Influencer marketing has emerged as a viable means of getting your business in front of potential customers. In fact, as of 2023, the worldwide market is estimated to be worth $21.1 billion. Because of influencers’ potential to reach millions, you should also leverage them for your PR efforts.
But finding and working with the right influencers is no easy feat. The task requires research and deft relationship management. Influencer marketing for brands (and influencers) is time-consuming. Luckily, as a brand, you can automate your influencer marketing campaigns for your PR efforts. Here’s how to do it.
What is influencer marketing automation?
Influencer marketing automation is the process of using technology to handle the most time-consuming and repetitive tasks in influencer marketing programs.
Typical software applications you might use during an influencer campaign include:
- Tools with robust analytics capabilities (e.g., Google Analytics).
- Influencer databases
- Social listening tools
- Outreach tools
Depending on your needs and budget, you may use separate technologies or one powerful tool that offers all the features you need for your campaign.
How automation benefits influencer marketing
Automation can aid your influencer marketing efforts in the following ways:
Helps identify potential influencers: Manually searching for suitable influencers for your social media marketing campaigns can be time-consuming. You could spend hours scrolling through the various social media platforms searching for personalities whose target audiences align with your business’s.
An influencer database will save you that time and energy. Platforms like Hypeauditor and Influencer.club have search filters that eliminate social media influencers who aren’t good matches for your campaigns. Their smart filters show you results based on factors like influencer profile, content type, audience demographic, and more. They also find influencers in seconds.
Tools such as Storyclash can also automatically search for influencers talking about your brand on your chosen platform.
Simplifies influencer marketing campaigns: Automation tools like influencer marketing tools can streamline your campaigns in several ways. For example, tools like Upfluence can help marketing teams send campaign briefs and drafts to multiple influencers from one platform. This is far more efficient than sending everything to one influencer at a time. Some tools can also help you centralize the onboarding of many influencers into your campaign.
Enables real-time tracking of campaign performance: When you use automation tools like influencer marketing software tools, you get more visibility into your campaigns. Their campaign tracking capabilities and deep analytics give invaluable insights.
These tools show you metrics like your campaign’s conversion rates and engagement rates, deep audience demographics, and so on. As such, you can easily measure campaign impact and make informed decisions.
In summary, automation software can speed up your workflow. It can also provide helpful data that can shape your campaigns. It is essential for any business whose growth strategy involves the use of social platforms.
How to use automation in your influencer marketing strategy
Here’s how to use automation to supercharge your marketing campaigns with influencers:
Identify and Select the Right Influencers: As discussed above, you can use an influencer database or social listening tools to find influencer collaborations. With that said, you need to be clear about who you’re looking for before you begin your search.
As a rule of thumb, your chosen influencer should be someone who produces content that aligns with your business’s brand values. In addition, the influencer should have a following that is interested in the products or services your business offers. Other criteria you may use when considering influencers are:
- the size of their audience
- your budget (for their influencer fee)
If you’re using an influencer database, you can specify these criteria.
When you’ve found potential partners, you can use email finder tools to locate their contact details. Make sure you personalize your email for the best results.
Implement Influencer Management Software: Once your campaign begins, you’ll need to manage your relationship with the influencer from start to finish. The process includes onboarding the influencer and sending relevant documents like your brand’s drafts for influencers to follow.
Luckily, there are applications that can help your business do this. For example, Klear can help you easily onboard influencers into your campaign and maintain correspondence in-app.
Grin, for its part, can help you create and share your one-on-one promotions with influencers. The tool allows you to manage many influencer programs and influencers at the same time. Once relevant influencer content is posted, you also get a notification. Some automation software apps like Kolsquare allow you to upload your brand messages from a central platform for all your influencers to see.
Track campaign performance: As part of your influencer marketing automation, use technology to measure your influencer campaign’s performance. There are tools like Modash that can automatically collect partner content so you can check how it’s doing. Tagger can also give you specific data on engagement, conversions, and overall influencer performance stats.
If you’re not using influencer tracking tools, you can monitor your influencers’ performance by supplying them with UTM links. You can then use Google Analytics or any other analytics tool as part of your influencer marketing automation. They can help you determine which influencer is sending the most traffic to your site.
Tracking helps you know whether your campaigns are producing positive results. If you don’t collect and analyze data, you can’t make sound business decisions about your influencer marketing budget or the future of your business’s relationship with influencers.
In closing
Influencer marketing is something brands should leverage for PR. But this can be time-consuming for brands. That’s why automation software is essential: it streamlines the process of finding, managing, and evaluating influencers. It also helps you manage and track influencer marketing campaigns.
You learned how to use automation in your influencer marketing campaigns. Visualize your workflow and see which parts can be automated. Then choose the tools that fit your business needs.
You’ll be all set for influencer marketing for PR success.
