Influencer marketing has become an efficient strategy for brands to reach their target customers. Influencers can build a brand’s credibility and strengthen the public’s trust in their products. As influencer marketing’s popularity grew so did the number of creators. To maintain authenticity, brands have to invest a lot of time and effort into finding the right influencers for their campaigns.
With AI's advent and rapid development, businesses can accelerate several phases of influencer vetting and communication. Still, brands must carefully balance between the usage of AI and personalization. AI tools are efficient for replacing menial and time-consuming tasks, but nothing can substitute the human determination and compassion needed to build a genuine rapport between two people.
This article will discuss how AI can assist in a critical stage of influence marketing: outreach and relationship management. We’ll also explore what elements require human interaction and customization to ensure that communication between your brand and influencers is honest and doesn’t seem robotic.
Influencer Discovery and Analysis
Every successful influencer marketing campaign starts with identifying the ideal partner. It’s important to understand that discovery and analysis are separate steps in planning a marketing campaign, yet they are also crucial parts of your outreach. You must recruit creators who meet several criteria, such as:
They are interested or experienced in your industry.
They share the same values as your business.
Their audience matches your target audience.
They maintain a high level of engagement.
Their audience and engagement are authentic and so on.
The more conditions an influencer meets, the greater the chance that your outreach message will pique their interest.
How can AI make influencer discovery and analysis smoother?
AI-powered tools can assess influencer profiles and key metrics such as follower count, audience demographics, engagement history, reach, and even past collaborations across multiple platforms. Based on brands' requirements, they can filter out the most suitable candidates and create a shortlist of potential creators who can be contacted.
Advanced algorithms can notice fraudulent activities that imply the use of automated services to boost followers and engagement. Fraud detection tools perform follower checks in a fraction of the time it takes to manually perform them.
Tools using Natural Language Processing (NLP) excel in reviewing creators’ posts for tone and sentiments. This is crucial to ensure the influencer’s voice matches your brand’s voice and prevents you from being paired with individuals who talk about you and your industry negatively.
Areas of influencer discovery and analysis where human input is necessary
AI can speed up the vetting process for sure but people must determine the goals of the campaign and it’s their decision in the end who aligns with their objectives. Although NLP analyzes the tone of texts, only humans can understand whether they are within the context or not. People realize humor, sarcasm, indecency, and sensitive content but AI isn’t yet at the stage of development to succeed in this.
Influencer Outreach
If your search and evaluation were exhaustive, then you can continue with outreach. You must decide how you want to contact influencers. By direct message, email, or video chat? You have to write a captivating initial message that proves you are familiar with a creator’s content. You need to propose an offer that is appealing and rewarding for them.
Outreach depends on personalization. Your message has to communicate to the influencer that they are unique. You must use their full name or social media username when addressing them. It makes the experience more memorable if you refer to one of their posts. This helps establish a connection between your brand and them. Influencers are more likely to respond positively if they see, they are not just one person from thousands.
In what areas can AI help in outreach?
Even though customization is key, AI tools can analyze an influencer’s content and identify elements in their communication style that can enhance your message. AI can pull in information like their names, latest posts, or preferred products from the internet and enrich your outreach email with these details.
Algorithms analyze the influencer’s online activity and suggest optimal times for sending the first message. AI-driven services help you build email sequences with reminders and follow-ups ensuring the re-engagement with creators. In case you need to recruit a large number of content creators for your campaign, tools can accelerate mass outreach and monitor conversion rates and reactions.
Take My Network, HypeAuditor’s influencer relationship management feature. It was designed to help brands and agencies streamline their outreach and relationship workflows. The tool enables marketers to reduce the time spent on checking in on influencers. Team members can follow and adjust the status of influencers to match the negotiation process. Plus, teams can synchronize their Gmail with the IRM for easier communication.
Make influencer outreach effortless
Use email personalization, pre-made templates, automated sequences, and email analytics to efficiently communicate with influencers. Keep all conversations in one place and take advantage of bulk outreach capabilities.
Book your free demo now
Which part of outreach requires the human element?
Influencers receive several collaboration offers, and what distinguishes your pitch from the others is the genuine interest in their content. While AI can help you craft the first message, a person needs to review and refine it so that it resonates with the influencer.
Human intervention is crucial when influencers have specific questions or concerns that fall outside of the AI’s capabilities. Outreach is the starting point of building authentic relationships with influencers, therefore brands mustn’t completely rely on AI and automation tools.
Negotiating Contract and Payment Terms
Once a few influencers are hooked, your communications will turn to campaign details. You need to discuss the number and types of deliverables, due dates, schedules, usage rights, exclusivity, payment terms, disclosure, and campaign termination or potential extension.
We recommend you draft a legal agreement between you and the influencers that includes all the obligations required from both parties and the benefits to be provided for them. Include the payment terms and usage rights. Make sure that everybody signs the contracts and that fees are paid on time.
In what steps of influencer negotiation can AI assist you?
Relying on standard templates, AI allows you to create a contract and automatically send it to influencers. Analytical AI tools calculate price estimates using industry benchmarks and influencers’ key metrics. This is especially helpful when you start negotiating fees with influencers and you are familiar with what rates they can charge for their work. Plus, price estimates enable you to calculate the total cost of your campaign.
What procedures of relationship management need human attention?
A tool can’t address unique influencer requests or answer questions that are different from the norm. Influencers may enquire about the possibility of a long-term partnership or would like to change the initially agreed upon payment structure. Either way, the essence of building relationships is to answer every specific question and find a solution for every emerging issue and concern that benefits both parties.
Despite its advanced state, AI tools can’t mimic human judgment. They don’t have empathy. Even little things can make or break the trust between two individuals. For this reason, team members must make sure to use AI only as an assistant for contract development and automating messaging. The decision eventually is made by humans.
Stages of Campaign Execution Where AI Can Help Brands
Analyzing the influencer’s content for necessary keywords, hashtags, and mentions.
Checking whether the texts and images are relevant and in context with the product.
Ensuring ad disclosure.
Monitoring campaign performance in real time.
Measuring campaign success, especially ROI.
Regularly checking in with influencers via automated follow-ups and reminders.
AI enables businesses to optimize the technical part of influencer marketing, such as analyzing enormous data and automating processes. Yet, it can’t forge honest relationships, understand nuances in an influencer’s personality and content, and make a decision. This is what businesses have to keep in mind whenever they try to rely too much on tools and technology.
