The older style of broadcast marketing has long been dead. Even the targeted advertising that the digital revolution ushered in is not as effective anymore. The increased clutter on the marketing channels has pushed the audience to not just tune out marketing messages but use ad blockers so they never get to see advertisements when browsing online.
This does not mean that the consumer today does not look for advice on what she should buy. For such an advise she goes to someone she considers an expert in the area of interest. These “experts” who can influence her decision are the best channel to reach the target audience. It should come as no surprise that Influencer Marketing has become an integral part of any marketing campaign today. Many marketing experts believe, all things equal, campaigns that use influencers are more effective than the ones that don’t.
While advertisers of all size want to invest in influencer marketing, the process remains very complex as today. Unreliable KPIs make it difficult for most to even measure the success of their campaign, and the return on investment remains questionable. SocialMedia.Market steps in here to solve the issues both the brands and influencers face while entering into and executing marketing contracts.
Brands find it difficult to work with a large pool of influencers directly, and therefore limit them to not more than 30 per campaign. They could instead choose to work with an agency, but that increases the marketing spend on influencers by at least 30%. To add to their misery, they cannot easily verify that the person they are negotiating with is indeed who he claims to be. Even if they have got a contract with the right influencer, it is difficult to ensure that the output meets the expectations they had from the influencer. What if he refuses to edit his content to meet the brand requirement? How reliable are the content engagement analytics being shared? Influencers run into a similar gamut of problems including fraudulent agents, agency managers, and even advertisers. If they are working with an agent - he takes away up to 50% of the revenues from advertisers and of the remaining a
substantial portion is spent on promotion and content generation, leaving very little to take home.
The issues that plague the influencer marketing space at the moment are:
Fraud: Difficult to authenticate participants, difficult to enforce agreements, fake follower count and fraudulent engagement statistics
Uncertain pricing: The presence of intermediaries makes price discovery problematic. One does not know what one is paying for, and there is no guarantee of efficiency.
Payment complexity: Since the participants are spread across the globe, multiple payment methods need to be maintained by all participants, adding to the overhead costs involved.
Low accessibility: Influencer marketing space is not accessible to small and medium businesses because of the high costs involved. Similarly, micro-influencers face a problem of discoverability in a chaotic marketplace.
Difficult to maintain relationships: Given the influencers prefer to only interact through online channels and could be a people from all stages of life, it becomes difficult to maintain a relationship with all of them.
Limited campaign diversity: Running an influencer marketing campaign in-house takes up a lot of time. This limits the number of influencers a brand can work with. But working with a large number of micro-influencers is known to generate deeper engagement that working with a small number of influencers who have a large follower count.
Difficulty in selecting right partners: Discovery is a problem in this large a market. It is difficult to find out which brands and influencers fit best together. A survey conducted by Tomoson found that more than half of the participants reported better quality leads as a result of Influencer Marketing - proving how important getting the right fit is.
Unreliable KPIs: Determining ROI on the marketing spend is difficult as the influencer may not even have the analytics set in the right manner.
SocialMedia.Market platform resolves these issues by automating many steps of the process. The immediate advantage over the current ad-hoc system of engagement include:
Transparent and competitive marketplace making price discovery easy
A single place to find influencers across social media platforms including YouTube, Instagram,
Facebook, Twitter, Snapchat, Quora etc.
Reduced operational costs as middlemen are removed from the system and overheads reduced
Accessible even to micro-influencers and small and medium businesses.
More effective use of marketing time and resources
Ability to create smart contracts that meet the specific requirements of each relationship.
Dispute resolution system utilizing decentralized Blockchain technology and fair arbitrators.
Real-time analytics on the hosted campaign with actionable insights based on big data analytics
Global outreach allowing a wide variety of influencers to be roped in for the campaign.
SocialMedia.Market platform manages to achieve these benefits by providing a unique set of features to each of the participants. This set has been developed based on our deep and varied experience in the field, working with both brands and influencers.
Secure payments: One of the challenges participants face is deciding when the contract fees should be paid. The influencers are worried that they will not be paid despite performing their tasks, and the brands think they may not get satisfactory results if they pay upfront. SocialMedia.Market uses an Ethereum based escrow system to resolve this conundrum. The funds are held within the system and automatically released to the influencer on satisfactorily completing the contract.
Decentralized dispute resolution system: The measure of the quality of content produced by an influencer can be subjective. This makes it difficult to resolve any disputes that may arise between the parties involved. Most platforms do not provide any resolution system, and those that do so for a fee tend to favour the paying party. SocialMedia.Market is different as it provides for a fair decentralized dispute resolution system. The mechanism is such that the arbitrators are not beholden to any of the parties involved in the dispute.
Participant authentication: SocialMedia.Market verifies the identity of all its participants while on-boarding them on the Blockchain. Further, a two-factor authentication system is used to ensure that participants are who they claim to be.
Reduced overheads: Using SocialMedia.Market platform gives all the participants a single point from where all the details of the influencer campaign across social media platforms and geographies can be managed. This not only streamlines the process but also reduces the management time and overhead required. Further, the step-by-step process for setting up the ad campaign with a smart-contract simplifies cooperation across all stages.
Communication made easy: SocialMedia.Market platform provides the participants with in-built CRM-system, in-platform chat app, Smart Contract templates, chat tips, instant notifications and a mobile app making it easy to stay up-to-date with the progress and communicate with the team in the fly.
The brands that have tried out the SocialMedia.Market platform is especially delighted by the ability to access influencers all over the world at just a few clicks. Some of the features they swear by include:
Unlimited access to micro-influencers: Microinfluencers are the most effective way to reach a community in a personalized manner. A micro influencers campaign on SocialMedia.Market can easily be scaled up to reach a wider audience, without losing the personal touch that these smaller influencers bring.
Optimized campaign costs: Influencer marketing platforms charge as much as 50% commission to let you work with their influencers. SocialMedia.Market reduces these costs significantly by removing the middlemen wherever possible. Plus it also reduces the cost associated with discovering the right influencer and transactional costs that banks and payment gateways may charge. This results in a much lower campaign cost for the brands, and an improved ROI.
Smart matching: SocialMedia.Market uses machine learning algorithms that utilize image recognition, natural language processing, and engagement analytics to identify influencers who best match a brand & image, campaign requirements, and product category. Given the difficulty in sorting through a large number of potential micro-influencers, this saves the brands a lot of time and effort.
Precision in selecting target group: Marketers can choose influencers based on the number of followers they have, the quality of engagement they generate, the geographic location of the followers, the estimated demographic/psychographic profile of the followers, the topics they are interested in, etc. This kind of precision targeting makes for a far successful campaign as the brands manage to generate much higher quality leads.
Real-time analytics: SocialMedia.Market provides real-time analytics based mentions, engagements, true reach, and ROI. The big data analytics built into the platform generates actionable insights for the campaign manager. Further, the platform provides a detailed report with top-line metrics, the impact of each Influencer and the user-generated content that was produced as a direct result of the campaign.
Social media optimization: SMO is as important a part of digital marketing as SEO and SMM. SocialMedia.Market tools are built to help the brands to utilize the latest trends in SMO, and hence help boost their ranking with search engines.
SocialMedia.Market is a boon to micro-influencers. Since they love this platform, all the brands who want to work with them also have to be here. Some of the features that make the platform their top choice are:
No entry barrier: Most influencer platforms today allow only the influencers with high follower count to participate. SocialMedia.Market does not impose any such barrier and allows even the influencers who are just starting out to build their presence online to participate in the market. This also opens up high-quality content monetization opportunities for micro-influencers.
Easy engagement with brands: With SocialMedia.Market, the influencer gets to engage directly with the brands she is working with. No need to worry about whether the intermediary is blocking the view. Further, the platform acts as a single point to get approval on content across channels and allows for a more integrated transmedia campaign to be designed.
Instant payments: One of the biggest worries of a micro influencers is the delay in payments she has to face more often than not. Sometimes an advertiser may even disappear once the task is complete - as the interaction is completely online. SocialMedia.Market solves this issue by acting as an escrow and guaranteeing payment as soon as the contract is satisfactorily executed.
Actionable insights for channel development: Microinfluencers usually do not have the expertise to set up analytics that will help them improve their channel. SocialMedia.Market takes away this pain and generates actionable insights for the influencers.
Clear task assignment: A complaint one often hears from micro-influencers is that the brands are not clear on what they needs to be done. This is where the smart contracts on Ethereum come in handy, and the process built on SocialMedia.Market ensures that clear tasks with well-defined timelines are assigned to each of the influencer participating in a campaign.
While the layman may still associate Blockchain with Bitcoins, the technology has in fact moved on. With applications like SocialMedia.Market, the trust network that the Blockchain builds is being used to solve real-world problems. This platform is set to revolutionize the influencer marketing space by making it accessible to even small players who would otherwise find it excessively costly to engage in.
