An industry projected to be worth $15 billion in 2022, has brought with it tremendous growth opportunities which also makes up for the reason why in 2019 alone, over 300 new influencer marketing platforms and agencies were established. With influencer marketing providing returns higher than print advertisement, it has established itself to become one of the most preferred online marketing strategies.

Technological advancements in majority sectors have given rise to automation for increased efficiency. And with this increasing scope of automation in major business aspects including different marketing activities, it would be naive of us to not expect automation in influencer marketing as well.

What is Automation of Influencer Marketing?

Automation of Influencer marketing refers to the use of technology to perform the important and rather tedious tasks involved in influencer marketing such as choosing the right influencers out of hundreds and thousands, calculation of engagement rate, content scheduling, workflow automation, calculation of returns per influencer, etc. Marketers use software programs or artificial intelligence

(AI - software that has a self learning feature) for the purpose of automation of influencer marketing.

Why is Automation needed?

Influencer marketing has picked up at a fast pace and businesses are in a pursuit to match up to it. However, these businesses are facing a few common problems such as:

1. Influencer discovery and shortlisting

2. Briefing and expectations

3. Price negotiations

4. Reminders and follow-ups

5. Performance tracking

These tasks, which if done manually are tedious in nature. They cost businesses time and expenditure on added resources which are required to undertake them. To tackle these problems, automation of influencer marketing in the right amount is absolutely needed. However, automation of tasks comes with its fair set of challenges.

Does automation of influencer marketing have any challenges?

The reason why influencer marketing works so well compared to other ways of online marketing is due to the very human nature of it. Sure online ads like search engine ads, affiliate links, YouTube ads, etc. help you reach targeted audiences, but what they lack is the ability to make your customers - regular or potential - feel connected. Additionally, many digital ads do not possess the ability to surpass ad blockers.

While automation helps you in reducing the time and efforts you put in tedious activities, implementing the same in influencer marketing may seem challenging. Unlike Google ads or Facebook ads where you do not need regular follow-ups or continuous interventions for ads to run, that is not the case with influencer marketing.

With influencer marketing every post requires a human intervention at most levels either from influencers or brands or both. If automated to one hundred percent, influencer marketing that seems to be working out well for brands, could lead to a bad user experience as AI lacks the very ability of creativity and discretion that humans possess. This bad user experience as a resultant of lack of human touch could more likely become the beginning of the end of influencer marketing.

Do the benefits outweigh the challenges of influencer marketing automation?

Our compilation will help you decide for yourself if the benefits outweigh challenges or vice versa.

Because influencer marketing has a human touch to it, the idea of automation creates a virtual setback in the minds of skeptical marketers. It is true that influencer marketing cannot be automated to one hundred percent, just like certain business activities such as critical decision making which cannot be automated. But, it is also true that automation of influencer marketing is only for the better, if done right.

Automation of influencer marketing helps you in:

1. Discovery and shortlisting the right influencers

2. Calculation of engagement rates of each influencer

3. Provides a seamless communication process between brands and influencers

4. Tracking of performance

5. Gives detailed campaign reports from engagement level to keyword level analytics.

Apart from this, automation also helps you reduce the expenditure on resources as well as saves the ‘time-cost’ expended by those resources in carrying out redundant activities. It also allows marketers to focus more on creativity, which happens to be a key part of influencer marketing campaigns or any marketing campaign for that matter.

What should you do?

According to IDC Group, a premier global marketing intelligence firm, “Not implementing a marketing automation solution may be the ultimate career limiting move for today's marketers. If you haven't gotten started yet, you are already behind the 8 ball”.

To get yourself out of that position, determine the requirements of your brand and its goals.

Team up with influencer marketing platforms that help you strike the right balance between automation and elements that need just the right amount of human touch for your influencer marketing campaigns.