issue of tension across society. Lighthouse3 covers that more in-depth in their customer/employee advocacy technologies landscape report for October 2016 if you are interested in a deeper dive.

Key Trend 3: CMOs Are Driving the Budget Increase in Marketing Technology Spend

If you have seen Scott Brinker's MarTech landscape, you can tell that it's a crowded space.⁷ And with good reason: CMOs are now outspending their IT counterparts in many organizations.

The Enterprise MarTech market size is projected to grow to $25 billion this year, with CMOs driving MarTech spending to $32.4 billion by 2018.⁸ That's a lot of billions. More and more of enterprise marketing budgets are going to marketing technology, and the year over year (YOY) growth is substantial.

Key Trend 4: Four Critical Factors Are Fueling the Chaos in Influencer Marketing

Despite MarTech's incredible growth, influencer marketing technology is facing some key challenges:

• Lack of standard technical capabilities; service offerings and features keep changing.
• Unstructured, fragmented market with 133 vendors across five categories.
• With more than 60 percent of platforms launched within the past five years, this is still a nascent space.
• Lack of scalable enterprise solutions, as many vendors are startups and privately funded.

The Five Categories of Influencer Marketing Tech

As mentioned earlier this is a fragmented industry with 133 vendors across five related but distinct categories. Lighthouse3 broke down the number of tools in each category:

Influencer Marketing:

• Influencer Discovery—17 tools in this category
• Influencer Outreach—six tools in this category
• Influencer Marketing—38 tools in this category

Advocacy/Word of Mouth Tools:

• Customer Advocacy—66 tools in this category
• Employee Advocacy—14 tools in this category

  Note: Influencer Marketing is different from Employee Advocacy; see more at the end of this chapter. They are closely related cousins but with slightly different attributes.

An Advocate has a positive sentiment toward your brand, whereas an Influencer may have a negative, neutral, or positive view. Advocates are not typically compensated, although they may receive perks, such as new product trials or coupons. This differentiation impacts the features and capabilities of their respective technology platforms. For example: Influencer marketing technology platforms typically provide an Influencer rate-sheet, while Advocacy platforms offer gamification features to keep advocates engaged.

Influencer Marketing Platform “5 Capabilities” Model

Lighthouse3 created a “5 Capabilities” model to help marketers figure out whether or not a platform is an influencer technology platform.

The Influencer Marketing Manifesto

In the recently published Influencer Marketing Manifesto by the Altimeter Group, over 67 percent of marketers say their key challenge is influencer discovery.⁹ Finding the right Influencer is both an art and a science. Here are some guidelines that marketers should use to select the right influencer for your campaign.

Community: Size and Type of Audience

Many “experts” try to justify lack of an audience by claiming that Influencer marketing is not about quantity of followers; it's about quality. Actually, successful Influencer marketing needs both—quantity and quality of influence. To be considered influential, the Influencer needs to have critical mass of the RIGHT type of followers, which is defined as the personas and look-alikes that the brand wants to reach. Start your Influencer selection by taking a close look at the Influencer's community and use the tools below to help.

Technology: TapInfluence.com is an influencer marketing platform that allows marketers to influencers based on their profile data (reach, engagement, topics, etc.) as well as audience data (location, gender, age, etc.). Also Little Bird (GetLittleBird.com) is a great discovery tool for finding relevant influencers.

Content: Format and Type

Long-form (blog), short-form, videos, microvideos, pictures, livestreaming…the options for content format are endless. Product and Consumer Packaged Goods (CPG) companies find visual formats work better, while service companies may find long-form or videos work better with their audience. Start by understanding which format resonates best with your audience and select the influencer that is great at the content type.

Technology: Some influencer technology platforms, such as Hello Society (bought by NYT), focus on creator-influencers who create/curate beautiful images and have a large following on Pinterest, while others like Roostr (recently acquired by Chartboost) focus on YouTube gamer-influencers. Grapevine focuses on video content creators.¹⁰

Channel: Social Networks and Sites

Here's a key point that both marketers and their agencies often miss—Influencers do NOT have the same level of influence on all social networks. Marketers should select influencers based on the channel or social network where they are most likely to be active.

Technology: Just like Influencers, the technology platforms also don't have the same reach across social networks. Platforms such as Niche (acquired by Twitter) focus on Viners and Instagrammers, and others, such as Cooperatize, focus on influential bloggers.

Credibility: Topical Relevancy

Please pay special attention here because this can make or break your influencer campaign. Topical relevancy and credibility is extremely important. This is usually measured through engagement—reshares, retweets, comments, and so on. Many influencers with large audiences talk about multiple topics. Some have lower engagement per post while others are focused on one to two specific topics but have much higher engagement. We've seen pitches from agencies for Influencers with high “average” engagement per post, but those numbers may be skewed because of their vacation pictures or cat memes.

Technology: Little Bird uses social graph and peer validation to determine whether or not an Influencer has credibility on a certain topic. Lumanu is a newer Influencer technology platform that allows influencer discovery based on content that Influencers have created and/or shared.

Chemistry: Brand-Influencer Fit

Influencers are human beings, so make sure you work with professionals who follow through on their commitments. When things don't go per plan as they often do, you'll wish you hadn't picked an Influencer who is a prima donna and a pain to work with. Get to know them in advance. Make sure they are a good fit for your brand.

Technology: No tool can help you figure out chemistry, yet, but Influencer technologies like Grapevine allow users to add notes based on their experience with the Influencer so you can make sure that history doesn't repeat itself with a bad influencer.

Controversy: Lack of Resonance and Transparency

Influencers can make headlines because of their controversial views and sometimes even a benign tweet can set off a firestorm. Brands need to realize that it's not about recruiting the most popular influencer but rather one that resonates with your audience.

Another issue we've run into is with Influencers who don't disclose they are being paid for their endorsements. And there are others who start pitching controversial or unrelated messages while still representing the brand. These are all red flags, and as of late 2016, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) has created new guidelines for disclosing paid endorsements.¹¹

As much as we want Influencers to be authentic, we also want them to be ethical and transparent so they are not misleading their audience.¹²

Technology: Many platforms can track/measure impact of Influencer content but few can monitor/audit influencer content once published. Proofpoint is a security-as-a-service provider who recently started offering tools for marketers to scan influencer accounts and automatically flag any inappropriate content.

Employee Advocacy

According to the Deloitte Millennial Survey, millennials will constitute 75 percent of the global workforce by 2025.¹³ And they are all on social media. But it's not just millennials. In fact, 50 percent of all employees already post messages on social media about their employers. Even though these employees are proud to share messages about their companies, it's almost impossible for brands to get their employees approved content efficiently to share externally.

Employees Are the Most Credible Voices in Your Organization

As mentioned in the Edelman Trust Barometer report, “Employees are the most credible voices on multiple topics, including the company's work environment, integrity, innovation and business practices.” This means that no matter how often your PR team is out there sharing the gospel or the CEO is on television, Inc. Magazine or TechCrunch talking about your company, nothing is more effective than the voice of your employees.¹⁴

In addition to building brand awareness and improving company culture, employee advocacy has been proven to have a significant impact on revenue. From a lead generation perspective, employee advocacy is an “always on” marketing channel that results in five times more web traffic and 25 percent more leads.

Employee Advocacy Drives Sales

With some of our clients, we've personally engaged their employees to get the top tweet at over 50 different events, including competitor events! We've engaged employees to amplify content to gain mind share and influence, and where it's most important, helped them increase sales. Employee advocacy should be a vital part of any social business strategy.

Employee advocacy tools allow sales professionals to establish and extend relationships with prospects and customers via social media. In fact, 72.6 percent of salespeople using social selling as part of their sales process outperformed their sales peers and exceeded quotas 23 percent more often.¹⁵

“In today's social world, every person has an extended circle of personal influence and an opportunity to build their own personal ‘brand.’ By helping your employees build that brand rather than squelching individuality, you can build an army of very powerful advocates,” says Ted Rubin, author of Return on Relationship #RonR and Dynamic Signal adviser.¹⁶

“Most people, when given the opportunity, will advocate for their brands, when they feel good about where they work. Two thousand employees, 2,000 followers each, you do the math.”

—Ted Rubin

Who Is Doing Employee Advocacy Right?

One such company in the employee advocacy space is Dynamic Signal. It helps solve this disconnect by giving communications and marketing pros the ability to curate and upload company-approved content, so their employees can pick what interests them and share it in just a few clicks. This helps transform them into experts, advocates, and contributors. Employees can also submit their own content or industry content to be shared by others. Since people listen more to their social connections (those they trust) than to official marketing campaigns, brands can increase content engagement by as much as 700 times and brand awareness by as much as 24 times.

“One of the most underutilized and yet powerful things a company can do for itself is find a way to activate its employee base to socially tell its brand story,” said Pavey Purewal, CMO, Dynamic Signal in a phone interview, who went on to say, “If employees are a company's best brand advocates, then why not let them share on behalf of the brand?”

Major global brands such as IBM, Humana, Pitney Bowes, GameStop, and SAP have all used employee advocacy tools to harness their employees' social reach to amplify company content. This type of tool keeps employees informed of company news and strengthens the brand. By extending their social media strategies, these companies ignite brand awareness, employee engagement, and revenue.

In a subsequent phone interview during the writing of this book, Tim Peacock, director of digital marketing, Ensighten said, “Everyone's busy, so tools like Dynamic Signal, Influitive, or GaggleAMP make it easy for employees to share coordinated content on a regular basis, boosting the impact of our social media efforts.”

Keep in mind, there are many tools out there to choose from that can help engage your employees. The most important thing is to pick a solution and begin engaging your employees as soon as possible. The EMF has provided you the high level structure of Purpose, People, and Process. Now you have drilled deeper in these past few chapters to learn how to specifically evaluate some of these tools, and internal/external voice of customer listening paths to implement the proper data infrastructures and more human-centric tactics. In the final chapters we will bring it all home with the Social Business Strategy for human resources and a guide to building your ultimate marketing technology stack.