August 7, 2024
The following article is based on a webinar hosted by Siddhartha Saxena, Sales Director at Bazaarvoice, and Nisarg Shah, Co-founder and CEO at Affable, on new technology designed to help you master creator marketing. Watch the demo here.
This one is for any agency producer, social media coordinator, or other marketer who’s ever had to wrangle together a creator campaign. Because WOOF.
You guys are superheroes.
Only you know how much time and manual effort it takes to find the right creator or influencer, with the right follower demographics, who aligns with your brand (you only have to sift through 300 million globally, no big deal). To manage outreach, contract negotiations, and content reviews — especially with multiple creators. To track performance and budget utilization, and respond to changing conditions on the fly.
It’s worth it, because your creator gave your campaign the relatable, authentic voice it needed. But yeaaah — it was a lot of work.
Well? We have good news, y’all.
We’ve been working on something specifically for you: a new way to streamline how creator campaigns are managed, trimming up to 80% from your typical time spent. It’s smart and tech-driven, designed by marketers just like you and powered by AI. It’s end-to-end for the whole campaign. Given its capabilities, it’s almost shockingly easy to use. And best of all, it’s going to let you hang up your superhero cape for a while.
(Not that you need to tell your coworkers. It’ll be our little secret.)
Meet Bazaarvoice Affable.ai.
What the right creator can offer your brand
But first, a quick refresher. With all of the tools in the marketing tool belt, you might wonder why we place such a high premium on creators. Especially if the above is true and, traditionally, their campaigns were so work-intensive.
The answer is that creators bring a lot to the brand partnership table. More than you might expect. And it’s all measurable.
Trust
Trust has always been a crucial factor in consumer decision-making, but perhaps never more than today, with ad fatigue on the rise and Gen Z skepticism of all things slick and branded. According to recent studies, 69% of customers trust recommendations and insights from influencers, friends, and family over information directly from brands. It’s all about authenticity and relatability, and transparency — and creators are simply better at those things than brands are. By partnering with creators who align with your brand values, you can enhance your brand’s credibility and foster deeper connections with potential customers.
Reach
Influencers and creators have cultivated their own unique audiences, often consisting of highly engaged and loyal followers. These audiences can offer brands access to new communities and demographics that they might not reach through traditional marketing channels. Collaborating with on-brand creators allows you to extend your reach beyond your current customer base, introducing your products or services to a wider audience and unlocking new opportunities for growth and brand recognition.
Conversion
81% of consumers report that social posts from influencers, friends, and family members drove their interest in a product or service over the past year. Moreover, 67% of shoppers now rely on UGC for shopping inspiration and fact-finding, and a big piece of this is influencer content. This shows how powerful creators can be when it comes to influencing purchase decisions and consumer behavior.
Innovation
Creators aren’t just content producers; they are also innovators and trendsetters. Involve them in your content supply chain, and you can benefit from their fresh perspectives and creativity. Partner with them on product development, and they can offer valuable feedback on your designs. Bring them in on marketing strategy, and they can introduce innovative, inspiring creative concepts and storytelling techniques. However you use them, it’s an invaluable POV: an outsider perspective, but one who knows how to prime their audience.
It’s imperative, then, that you find the right creator. And this is how you can remove the barriers and streamline the process to reach and collaborate with the people you need.
The Affable.ai platform
Affable.ai is an innovative, end-to-end creator marketing platform developed by Bazaarvoice and Affable. It features first-to-market AI technology designed to help you discover, collaborate with, track, and measure creators and content. Here’s a look at what the platform can do for you.
Discover creators with real relevance and influence
Creative listening solution: Affable.ai provides a powerful creative listening feature that lets you track and monitor the brands you support across every social media platform. This feature captures all the content that creators are posting about the brand, allowing you to gather valuable metrics such as reach and impressions. With this data, you can assess the performance of your campaigns and understand the impact of your content on different audiences. Moreover, you can use the same capabilities to track competitors, giving you insights into industry trends and strategies that can inform your own marketing efforts.
AI-Powered creator discovery: The platform’s AI search engine is a game-changer in creator discovery, offering advanced capabilities for finding the perfect creators for your brand. Utilizing cutting-edge image analysis and over 20 advanced filters, you can identify creators whose style and audience align with your brand’s objectives. Once you have a list of potential collaborators, Affable.ai allows you to compare engagement rates, follower counts, industry relevance, demographic information about followers, brand affiliations, and posting frequency. All essential information when deciding who will best amplify your brand message.
Make collaboration and communication a breeze
Frictionless collaboration and oversight: Finding the right creator is only the beginning. Developing an open, effective working relationship is equally important — and whole lot easier when Affable.ai is facilitating it. The platform provides tools for leaving notes, giving approvals, and managing feedback, ensuring clear communication throughout the campaign process. If you’re an agency, it even allows brand clients to review and leave notes, so all parties can collaborate in a single place.
One-click (or less) communication tools: Effective communication is essential for maintaining strong relationships with creators — but literally nobody wants to spend their day emailing, especially if you’re managing multiple creators at once. Affable.ai simplifies the process with template emails and automated follow-ups. These tools allow you to communicate efficiently with your creator army, saving time and reducing the manual effort required to manage creator interactions.
Track campaigns with no more manual monitoring
Comprehensive content and campaign tracking: Where many creator campaigns sink or swim is with the marketing team’s tracking capabilities. Affable.ai lets you monitor the number of content pieces created, track embedded link clicks, and maintain a content library of everything produced during the campaign. At a higher level, the platform also provides a detailed campaign overview, displaying information about all engaged influencers, budget, media coverage, engagement metrics, estimated reach, estimated impressions, and estimated media value. Taken together, all of this data helps you stay informed about the progress and impact of your campaigns, assess what’s working, and find where improvements are needed.
Measure performance: Don’t let your campaign investments go unnoticed
AI-driven sentiment analysis: Every creator marketing analytics platform gives you a quantitative survey about how your campaign performed: that’s table stakes. But Affable.ai adds to this offering qualitative insights. By analyzing follower post comments using AI-driven sentiment analysis, the platform goes beyond numbers to provide a deeper understanding of how your content resonates with audiences. With this qualitative feedback, you can refine your messaging and approach, ensuring your campaigns effectively engage and connect with your target audience.
Ready to try it out?
Like we said at the beginning, that’s a lot of functionality for one platform — and a lot of legwork we’re ready to handle for you. But don’t take our word for it: you can request a demo and try Affable.ai for yourself. And see how super-powered marketers like you are taking the creator game to new heights.
