The same influencer marketing platform that helps you identify influencers to partner with should also be able to vet them to help mitigate risk and protect your brand from things like influencer fraud, which has challenged the influencer marketing industry since its inception. Research showed the cost of fraudulent influencer practices reached $1.3 billion in 2019, highlighting the need for a centralized approach to vetting based on robust data and machine learning.
While you learn about the vetting solutions within influencer marketing platforms, be sure to also read through the other articles in the 13-part blog series dedicated to helping you select the right influencer marketing platform. There are many things to consider as you evaluate prospective influencer technology providers.
In the early days of influencer marketing, the number of followers an influencer had was the key driver of the price tag they commanded per post - this led to many influencers using dubious tactics to boost that number, such as purchasing fake followers from bot farms. As such, follower fraud became more frequent, threatening the ROI of influencer partnerships; in short, influencer marketing had an integrity issue.
Companies began to pay closer attention to the integrity of the influencers they worked with, particularly the composition of their audiences - and developed ad hoc tools to mitigate losses. Some major companies, including pioneers of the influencer marketing landscape like Unilever, integrated fraud detection into their process, signaling to the industry an urgent need for action.
While the industry matured, so too did the tactics used by some influencers used to create illusions of large, engaged audiences so that they could command higher fees from brands. The industry saw limited action from social media companies like Facebook to mitigate these developments, which presented up-and-coming influencer marketing software companies with a new product opportunity: influencer vetting and fraud detection.
The need for influencer and audience integrity gave rise to new capabilities within influencer marketing tech, including the use of machine learning to develop algorithms designed to automate a vetting process identifying fraudulent practices at scale.
Most influencer marketing platforms now offer multiple metrics for vetting influencers based on vast datasets and smart algorithms. The right platform will not only provide complete vetting metrics, but will also stay ahead of new developments in fraud tactics, which are inevitable to arise as questionable influencers - who make up a tiny fraction, we hasten to add - catch up to advancing vetting processes and capabilities.
Question to Ask:
In addition to detecting follower fraud, ask what other vetting metrics the influencer platform you’re considering offers. A fully capable dashboard should be able to scan content for potential NSFW material and flag any concerns in bios, images, and hashtags, while analyzing existing brand partnerships so that you can identify potential conflicts. A comprehensive platform will evaluate an influencer’s audience and its potential value using a scoring system.
CreatorIQ’s Active Audience Score analyzes multiple follower and engagement metrics to provide a broad overview of the audience’s value, taking the guesswork and manual searching out of the process. Every brand and even campaign will have different needs regarding the integrity and value of an influencer’s value proposition, which is why flexibility and filtering variables are a key factor in evaluating the vetting capabilities of an influencer marketing platform.
Pro Tip:
Before you start evaluating which platform best suits your needs for vetting influencers, we recommend creating a checklist like the one below. If you need more inspiration, check out other workbook grids to help you during your platform selection process. You can access them here.
Influencer marketing is a uniquely personal marketing channel as influencers typically come to the table with highly engaged audiences cultivated over a long period of time - and as with all long-term relationships, these audience relationships are built on trust and consistency. If an influencer’s audience is as engaged as they say, this presents a major opportunity for marketers trying to convert new business.
However, that trust is a two-way street, and smart marketers will approach these conversations with a desire to positively affirm the integrity of the influencer and their audience; by using advanced, automated audience vetting tools like CreatorIQ, this process is made swift and precise, freeing up your team’s time to focus on building fabulous campaigns that your target market will love.
There are several things to consider when choosing an influencer marketing platform. Our next blog post will discuss how to evaluate influencer marketing platforms’ collaboration and approval solutions. Get the complete Guide & Workbook for Selecting an Enterprise Influencer Marketing Platform or stay tuned for the next blog post.