How influence can drive results – 6 key takeaways

Here are some of my key takeaways and insights from How Influence Can Drive Results at Brainstation in Vancouver:

THE BRANDS – KEY TAKEAWAYS

Tech companies Assembly and Social Nature presented two influencer marketing tools to an audience of agencies, brands, and influencers. Each presentation showcasing insightful influencer marketing stats, concerns, product info, and case studies. The audience was engaged throughout and asked some very informed questions.

Assembly is an influencer marketing tracking platform that enables marketers to build out and nurture influencer relationships. Automated payments, advanced reporting, and cross-channel attribution are just a few of the functions available to marketers. Without an existing network of influencers to recruit from clients must take care of this themselves. But the level of trackable data presented in case studies was impressive, and the Assembly team has a strong background in affiliate marketing too.

Social Nature, available only to those with products in the natural/organic space, was a very different service. For anyone looking to test campaigns in the influencer marketing space, this could be an excellent introduction. A turnkey solution Social Nature offers instance access to over 200,000 micro-influencers (an influencer with 1k followers or less). Since micro-influencers are a hot topic in the world of digital right now, it immediately perked my attention, but why should we be interested in working with an influencer with such limited reach? 

• 92% of people trust recommendations from individuals that they know.
• For the same price you could active 10 bloggers or 1000 Micro-Influencers
• Micro-Influencers can generate a high volume of online reviews to boost your SEO by up to 25%

THE RESULTS OF INFLUENCE – INSIGHTS

It’s hard to measure the effectiveness of Micro-Influencers, without advanced tracking or attribution. We should also take into consideration the difference in their call to action, and volume of traffic compared to a traditional coupon/deal site, all of which creates frustration due to lack of results. Here are some final thoughts I came away with:

• Brands and marketers need to figure out how to compensate and recognize the marketing impact that influencers can create.
• More affiliate networks are going to attempt to leverage Influencers, evidence of this seen in Commission Junctions VIP Content Service, and the recent launch of Impact Radius’s Media Partner Discovery tool.
• Consumers are becoming wary of sponsored content that bloggers are creating, are messages becoming less authentic?

For any additional questions or comments regarding the topics discussed above, please feel free to reach out to me, or to take a closer look at the brands discussed head over to Assembly and Social Nature.