Upfluence referenced in yet another research paper
Upfluence was referenced a total of 19 times in an academic research paper published by an MBA student at the University of Milan this July.
‘The Growing Business of Influencer Marketing Platforms’, is a 109 page case study by Mr. Alessandro Moro which can be read here.
The thesis paper details the growing industry of influencer marketing platforms, in which Upfluence stands out as a dual actor: providing both agency services as well as software technology via its SaaS model.
Here are 3 interesting insights provided within the paper:
Influencer Marketing can be defined as…
Influencer marketing is the most powerful new strategy to marketing in a decade for those specialists at the front edge of purchasing decision-making. (…) According to Sammis, Lincoln and Pomponi (2016), influencer marketing is the “art and science of engaging people who are influential online to share brand messages with their audiences in the form of sponsored content” (Alessandro Moro, pg.23)
You can understand how consumers think with influencers
Unlike traditional market research methods such as surveys, focus groups, and data mining that require a lot of time and money and take weeks or even months to examine, marketers can use social media to get “live” data on consumer behaviour and points of view on a company’s brand or products. (Alessandro Moro, pg. 21)
Measuring influencer success is an ongoing process
When measuring how effective the campaign has been, the company needs to look at traffic generated to a website, microsite, or landing page. (…) Depending on the product or service, the customer purchase cycle may be longer than the duration of the campaign. The company should include a plan to continue measuring the effect of the influencer marketing campaign on this purchase path. (Brown & Fiorella, 2013. Alessandro Moro, Pg. 33)
Mr. Moro finishes his research paper with a word about the fascinating future of influencer marketing, one that requires more of both artificial and human intelligence.
According to many of the interviewees, the future of influencer marketing is driven by AI, after all, social networks are based on specific algorithms and artificial intelligence is the most powerful and ideal tool to help find the right influencer. Surely the data is the master in these situations.
At the same time, however, another prospect for the future of this business could instead be complete reliance on the human side, (…) Only a real person can view and judge the contents, displays or videos, and understand how genuine and ideal they are for a hypothetical marketing campaign.
The only certainty is surely what will be a growing and evolving business for the coming decades.
– Alessandro Moro, “The Growing Business of Influencer Marketing Platforms” (pg.104).
At Upfluence, we wholeheartedly agree that the future of influencer marketing is a mix of machine intelligence and human creativity which is why we’ve chosen to develop our software and agency hand-in-hand.
Finally, we’d like to thank Mr. Moro for including us in his study and congratulate him on his degree.
Are you a researcher? Upfluence is happy to be working with the academic community and is willing to provide influencer data for non-commercial purposes such as these. Please contact our team for additional information.
