And it was all worth it.
We’re Still not Over “Under the Influence” [Roundup]:
Summary of the event
The event went off smoothly, and our sold-out crowd of marketers, brands, and influencers reminded us what “audience engagement” looks like in real life. But perhaps what was most gratifying was seeing the community that’s evolved around Influencer Marketing Hub in person. Google Analytics tells us we’re the number one resource for the industry, but everyone showing up and joining us for the day made it real. Thank you to everyone who attended! Many thanks are also due to our sponsors, Traackr and Assembly, for their parts in making the day happen—and their contributions to the day’s presentations.
As a company, Traackr has evolved right alongside influencer marketing itself, so it makes sense that they’d have some ideas as to where it’s headed. SVP Nicolas Chabot’s presentation showed us how that evolution has transformed the industry—and where to go from here. Assembly is one of the newest IM platforms on the market, but the company behind it, Redbrick, has been doing digital marketing and analytics for years. That experience was on full display when CEO Neil Henderson presented best practices for tracking campaign analytics and ROI.
We also need to give a shout to all the other great companies that participated in our daylong agenda of dialogue and presentations. You all helped us cover a lot of ground that day:
Simon Staib, blogfoster’s co-founder, talked about ways to combat many of the fraud issues with influencer marketing, and opened a lot of eyes. Mavrck CEO Lyle Stevens might have made some marketers in the room a little nervous when he showed how Artificial Intelligence can be used to power influencer campaigns. Aaron Ru from Pinterest discussed the way the Lens feature of his company’s app is changing the way consumers shop for merchandise, and how this perfectly intersects with the goals of brands and their content creators. NeoReach CEO Jesse Leimgruber deconstructed some myths of ROI—and confronted its realities—as he explained a new standard his company had come up with.
Of course, no conference is complete without networking, and our attendees were quick to make connections. We watched as people mingled over food and drinks in the atrium of London’s newest—and best looking—event venue, The Crystal. There’s no telling how many meetings were planned in person, but we do know that attendees booked 280 of them using our event app.
If you missed the conference this year, a few of our speakers have let us publish their slide decks here. You can check them out, linked below. And be sure not to miss our next one! We sold out two weeks before the event this time, and based on the response we’re expecting our second go-round to fill up quicker than that.
Speakers
Oliver Bruegmann
Creative Personal Branding - From Zero to Hero
Opportunity favours the prepared mind. Reflect. Reframe. Create. Grow. Differentiate. Go. Using examples from social media accounts and pop culture, successful branding strategies as well as his own team experiences, Oliver shares his expert tips on how to successfully create, develop, maintain and shape the personal branding and visual identity online. Be hero or zero!
Lyle Steven
At the Speed of Feed: AI & The Future of Influencer Marketing
More often than not, your best influencers are not found in a database or marketplace – because they exist among your own customers. Integrated with your CX, AI-powered influencer identification and activation enables you to discover the best mix of influencers in the moment to power your marketing strategy from insights to measurement. In this session, learn how AI is transforming the future of influence marketing strategy, design, and performance.
Simon Staib
Don’t waste your money – Top 5 Fraud Issues in Influencer Marketing!
“I just bought 4000 followers for 10 pounds“ - Confession of a real (and major) influencer Buying followers instead of building up a real and loyal community is only one fraud issue influencers and bloggers are using to grow their visibility. It’s becoming one of the biggest challenges marketers and platforms have to face when working with influencers. In this session, we show ways to identify, monitor, and solve the problem of fake followers and other fraud issues in influencer marketing. Then we’ll talk about setting standards for fair and honest communication as a preventive measure.
Neil Henderson
How to run an ROI positive influencer campaign… and have the data to prove it.
If there’s one thing that brings us together here, it’s the understanding that influencer marketing drives results. If there are two things; we’d add the fact that influencer marketing is snowballing into a force of its own, and becoming one of the biggest challenges - and success stories - for marketers in 2017. So, what’s missing from this relatively, but incredibly exciting new influencer channel? How to track and manage influencer campaigns, and scale! In this session, Neil will discuss best practices for not only measuring campaign analytics, and ROI, but tracking it down to a very granular level with the right technology. Neil will focus on how Assembly helps Brands and Agencies manage campaigns, with ROI top of mind.
Nicolas Chabot
Influencer Marketing: From Experimentation to Transformation
Uncover key insights about the current state and strategic evolution of influencer marketing practice within leading enterprises. This deep dive into Influence 2.0 research will help you understand why influencer marketing goes beyond the comms function, how it is impacting global organisations, and how to move from tactical campaigns to strategic programmes. These findings come from leading global brands that engage strategically in influencer marketing, After this session, you will understand the major priorities and opportunities for marketers today in scaling influencer programmes.
Gil Eyal
Activating Influencers: The Mistakes We Shouldn’t Be Making
After claiming a $2 billion market share in 2016, influencer marketing will continue to rise significantly in 2017. That being said, there is a divide between those implementing data to target niche influencers for higher engagement, reach and amplification, and those unaware of best practices—investing in celebrities without auditing their audience demographics. For example, U.S. brands continue to partner with Kim Kardashian, yet 70% of her audience reside outside the United States. The nature of social media consumption in an already saturated market means there needs to be a push towards partnering with targeted influencers for elevated traction within a specific audience demographic.
Aaron Ru
Pinterest: Monetizing Visual Search
Internet search is moving away from text towards images, video and augmented reality. As a result, content creators and influencers have a variety of new monetization tools and strategies at their disposable.
Jesse Leimgruber
The True ROI of Influencer Marketing
How much are big brands really spending on influencer marketing? Are they an getting an ROI or over spending? Which tactics had the highest ROI? Analyzing the direct conversion, sales, and media value data from the world’s largest brands paints a vivid picture of the true industry landscape. This presentation analyzes how big brands calculate their influencer media value, what influencer marketing actually costs, and shares direct data from over 400 analyzed influencer marketing campaigns representing over $50m in spend.
Olivier Billon
Using Influencer marketing to create and amplify story-telling around a product launch
The work we are currently doing with Cartier to support the launch of their new fragrance ‘L’envol’ is a great example of how influencer marketing can bring a product’s story and inspiration to life.
