A.I. Will Change Influencer Marketing Forever
No form of marketing evolves as rapidly as influencer marketing. The ever changing social media landscape and the growing popularity of creators alone require specialists to always be on their toes and open to constant change. I love it.
Enter A.I. In just a few months, we went from zero to a hundred. ChatGPT is the fastest-growing technology EVER. While it took Facebook 10 months to reach its first 1 million users, and Instagram took 2.5 months, ChatGPT achieved this within just 5 days.
Long story short: A.I. is radically changing influencer marketing, and for the better. In summary, it's changing it in two different ways: efficiency and innovation.
Efficiency in labor and costs
Influencer marketing involves human effort and is therefore not as scalable as buying Google Adwords or Display Ads, which can be easily automated. It's the human factor that makes influencer marketing so effective and builds trust. Now, AI is stepping in to automate many behind-the-scenes tasks. Here are some processes it can assist with:
Matching based on brand fit for influencers: AI can rapidly scan influencers for the type of content, brand collaborations, and their success.
Matching based on brand fit for the audience: Does the fanbase match the target audience in terms of gender, age, and region? How engaged are they with various content and brand collaborations?
Fraud detection: Crucial to avoid collaborating with influencers who have bought their following or have a high percentage of bot followers.
Negotiation: AI can help determine a fair price based on the criteria mentioned above and others like authority, authenticity, and impact.
Planning: Strategically planning and scheduling different types of content, influencers, their flights, and integrating them with other media in the campaign.
Quality control: Ensuring content adheres to timing, hashtags, functional links, and correct spelling.
Payment: Automating payments based on agreements and their fulfillment.
Reporting: Providing insight into what works best for each influencer and content piece. This information can be used for real-time optimization. AI can also identify which influencers were intrinsically motivated, contributing to overall quality and impact improvement.
Currently, there are several tools that offer some of the above features individually, but a comprehensive end-to-end solution is lacking. Moreover, the intelligence aspect is still missing. While analyses can be performed, interpretation is still left to humans.
Keeping up with innovation in the market
The integration of AI not only makes work easier and more effective for all parties involved but also drives significant innovation. One of the major innovations in influencer marketing - one we've been enthusiastic about and experimenting with for years - is virtual influencers.
Virtual influencers? These are computer-generated avatars that have greatly improved with the advent of generative AI like Dall-E and Midjourney. They have transitioned from poorly rendered static Photoshop images, known as the 'uncanny valley,' to hyper-realistic moving virtual influencers. You may have already come across one of the more famous ones, like Lil Miquela (2.8 million followers on Instagram).
They are extremely popular, and due to the increasing accessibility and affordability of the technology, we are seeing more of them. Over the past few years, we've witnessed brands like Samsung, KFC, and Renault experimenting with their own virtual ambassadors who engage with the target audience, live on social media, and participate in campaigns.
Considering both the current popularity and the numerous brand ambassadors such as Ronald McDonald or the Michelin Man, we encounter a fascinating opportunity for brands to get more out of their social media, engage with their target audience in unprecedented ways, and become less dependent on 'external' influencers.
But brands aren't the only ones capitalizing on this trend. We are seeing more influencers develop virtual versions of themselves that look and sound like them. And with the emergence of tools like ChatGPT, we can soon have these virtual influencers speak without human intervention.
So yes, with AI, we can create virtual personalities that look and sound like real people. By connecting them with AI, we can eventually bring them to life so that they can interact with the target audience on their own. We are all familiar with the limited chatbots that answer customer inquiries. In the not-so-distant future, these will become much smarter. This opens up possibilities for customer service and marketing. By addressing the needs of the target audience and learning from conversations, sentiment, and engagement, these virtual ambassadors will know what kind of content to create. They can also provide better and more appropriate responses by interpreting your words, tone, facial expressions, or other data such as your heart rate. Brands will thus get closer to their audiences on a large scale.
Enormous impact, but can brands keep up?
In short, AI has a profound impact on influencer marketing. It becomes more effective by automating 'mechanical' tasks. In addition to cost reduction, this also increases the impact in campaigns and programs. Thanks to automation, influencer specialists can allocate more time to strategy, creativity, and attention to the influencers themselves. These are areas where humans still face little competition from AI.
At the same time, it creates tremendous opportunities for innovation, ways to engage your target audience more with your brand, and the ability to communicate on a one-on-one basis on a massive scale.
If we've learned anything in the past 10 years, it's that influencers are now an integral part of a world where people are tired of flat advertisements, where storytelling is central, and where human connections matter. Some brands have yet to fully grasp this. The fact that influencers and the way they are utilized evolve over time is a reality. The question is which brands have what it takes to adapt at this pace.
This article was published on MarketingTribune.
