Technology Would Continue To Play A Significant Role In Evolving The Future Of Influencer Marketing: BuzzOne
What is this type of marketing and how is it making so much difference? While Sanjay Vasudeva, CEO & Founder of BuzzOne guesstimates that the growth trajectory of influencer marketing in India is currently growing at roughly 40-50 percent YOY, Sarabjeet Kaur from BW CIOWORLD, interviewed him to decipher the know-how of Influencer Marketing, alternatively termed as the social word-of-mouth marketing. Excerpts:
The new digital age is impacting the traditional forms of marketing in a big way. With the increase in the use of technology such as mobile phones and increasing number of people with digital out-reach it has impacted the traditional form of marketing. In various industries digital advertising has already over taken media spends on traditional marketing such as TV, radio and print. In fact, in some cases, OOH (Out-Of-Home) is also using technology for their display of ads. However, as the traditional form of marketing is still relevant in the tier 2 and tier 3 markets, I feel it is important to adopt a collective approach by the brands.
Very similar to word of mouth marketing, influencer marketing establishes positive credentials for the brands in the minds of their target group by associating with the influencer whom they follow avidly. The word of mouth marketing is considered as one of the most effective ways of offline brand communication and now influencer marketing helps the brands achieve equal levels of effectiveness on social media platforms.
Influencer marketing is a multipurpose tool for all types of businesses and is being currently adopted by brands across industries including fashion, lifestyle, hospitality, technology, auto, FMCG, BFSI and consumer durable to name a few.
Technology helps us identify influencers and how their content resonates with the brand requirements. Its assists us in finalizing the appropriate platforms which are to be used for a specific campaign and finally technology also helps us in analyzing the campaign performance and efficacy.
Big Data is yet to play a significant role in influencer marketing in India; however, I consider the same as a major player for the near future. It can help us gauge consumer behavior on social media, the appropriate content to determine how effectively communication can be targeted to the consumers – and through which influencers on which social platforms.
Most of the technological tools aim at identifying the influencers, managing influencer campaigns and analyzing campaigns. We, at BuzzOne, use KeyHole, Traackr, Socialalert, etc.
With the significant increase in influencer marketing, there has been a parallel increase in the use of technological tools which are available to the marketers to identify with the right influencers, their reach and efficacy and also in campaign analysis.
I agree that there are ad blockers but this technology has not affected the display of advertisement very heavily. Despite of these blockers there are numerous ad inventories available for media planners to consume. This, however, does not impact with influencers’ space as it uses the native reach of influencers’ social platforms. In order to build and maintain transparency for the brands, recently there have been de-cluttering actions taken by platforms such as Facebook and Twitter. This is a great initiative as it removed innumerous inorganic/fake followers from various renowned handles.
Technology is playing and would continue to play a huge role in how influencer marketing would evolve in the future. I see a definitive increase in tech play to map the last mile social content and how it impacts the sale.
