How Brands can Leverage AI to Identify the Right Influencer

CIO Applications| Tuesday, January 12, 2021

A recent study by Salesforce Research suggested that 92 percent of the customers surveyed believe that trusting a brand increases interest towards buying their products and services

Fremont, CA: Social media is now more than just a platform to express one's personal life or a leisure platform that helps people kill time. A significant number of companies are leveraging social media platforms to market their products to leverage its vast reach and simplicity. However, one of the biggest challenges faced by brands today while using social media is identifying the right influencer for a brand. While the wrong choice of influencer may not have a detrimental effect on the brand, it can be time wasted in an environment that is becoming more competitive each day. In some extreme cases, a poor choice of influencer can have an adverse impact on the brand image.

A recent study by Salesforce Research suggested that 92 percent of the customers surveyed believe that trusting a brand increases interest towards buying their products and services. Nearly a third of the consumers also believe that the influencer's core values should align with the brand values and image. Human monitoring teams can quickly identify an influencer's core values by browsing through the influencer's previous posts and brands associated with it. However, this can be a very time-consuming process and has a high margin of error. Finding an influencer who is the right fit and can provide a reasonable Return on Investment (RoI) in terms of sales or sales traffic is essential.

The uses of Artificial Intelligence (AI) and machine learning are vast and spread across various sectors. The technologies use predictive algorithms to determine a customer's life cycle, as their key areas of acquisition, relationship growth, retention, and win-back. This powerful technology can be used to help brands identify the right kind of influencers that align with their brand values. AI can be used to identify brand-safe influencers by measuring profanity ratings to ensure that brands partner with influencers with shared values. At the same time, it also helps combine online behavior with offline purchases to help drive ROI based real-time campaign measurement across brand perception, consumer engagement, online conversation, offline sales, and foot traffic.