Artificial intelligence is evolving quickly, and it’s becoming an inherent part of digital marketing. Influencer marketing is no exception to this trend.
Currently, Renault is testing an AI social listening tool to segment audiences and find influencers they trust.
However, this technology has yet to reach several small and medium companies, owing to a lack of awareness.
So, how can AI streamline the influencer marketing process?
Let’s start with some basics.
What is AI?
Artificial intelligence is an area of computer science which deals with building intelligent computers that can think and work like humans. It is comprised of machine visions and speech recognition, and other complex systems.
You can use AI for logical reasoning, problem-solving, perception, learning, and planning.
Critical Problems in Influencer Marketing
But influencer marketing comes with a few unique problems of its own.
The biggest concern is identifying fake followers and engagement metrics which are created or facilitated by social media bots.
Tracking the increasing use of video and images on social media has also become extremely difficult, especially if there are no relevant texts or hashtags.
And finally, finding the right influencer for your brand has always been difficult.
Big isn’t necessarily better, these days.
Many influencers have a huge number of Instagram followers.
But, there’s very little evidence to date suggesting those numbers will translate into engagement and sales conversions.
So how can AI help, you ask?
By using AI, you can streamline the influencer marketing campaign process. It allows brands to use a few trusted and relevant influencers to obtain maximum brand exposure.
Let’s take a look at how you can use AI to do this.
Finding Contextual Relevance
AI can bring you a step closer to finding your “influencer soulmates.”
Use AI-based social listening tools to dig up information well beyond the usual demographics by quickly browsing massive data sets.
These AI tools can study factors such as psychographics and contextual relevancy. Why? To determine if an influencer is a perfect match for your brand.
You can also use them to categorize influencer personalities into different types and match with a predefined template.
For example, Influential uses technology based on IBM’s Watson AI to match brands with influencers. The AI tool can scan the last 22,000 words produced by an influencer. Then, it analyzes them based on 47 different traits.
“We are able to match them, and tell brands here are the 100 influencers that speak about you the way you want to be seen,” says Influential CEO Ryan Detert.
It also identifies any negative comments an influencer has made and flags if they’ve supported a competitor, instructing you to avoid them.
Influencer Marketing and AI: Fraud Detection
Recently, influencer marketing fraud has become a growing concern.
According to data from the anti-fraud company, Sway Op, bot comments are responsible for over 40 percent of the total comments on more than 500 of 2,000 sponsored posts made each day.
Often, human-operated tools fail to differentiate between genuine and fraudulent influencers.
However, AI-powered influencer discovery platforms use advanced analytics to scan data and find any suspicious activity.
Now, FMCG giant, Unilever, has decided to fight influencer fraud head-on.
In order to improve the integrity, transparency, and measurement of influencer marketing, their top marketer, Keith Weed, is calling for urgent action from the ad industry and social media platforms as well.
Image and Video Recognition
When it comes to image and video recognition, AI-powered machine vision can lead to two-fold benefits.
It improves the ability to identify objects, places, people, text, and actions within images.
And most importantly, it can perform this task at scale by scanning millions of pictures and videos in a matter of seconds.
The advanced scanning process can recognize specific products, people, and objects in the images.
If you have sophisticated AI tools utilizing Artificial Neural Networks (ANN), they can also identify facial expressions of people in the pictures. So, in other words, you can tag relevant people and products in a flash.
Measuring an Influencer’s Performance
Influencer marketing systems powered by AI can track an influencer’s performance.
You can use Natural Language Processing (NLP) to analyze the type of comments and responses an influencer receives for each post.
And, you can compare other metrics such as engagement level and sales conversions with predetermined campaign goals.
Furthermore, you can use AI to analyze historical data from various influencer marketing campaigns to find out which incentives worked best.
So you see, using this information can ensure greater success for your next marketing campaign.
Creating Stronger Emotional Connections
Since AI can help you find the most suitable influencers, you increase the chance of making a stronger emotional connection with your target audience.
Influencers are already using emotional marketing to connect with their followers.
With the help of AI, however, brands can find out what messaging is most likely to resonate and influence consumers.
Take steps to encourage influencers to create content most likely to elicit a stronger emotional response from your target audience.
But keep in mind, AI is still in its infancy, so it will take a few more years until it’s used for emotional influencer marketing.
AI as Part of Your Influencer Marketing Strategy
AI is fast becoming an indispensable part of influencer marketing.
In recent years, it has helped marketers connect with suitable influencers, measure their performance, eliminate fraud, and recognize complex images and videos.
Eventually, it will become sophisticated enough to deploy emotionally engaging marketing campaigns.
Think about how you can plan to use AI to create highly efficient influencer marketing campaigns.