TikTok and Instagram Reels are already an essential part of a brands marketing, but how do you source the right creators for your business? Today, Ed Hill, Senior Vice President EMEA at Bazaarvoice, discusses creator marketing platforms and how to select an agency that is a good fit for you:
The creator economy is booming. As brands seek the power of authentic voices to reach their target audiences, there’s a rising demand for effective creator marketing platforms.
That’s mainly because the right creator marketing platform saves time, reduces overhead costs, provides you with metrics extending beyond just brand awareness, and streamlines your end-to-end campaigns. Emerging AI functions can also keep you from drowning in a sea of tedious manual outreach.
But with so many platforms available, choosing the right one can seem pretty daunting. Here’s everything you need to know about finding the perfect solution for your brand’s unique needs.
What is a creator marketing platform?
A creator marketing platform is automated software that helps businesses find relevant creators, as well as facilitating campaign management, and providing analytics to measure campaign performance.
Considering the sheer volume of creators and the amount of content generated on social media, businesses have discovered finding, filtering, and connecting with relevant creators to be a challenge. Not to mention managing them and their content, and evaluating their performance.
Creator marketing platforms are a powerful tool to aid businesses in this process. They’re a centralized hub for everything creator marketing-related to help businesses run a data-driven campaign effectively and efficiently.
The key features of a great creator marketing platform
Creator marketing platforms address the above pain points head on. Through machine learning and AI technology, these tools provide a range of filters to help you find the right creators, such as searching based on age, gender, location, language, interests, and follower range. For example, if you’re a vegan makeup brand looking for a niche beauty creator, all you need to do is apply the right filters and you’ll have access to a global community of content creators within seconds. These advanced filters simplify creator search and enables you to collaborate and manage your creators seamlessly from one place with text, mood boards, conversational chat and lookalike recommendations.
What’s more, some platforms have a vetting process and employ advanced algorithms to identify and filter out suspicious accounts. AI-driven platforms can even spot fake creators by analysing their follower growth, engagement timeline and fake or ghost follower profile, allowing businesses to see through the looking glass, and filter the fake users from the real ones.
The benefits aren’t limited to finding real on-brand creators in less time. We know that manual invoices, managing multiple spreadsheets, and chasing payments are tedious, laborious, and resource-heavy. With a specialised platform, conversations with individual creators are tracked in one place, payments are automatically triggered on campaign completion or have flexible payment options as performance-based incentives. Plus, marketing teams can easily set up secure recurring payments to foster long-term partnerships.
Beyond all of this, creator marketing platforms can be used to track the overall effectiveness of your campaigns. They provide access to in-depth reports and analysis of campaign performance, which you can leverage to make informed, data-driven decisions – all at the push of a button.
How to pick the right creator marketing platform
With so many creator marketing platforms out there, each offering unique features and functionalities, it can be tricky knowing which is the right one for your campaign.
Start by identifying a handful of platforms for a thorough evaluation. Read into reviews and case studies and look into how different brands have successfully leveraged each platform. Don’t forget to make the most of user-reviews and demos to experience the platforms firsthand. This approach can help you gauge how user-friendly a platform is and whether its creator database meets your specific requirements.
The best platforms feature intuitive interfaces that are effortlessly navigable for you and your team. You should evaluate whether the platform provides mobile access and enables you to conveniently manage your campaigns on the move.
Pay close attention to the customer support options on offer. Understanding their onboarding process and the assistance they provide can be crucial in making your marketing campaigns a success, which is especially useful should the requirements of your campaigns change in response to the real-time traffic, sales, leads, conversion and engagement data you’re receiving. Choose a platform that includes creator discovery and management technology as part of its existing creator-managed services. This ensures you can build a creator marketing strategy with a choice of service options that help increase product visibility even without the required resources.
Undoubtedly, identifying the right creator is the greatest challenge for many brands. Perhaps due to a lack of knowledge about the right creator marketing platforms required to get started. So, before you strategise for your next creator marketing campaign, evaluate a platform that will aid your specific needs. Or better yet, try a platform that covers the whole creator marketing spectrum and uses AI to save time and seamlessly source, manage, track and measure creator programmes.
One Response
My mother fell for one this week on Insta, £60 the y were trying to flog a dogs groom kit for. I picked it up on Temu the exact same thing for £3.40.