"It's no secret that the way companies communicate with customers is changing. For brands, leveraging the right online influencers is a growing part of how they tell their stories," says Jamie Reardon Sims, co-founder and CEO of Find Your Influence (FYI), a cloud-based application for advertisers, agencies, and influencers to manage campaigns from start to finish. "Yet finding these influencers, connecting with them, and executing campaigns has traditionally been a fragmented, frustrating process for both influencers and the brands looking to work with them."
Sims and her co-founder, Cristine Vieira, had first-hand experience with this pain point while managing digital marketing at LifeLock. As marketers, they had few options.
"What resources did exist were simple blogger directories, but just like Yellow Pages, directories do not provide a comprehensive solution for campaign creation, management, and measurement," Sims says. "Services that did offer complete influencer campaign management were-and remain-expensive. The other issue we encountered was that there were no ad networks to target influencers. A pricing standard for influencer marketing simply did not exist, making it even more difficult for advertisers, like us, to budget for these campaigns."
Taking matters into their own hands, Sims and Vieira launched FYI last month to improve and simplify influencer campaigns for brands and bloggers. Unlike competitors, the startup offers an online, self-service platform, so influencers' campaigns are available to agencies and businesses no matter their size. There are three pricing tiers in its subscription-based service ranging from $299 to $999, depending on the campaign features you choose. Perhaps you want to reach influencers. Maybe you want to put marketing practices to work.
The Scottsdale, Ariz.-based startup is working with notable brands to help them achieve a range of goals. Some clients need brand awareness, lead generation, or website traffic growth. Others want product launch and event support, reputation management, and custom content amplification.
So if you're an advertiser, you can create a campaign in four steps: provide campaign details and assets, select influencer criteria, define execution details, and activate. You should have no trouble connecting with influencers since there are more than 1,000 scored and ranked in FYI's influencer database. Using the platform's proprietary algorithm, you'll be matched together based on vertical, demographic, topic, and reach (i.e., Classic Influencer, 20k+ reach; Advantage Influencer, 50k+ reach; Power Influencer, 80k+ reach). From the influencer's perspective, just fill out a simple online application form. Once you're approved, you can create content for compensation.
There's no need to email branded content and assets piecemeal or save them on a variety of platforms anymore. You can store and organize copy, URLs, hashtags, images, videos, and logos in FYI's database. Then measure and view the status of and data from all pending and active campaigns in the same dashboard.
The FYI platform integrates with each influencer's blog, and other social media accounts including Facebook, Twitter, and Pinterest, providing third-party validation on the influencers' reach. Instagram, Google Plus, and YouTube metrics will be available on the dashboard soon.
Request a demo and check back in the next 14 days to read FYI case studies.